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Mike Campbell on 30 years with Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
The Live Anthology due 23 November
Joe Bosso, Thu 12 Nov 2009, 5:05 pm UTC
Who all was involved in the process? I would think with so many tapes, so many performances, it could lead to some arguments.
"Basically it was me and Tom and Ryan Ulyate, our engineer-producer - he gets huge credit for this. Tom came to me originally and said, 'I want to do this. We should go through all our stuff and pick out the highlights of all our live performances from the last 30 years. I'm busy, you go do it.' [laughs]
"I got Ryan, and he found the stuff, compiled it for us, and as we narrowed it down, we brought Tom back on board and he got real excited and got hands-on involved in finishing it with us."
Were some of these pleasant surprises - or horrors, if you will?
"Well, there some rough spots. We had one criteria: focus on the vocal. Almost every time, if the vocal is really good, the band is almost always good too. You might have takes where it was 'Oh, that was an incredible guitar solo,' but you know, Tom couldn't hear himself or there was some technical problem. So basically, we just went ahead with, If the vocal is great, then we'll start with that and see if everything else holds up. That seemed like a pretty good way to go."
Tom Petty And The Heatbreakers get goofy in 1981 © Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis
"It was very enlightening and exciting to hear some of this stuff after all these years, to hear the different eras of the band and the excitement of the early lineup back in the late '70s and '80s, and to hear how kinetic that energy was when we were just breaking through - and then, later on, when the band matured and changed, that was exciting, too."
What was it like hearing some of band members who are no longer with you?
