The one gift Mike Campbell gave to Stevie Nicks as a songwriter: “I was totally flattered”
“I asked Tom if I could be an honorary Heartbreaker,” Stevie Nicks recalled of asking Tom Petty if she could join her all-time favourite band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreaks – “He said, ‘You already are one, Stevie.’” Nicks has never made any secret of her deep love for Petty’s band, but the lead singer wasn’t the only band member to grant her a beautiful gift as she has a moving experience working with Mike Campbell once too.
“So, listen, what I’d really like to do is be in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ band,” Nicks recalled telling Atlantic Records when she launched her solo career. While taking a break from her role as Fleetwood Mac’s resident witchy poet, all she wanted to do was feel like a rockstar, taking inspiration from her peers but especially from Petty and his troupe.
So when she got to work with the band on Bella Donna, her solo debut, it was a dream realised. From then on, Petty proved to be a constant source of inspiration and encouragement. After a stint in rehab knocked her confidence as an artist, leading her to ask him if he would write a song for her to sing, Petty put her back on track, telling Nicks, “No. You are one of the premier songwriters of all time. You don’t need me to write a song for you,” adding, “Just go to your piano and write a good song. You can do that.”
But all the members of the Heartbreakers did a lot for Nicks, encouraging her when she needed encouragement, helping her when she needed help, and, in the case of guitarist Mike Campbell, granting her a gift that no one else had.
Working together on the song ‘Whole Lotta Trouble’ for her 1989 album The Other Side Of The Mirror, Campbell’s treatment of the song meant a lot to Nicks. “I recorded this song in Michael’s room in Sydney, Australia, on his 4-track. I actually played guitar, and almost a year later, Michael had worked up a track right along with what I had played in Australia,” she recalled of the song’s origins. But it was less his additional work on the song that moved her and more that way that he had stayed true to her initial idea as she explained, “He wrote a bridge for it, and when I got home from MY tour, he insisted I come up and sing it exactly as I had played it that night; and he could play his track right along with me playing rock and roll guitar.”
Keeping the original spark of the song intact and working solely from her early idea, Campbell’s dedication to preserving Nicks’ vision meant a lot, as the singer said, “I was totally flattered.”
Coming from Fleetwood Mac, where even her own songs ended up as collaborations, impacted by her band members, this moment with Campbell felt like the first time her vision had been left untouched. “He is the only person in my whole life who has EVER done one of my songs exactly as I had written it,” she said, seeing that as an incredible gift the guitarist gave her as she said sincerely. “Thank you, Michael, for all your wonderful music.”
