Tom Petty wrote most of the Heartbreakers‘ songs, but guitarist Mike Campbell‘s role in the band over the years should not be overlooked.
Where, for example, would the song “Breakdown” be without that famous descending riff? It just wouldn’t be “Breakdown,” the Top 40 hit released in November of 1976 from the Heartbreakers’ debut album.
“You know, Michael is not one to show off,” Petty said to Guitar Player in 1986. “He thinks as a writer a lot, which sometimes I have to kick his ass about. I want to tell him, ‘Go ahead and give it to me.'”
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Campbell didn’t write “Breakdown” — that was Petty’s own doing late one night in the studio in between working on other songs. Sitting at the piano, he and Campbell got into a groove that wound up being a nearly eight-minute long take. The aforementioned riff was in there, but just barely at the end. The plan was to then extract the best bits from the take, but from next door in the studio came Dwight Twilley, who heard the recording and, with zero hesitation, gave them some valuable advice.
“Twilley turns to me,” Petty recalled, “and says, ‘That’s the lick, man! How come he only plays it once at the end of the song? It’s the whole hook.'”
After listening back, Petty agreed and called the rest of the Heartbreakers back to the studio. This time, Campbell tried using a slide for the riff.
“I [used] a pill bottle with a ridge on it — One A Day vitamins, I think,” he explained in the same Guitar Player interview. It wasn’t exactly what they were looking for though: “We decided that the bottleneck was too bluesy. So I just played the part without the bottleneck and it worked. It’s just one of those things you stumble onto.”
Twilley wound up singing backing vocals on “Breakdown,” which was whittled down to under three minutes.
Listen to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ ‘Breakdown’
“These were just strange days,” Petty would later recall in 2005’s Conversations With Tom Petty, marveling at how quickly the finished version of “Breakdown” had come together. “I wrote the whole songs, words and music. It’s something I wouldn’t really think I could do now. But I guess I could. But when you’re young, and just so innocent, it was just something that happened. You know, we weren’t going to sit around for two hours and let them fix the mikes or whatever without doing something, so we did that.”
And though the version of “Breakdown” that appeared on 1976’s Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers clocked in at two minutes and 42 seconds, the band would often stretch it back out during live shows, as evidenced in the below recording from 1985.
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“Breakdown” went to No. 40 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and went on to become a staple of the Heartbreakers’ live shows. It also gave Campbell a well-deserved confidence boost.
“[The riff] kind of became very definitive. That’s a good example of my vibrato, tone and finding my essence,” he told Guitar World in 2024. “You always learn something from every song, and you surprise yourself. If you’re lucky, you’ll surprise yourself a lot and think, ‘What was that? Where did that come from?’ The important thing is to be open, pay attention and don’t let anything get past you that was really good.”
Listen to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Perform ‘Breakdown’ Live in 1985
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He’s a rock ‘n’ roll rarity: an artist who was consistent until the very end.
Gallery Credit: Bryan Wawzenek
