"Heartbreaker": http://bit.ly/4mhm6LB
1
This book is bumming me out. Because that's the way it was and it's not that way anymore. There used to be a rock culture with defined steps, you buy an instrument, form a band, play in bars and then try to move up the ladder, get a deal and become a success. Now all those steps have been eliminated, now you try to become a POP star, and having played in a bar is irrelevant, you may not have played live at all!
And if you cut in a big studio, it's only basics. The business is decentralized, done in various home studios.
And if you strike it big, you no longer become rich.
Scratch that... The Heartbreakers weren't getting rich even after they had hits. They were essentially destitute. Living on mattresses on the floor of houses with no furniture. Actually, that was when things were looking up! Before that you might be living in someone's garage, or sleeping on a couch...
I don't want to say no one lives that way anymore, but the standard of living in America has gone way up. As have expenses, affecting mobility, but the concept of struggle is different. I grew up in a classic split level, with all five of us on top of each other with three bedrooms and one bathroom. We added an addition in '62, but really... Today everybody seems to live in a mansion! The average person can live in a 4,000 square foot house... That was unfathomable back then, those domiciles didn't even exist!
But it's harder to live than before, costs are through the roof, which means a struggling musician...can't.
That's one thing no one acknowledges about today's college students, how savvy they are. I graduated and moved to Salt Lake to become a ski bum. Not a single person I knew was on the corporate track. But today? The kids know you're either a winner or a loser, and you don't want to be a loser without a leg up, no way.
Which means that so many of the middle class don't go into the arts, the odds are too long. Therefore, you get those without portfolio playing the game, who are malleable, who will do what their label and handlers tell them to.
Unlike Tom Petty.
Are you willing to put it all on the line, risk everything, your career, to protest a raw deal? Tom Petty did. Today you work with cowriters, do a cover, anything for a hit, the label has invested and it wants a return. And it was always a business, but more money was thrown around and more acts were making money...more acts were signed!
But how do you get signed?
2
It all started with the Beatles. Sure, there were Americans born in the forties who just happened to be players who benefited from the success of the Beatles, but those of us born in the fifties...we saw the band on Ed Sullivan, we heard the records on the radio, we wanted IN!
So everybody bought an instrument, and everybody played.
And everybody was forming bands.
And then you tried to get gigs. And there were a ton of gigs available. Not so every band could work, but if you were good...
There were school dances, sock hops. Battles of the bands. Bar and bat mitzvahs. Proms. Bars. There was seemingly an endless number of places to play. And now there are fewer and most want to spin records, they want a deejay. Why hire a not fantastic Top Forty cover band when you can play the records themselves, in a world that venerates the deejay?
As for bars...
They're a business, first and foremost. The entertainment is there to sell alcohol, that's it. They're not a service. And somewhere in the past decades, most of the public rejected live music by bands playing original material. There was no leeway whatsoever. Especially now, when the hits are available on everybody's phone.
And was it a good business proposition? Was it worth it to the bar to pay the band, did it get enough in return?
And even weddings now have deejays instead of bands. No one pooh-poohs the affair.
As for clubs... Even the ones that showcased talent with a deal have fallen by the wayside, even the Bottom Line closed. The economics just didn't work. People want to see and hear music, but they want to hear the STARS! They'll pay big bucks to see their favorite in an arena, but to see an up and coming act, wet behind the ears, play in their local watering hole? That's viewed as a bad experience.
OF COURSE there are exceptions. But there used to be a whole culture of developing bands in every region of the country, honing their chops, trying to make it.
You knew every player in your town. The bands were rarely static. Members were replaced, maybe because they weren't good enough, oftentimes because the players felt it was no longer worth it, they wanted to grow up, they wanted to have some MONEY!
3
Mike Campbell grew up relatively poor.
Even at this late date when someone says they grew up poor, don't believe them. They're oftentimes lying to embellish their credibility. You went to prep school? You couldn't have been poor. Your father was an attorney, or owned a car dealership? I've heard these stories from multiple musicians. You pierce the surface and you find they're lying. Because no one wants to say they were rich and comfortable, that goes against the ethos.
Benmont Tench came from money.
But Mike Campbell really had next to nothing until the band hit. I mean really hit, with "Damn the Torpedoes."
Mike made it. But a lot of the other people he played with in the band did not. And then where were they? Broke, with few options, too old to start over and go to college.
As for Tom Petty?
His image is pierced in this book. He was not a lovable everyman. He knew what he wanted and you couldn't stand in his way. And sometimes he'd poke you, needle you, make fun of you, just for the sport of it, with no goal whatsoever other than to make you uptight. Stars are a different breed. It's not only Tom, it's most of your heroes. Because do you know how hard it is to make it? To sacrifice everything for your dream with odds of success so damn low? Tom Petty made it, you don't know the names of all the people who tried and didn't.
As for the 50/50 deal...
Mike had told me this, but when you read about it in the book...
Tony Dimitriades brought in Elliot Roberts as co-manager. And a band meeting was called. And everybody was there except Tom. And Stan Lynch immediately senses that something was up.
And then Elliot told them. Going forward, Tom got 50% of the money and the other four spit the remaining 50%. And this didn't go over well with the band, they wanted to quit, after all, it was a BAND, they believed Petty couldn't do it on his own. HOWEVER, Mike reminded them if they stood on their principles and quit, where would that leave them? Right and broke without a band? Or should they suck it up and stay with Petty who had a deal and some success and was a great songwriter and frontman.
What Mike did not tell me in our podcast was that the resentment lasted for YEARS!
Ah, bands.
4
So what you've got here is the story of Mike Campbell begging for a guitar, and not getting one until he was already in his teens. And then he dedicated himself to it.
But he didn't believe in himself. He knew he was practicing, but how good was he? Not that good, right?
But when he got a chance to play with others they were impressed, and this ultimately led to working with Petty and getting a gig at a popular bar where everybody would end up with $100 a week, but...
The main draw was not the band, but the STRIPPERS! And the wet t-shirt contests. Ah, the seventies. Do they even have wet t-shirt contests anymore? As for nudity, just fire up Google!
And they're playing for YEARS!
And make a demo which generates nothing.
Ultimately Tom goes to California and goes to the labels and London might be interested, but then he gets a call from Denny Cordell at Shelter who is ga-ga, wants them to come to Tulsa and meet.
You've got to understand, he may have ended up as Tom Petty with his Heartbreakers, but at that point you're hanging on by a thread. If this guy isn't interested...there's not another person. You're nowhere.
And after signing with Shelter and being in the studio...
Nothing happened. The band broke up. Everybody was on their own other than Tom, who convinced Denny to throw a little cash at Mike too...very little cash.
This is the way it WAS!
And it's no longer that way anymore.
Even after the band starts to gain traction... They talk about Robert Hilburn writing about them and that having a positive effect. If it weren't for the efforts of promotion man Jon Scott, would ANYTHING have happened in America?
5
So I don't read most rock biographies, because usually they're print versions of "Behind the Music." They're not honest. You don't really see the struggle. You see the arc, and that's important, but not everything.
Mike goes into some of the details of playing the guitar, of instruments themselves. And it's not too much if you're a casual fan, and if you're more than that, you'll eat it up.
Mike was a fan. He knew the records, the ones you played, and he knew the labels and the business...all from afar. And he was not the only one. Back then there was a plethora of those people, maybe you too, reading this. We lived for the music and more, the whole penumbra. We just wanted to be involved. But one thing about the music business, they didn't need us, they didn't need ANYBODY specifically, they just needed people who could generate cash, and they didn't really care who that was.
So Mike is a shy, quiet guy, not the life of the party and not a ladies man... What was it like to be in the game, but trading only on your ability, that's it. Mike doesn't sound like a star, he sounds closer to you and me.
6
Now I'm halfway through the book, they're recording "Damn the Torpedoes" at Sound City with Jimmy Iovine and Shelly Yakus, and it's interesting, but not as interesting as what came before.
We've seen this movie in its various permutations. Making records, making them into successes. But what came before? That hasn't been heavily delineated, and that's what makes the first half of the book so interesting. Because if you were paying attention back in the late sixties and early seventies...YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT MIKE IS TALKING ABOUT! You didn't even have to be a player, just a listener, the vibe... It was a different era. Music was everything, we were all paying attention and you could struggle and figure out who you were and wanted to be on minimum wage. You couldn't live like a king, but you could get by.
And at that age, your late teens and early twenties, it's all about meeting people and their friends. Making connections, going places, taking risks. You're out and about, not always sunny and happy, but life was an adventure, anything but plotted out. Who could you believe in, who could you trust?
And if you were living in L.A. in the mid-seventies, what Mike talks about will resonate.
There was a free-flowing atmosphere. You could see the billboards, go to the clubs...where you might run into someone famous. But you knew behind closed doors it was a mobile society of studios and hanging out and doing drugs and...
It's not that way anymore. Now it's about being a brand and making money. Back then, just playing the music was enough.
Sure, sure, sure... There are still rock bands. But very few break through to big time success, they're niches in backwaters. Blues Traveler was on MTV, today you're either a Phish fan or you're not. There's a jam band scene, but there's no crossover. So everybody in America knowing your name and your music...it's nearly impossible. And whatever success you have either comes instantly, if you're a pop star, or takes a really long time if you're anybody else.
7
Yes, this book depressed me, but not all the way through. But there would come times when Mike was talking about situations I was in. Parallel societies, even in Los Angeles. And one thing is for sure, it's not that way anymore. There will always be a music business, always be hit records, but the stars of yore...they were different, don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, even Miley Cyrus? Musicians didn't start out in the mainstream, anything but. And they had contempt for those in the mainstream, you listened to FM rock, not AM pop drivel. You worked your way up from the bottom. It was unfathomable to be on a TV show and then leverage this into a musical career. Ricky Nelson was a progenitor, and pre-Beatles, and the Monkees were fabricated and whatever you think about their music today, many had disdained these acts back then.
No, you wore your jeans, smoked your dope, played your Telecaster to the hits of the day and constantly thought about original material, which was the only thing that would give you a chance, a break. And to form a band that could get by on original material only? That was the dream, but that was rare, VERY rare.
But a few broke through.
And it was a knife edge. It's not like everybody was clamoring for Tom Petty. He got a chance, and it ultimately paid off, but it just as easily could have gone completely bust.
So if you're thinking about the story of Tom Petty...
This is the story of the guy one step away. Who wrote some of the music and was there and it's a different perspective.
And at times it was so true, resonated so much, that I truly almost put the book down, it hurt too much. We lived through this and it is never coming back, this era is going to die with us.
So, if you have any interest at all in Mike's story...READ THIS BOOK!
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