Mike Campbell’s guitar solo wowed Jeff Lynne

(Credit: Raph_PH)

Monday 9 December 2024 21:30 UK

When you’re constantly working with some of the greatest musicians and songwriters of all time, the pressure to continually impress them in new ways must reach an all-powerful level to deal with. Given that they’ve probably heard it all before, and that after a long career their belief that the creative well runs dry when people start retreading like they did in the past, you have to go some distance to impress the masters. of rock music.

Mike Campbell always had enough talent to impress his peers, but even if he was comfortable in his own company Tom Petty during his time with the Heartbreakers, there were always others in his presence that he had to pique the interest of. As one of Petty’s closest friends and collaborators, Jeff Lynne spent a lot of time around the other Heartbreakers as a producer and co-writer, and was present for one song in particular that Campbell was determined to fix.

“Runnin’ Down A Dream” is now considered one of Petty’s best songs, but it didn’t come without stress from Campbell. Tasked with crafting a solo that would feel fitting to close such an emphatic piece of rockland, Campbell figured he’d be able to extend his moment in the spotlight a little longer than usual.

Speaking in an interview about his experience working alongside Petty and Lynne on Full moon fever track, revealed that “when I did the solo at the end, I let it go a lot. Most of our songs don’t have long solos because we’re not connected that way, but this song we thought it could go on a little bit and I could play it.”

In a moment of impromptu inspiration, Campbell began what would become his only solo, lasting almost two minutes and taking up almost half of the song’s length. “Everything was spot on,” Campbell explained. “It wasn’t rehearsed or anything and I just nodded.” However, just because he was clearly in the zone didn’t mean he didn’t have anything in the back of his mind to bother him, and Lynne’s presence in the studio was a little disconcerting.

“Jeff was hard to please, and I remember him watching me, and when I did one of the more complicated things, it kind of went like this,” Campbell said, before mimicking Lynne by taking off her glasses and staring intently above. among them. Campbell then went on to say that this was one of Lynne’s commercial moves in the studio and it could have meant one of two things. “Every time Jeff looks over his glasses, you’re either in big trouble or he’s really good, so he was very proud of that.”

After this moment of relief when he soloed in one out, he laughed and recalled exactly what pushed him to his limits in soloing: “I had Jeff Lynne and Tom there, I had to do something good – I can. don’t pose!”

If that was enough to impress one of the greatest rock and pop songwriters of all time, then he must have gone the extra mile in the studio that day, and the end result is proof that he did.

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