Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell insisted his “conscience is clear” over his bandleader Tom Petty‘s 2017 death from an accidental drug overdose.
“I don’t torture myself [over Petty’s death],” Campbell, 75, told Guitar Player in an interview published on Tuesday, March 11.
Petty’s death at age 66 sent shockwaves through the rock community, especially after a coroner’s report determined that a mix of opioids — including fentanyl and oxycodone — in his system contributed to a fatal “mixed drug toxicity.” The rock legend had gone through periods of drug use throughout his life, but famously got clean in 1999 when his future wife, Dana York, convinced him to go to rehab.
Campbell explained in his new interview that while he recognized Petty was no longer sober near the end of his life, he felt it was impossible to get through to his longtime bandmate.
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“With Tom it was like, ‘Your private life is yours, and mine is mine. I can see what you’re doing, but out of respect for you, I’ll trust you’ll do the right thing. If you need me, call me,’” he recalled. “I could have gone to him and said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to cut this s— out,’ which I kind of did once to the manager. But the thing with Tom was, you could say that and he would just look at you like, ‘But I’m Tom Petty. I’m going to do whatever I f—ing want. Get out of my face.’”
Campbell suggested that “the sides of [Petty’s] personality” always made it challenging to get close to the musician he worked with for more than 40 years.
“He was intimidating, but there was love there. I think one reason we stayed together is because we kept our private lives separate. We didn’t socialize that much off tour,” he insisted.
The last time the pair worked together was only a week before Petty’s death, when they concluded their 40th Anniversary Tour at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2017.
When Campbell was pressed on why he didn’t “get in [Petty’s] face” about his noticeable decline, the musician replied: “I don’t torture myself. My conscious is clear because Tom knew that I knew, and Tom knew that I wasn’t forcing him and getting in his face about it.”
The guitarist added that there was “an invisible understanding” between himself and Petty about their personal lives.
“I didn’t have to confront him, for him to know how I felt about it,” Campbell said. “Like I said, there was no second thoughts or reservations about going out on tour. In fact, the last conversation I had with Tom about it, I said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this? Are you up to it?’ He said, ‘I’m not staying home. I’m going out. I want to do it. If I have to be in a wheelchair, I’m going to do it.’ I said, ‘OK, then what?’ He said, ‘Well, when the tour’s over, I’m going to go get my [hip] surgery. We’ll write some more songs, make another record.’ That was the plan.”
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Campbell continued: “It was kind of business as usual. I know that Tony [Dimitriades], our manager, spoke to him and gave him options like, ‘We can postpone this. You can get your surgery now.’ Tom said, ‘I need to be out there. I want to play with the band, and we’re going to do it. I’ll be OK.’ So I have no second thoughts about it. I don’t beat myself up like that. I miss them — same with [Howie Epstein, the Heartbreakers’ bassist, who died at 47 in 2003] — but I did all I could.”
Since Petty’s death in 2017, Campbell and Crowded House’s Neil Finn have joined Fleetwood Mac as replacements for Lindsey Buckingham following the latter guitarist’s acrimonious departure from the group. Campbell has written a memoir about his career with Petty called Heartbreaker, out on Tuesday, March 18.
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