The Writer’s Block: Mike Campbell on Making Music With Tom Petty, the Dirty Knobs, and Why Songwriting is His “Higher Power”

It’s no surprise Tom Petty was in awe of words, and their structure. “Tom said, ‘I love the English language,” recalled Mike Campbell, Petty’s early Mudcrutch bandmate, longtime Heartbreaker, and songwriting partner. “’There’s so much you can do with it,’” he recalled Petty saying. “I’m discovering that, too,” added Campbell. “Looking for rhyme schemes, the right word. At first, it was a struggle. Now that door has opened.”

Campbell, who released his third album with his band the Dirty Knobs, Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits, in 2024 says the band has finally grown into “different feels,” more than two decades since forming. The band started playing around Los Angeles around 2000, and released its debut 20 years later with Wreckless Abandon in 2020, followed by External Combustion in 2022.

Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits also reunited Campbell with Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench and drummer Steve Ferrone, along with special guests Graham Nash, Lucinda Williams, and Chris Stapleton.

[RELATED: 7 Songs You Didn’t Know Mike Campbell Wrote for Other Artists]

With the Dirty Knobs, Campbell has found new footing as a songwriter after more than four decades of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers albums, and as Petty’s other half writing “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” “Into the Great Wide Open,” “Refugee,” and more along with their co-writes and individual collaborations with other artists.

Outside of the Heartbreakers, Campbell wrote for Don Henley (“The Boys of Summer”), Brian Setzer (“Aztec”), Cheap Trick‘s Robin Zander (“I’ve Always Got You”), Patti Scialfa (“Lucky Girl”), The Chicks (“Lubbock or Leave It”), Stapleton (“Watch You Burn”), and more.

Campbell spoke with American Songwriter about writing with Petty versus the Dirty Knobs and why songwriting will always be his “religion.”

American Songwriter: How has songwriting evolved for you over the past 50 or so years?

Mike Campbell: Musically, nothing has changed. I write on guitar a lot and that hasn’t changed. Back when I was in the Heartbreakers, I hardly wrote any lyrics. I would always leave it up to Tom. He was so good. I’d have the music, and he would come back with the words. What has changed now is that I’m fleshing out the songs with the characters and the lyrics, and that’s a new frontier for me. I’ve found an open door there, where stuff is coming to me, and it’s really exciting.

AS: Are you finding yourself pulled in any particular direction with songs now?

MC: I follow the muse. I don’t have rules about it. It’s a mythical, mysterious thing, creative ideas when they channel through you. I don’t try to anticipate anything, per se, I just let it come if it’s a slow song, fast song, guitar song, piano song, or if it’s a story about a girl, or a guy, or a gypsy—whatever it might be. I just let it come through. I don’t try to push it.

Some people write on the clock. They write from 10 to noon. I can’t do that. I don’t force it. I write all the time, but I have to feel it. It has to come to me, then I go “Okay, now I have this germ of a thing I have to go work on.” It could happen in the car, in a dream. It happens in the backyard playing with the dogs or just noodling on the guitar. You just never know when it’s gonna come, but it’s a very magical thing.

[RELATED: Mike Campbell Enlists Graham Nash, Lucinda Williams, Chris Stapleton, and Heartbreakers on the Dirty Knobs’ Third Album ‘Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits’]

AS: Songs can sometimes transform in meaning or feeling over time. What’s your connection to some of the older Heartbreakers songs now?

MC: Even songs that I had that I was inspired by when I was young, I hear them now and I get different emotions from them. But the songs that I wrote with Tom, I’m very proud of—there’s quite a few of them. Of course, there’s always that spiritual moment where I feel my friend’s spirit. But these songs, have a life of their own. Really good songs do age well with time.

With “Refugee,” which I do with the Dirty Knobs in an almost waltz-time—I break it down to a more intimate version—the song, the lyrics when it was written there was a lot of political unrest in the world. And now it’s still going on. The song is almost just as fresh as when Tom wrote those words. It’s aged well.

It’s almost hard to talk about it because it’s mysterious. Songs are alive. With “American Girl,” which is one of the first songs we did, I don’t know what it is about that song, but every time I play it, it feels just as fresh as the first time I’ve heard it.”

Most songs, depending on the social world, and the climate as a society we’re in might take on a different timbre.

I love talking about songwriting. It’s always been my favorite subject. Songwriting is my religion and is close to a higher power.

Photo: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell (l) and Steve Ferrone
BottleRock Napa Valley Festival, USA. May 27, 2017 by Rmv/Shutterstock