Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell is opening up about his life and musical career in the new memoir Heartbreaker, which is out now.

Campbell worked with ghostwriter Ari Surdoval on the memoir. He tells ABC Audio it wasn't difficult for him to dip into his past for the book.

“I would just talk and as I would talk, little synapsis would go off and little memories I didn't know were in there would come back to me,” he says.

Of course, a good portion of the book delves into his relationship with Petty, both the good and the sometimes not so good.

“I wanted to tell the truth, but I didn't go in certain areas that I thought were unpleasant or unnecessary to his character or my relationship with him,” he says. “But I didn't want to sugarcoat it and make an untruth.”

He also gives fans insight into his work writing songs for and with Petty, noting, “I wanted to illuminate the songwriting magic. How it happens."

He adds, “You can't conjure it up when you want it. ... Sometimes it does all come in at once, if you're lucky.”

The book also delves into Petty’s unexpected death in 2017 and Campbell's relationship with him at the end.

“We weren't touchy-feely dudes that talked about your feelings, you know? But we knew,” he shares. “There were a lot of things that didn’t need to be said. You know, that I love you ... we knew it.”

But in the end, Campbell did get to tell Tom he loved him at his bedside in the hospital.

“They told me he could hear me,” Campbell explains. “So I said what I had to say. But there was no unresolved issues that I had to get off my chest.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.