Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell says there was no saving Petty, no matter how much he wanted to.
Campbell writes in his forthcoming memoir, Heartbreaker, that he and Tom "had our brotherly friction here and there, but there was a deep love that kept us together through all the rough times.” And apparently that love wasn't enough to save Petty's life.
Campbell tells Guitar Player, "With Tom, it was like, 'Your private life is yours, and mine is mine. I can see what you're doing, but out of respect for you, I'll trust you'll do the right thing. If you need me, call me.'
"I could have gone to him and said, 'Hey, you’ve got to cut this [crap] out,' which I kind of did once to the manager. But the thing with Tom was, you could say that and he would just look at you like, 'But I'm Tom Petty. I'm going to do whatever I want. Get out of my face.'
"Those were the sides of his personality. He was intimidating, but there was love there. I think one reason we stayed together is because we kept our private lives separate. We didn't socialize that much off tour."
So, as for Tom dying in 2017 "due to mixed drug toxicity," Campbell says, "I have no problem with that for the reasons I just explained. I don't torture myself. My conscious is clear because Tom knew that I knew, and Tom knew that I wasn't forcing him and getting in his face about it.
"We had this invisible understanding, and I didn't have to confront him for him to know how I felt about it. Like I said, there was no second thoughts or reservations about going out on tour. In fact, the last conversation I had with Tom about it, I said, 'Are you sure you want to do this? Are you up to it?' He said, 'I'm not staying home. I'm going out. I want to do it. If I have to be in a wheelchair, I'm going to do it.' I said, 'Okay, then what?' He said, 'Well, when the tour's over, I'm going to go get my [hip] surgery. We'll write some more songs, make another record.'"
Petty died on October 2nd, 2017. He was 66.
Heartbreaker will be published on Tuesday, March 18th.