Photos and Review by Max Stewart
There are not many firsts left for Mike Campbell. After decades spent helping shape the sound of American rock with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and now with The Dirty Knobs, Campbell has played just about every kind of stage imaginable, but Saturday night at Atlanta Symphony Hall offered something entirely new: his legendary catalog performed alongside the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The evening also carried a personal connection to the region. “I want to dedicate this evening to my mom and dad,” Campbell told the crowd. “My dad lived in Macon and my mom was from Jacksonville… they would have loved this.” Campbell chatted with the audience at the beginning of the night to lay out the expectations for the evening and to introduce the incredible opener Sarah Lee Guthrie, who carries her own remarkable musical lineage as the daughter of Arlo Guthrie and granddaughter of folk legend Woody Guthrie. And despite everything Campbell has experienced during his career, he made it clear this particular show had him feeling some nerves. Borrowing a line from Stephen Stills, he admitted to the crowd which got some laughs, “I’m scared shitless.”
What followed was like Campbell opening the hood on songs we’ve heard a thousand times and discovering there were still a few parts hiding underneath. “Free Fallin’” naturally became enormous with the orchestra, and you really felt “You Got Lucky”’s cinematic backbone suddenly surrounded by strings. Campbell promised some Heartbreakers deep cuts and he certainly delivered. “You Can Still Change Your Mind” was practically born for this treatment, while “Into the Great Wide Open,” “First Flash of Freedom” and “Good Enough” showed just how much musical real estate exists inside the Petty/Campbell songbook. Campbell has always been the rare guitarist who understands that what you don’t play can matter as much as what you do, and even with an entire orchestra behind him, those wonderfully economical guitar lines remained unmistakably his.
“Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream” sounded massive without losing the scruff around the edges, which is probably the highest compliment you can give a rock song after adding dozens of classically trained musicians to it. “Can’t Stop the Sun” dug a little deeper into the catalog, while “The Boys of Summer” served as a reminder that Campbell’s musical fingerprints stretch well beyond the Heartbreakers. He co-wrote the Don Henley classic and he told a funny story about when he presented to music to Henley and he hardly reacted before calling him and saying “I just wrote the best song of my life to your music.” Hearing that iconic riff wrapped in an orchestra was one of those moments where you remember just how many pieces of the American rock songbook have Campbell quietly lurking somewhere in the DNA.
There was something pretty great about watching a musician of Campbell’s stature still find something capable of pushing him outside his comfort zone. He’s spent decades alongside Petty and written riffs that will probably outlive all of us.. Yet here he was in Atlanta, hearing songs he helped create decades ago come roaring back at him in an entirely new form. That was really the magic of the evening. These weren’t songs being preserved behind glass; they were being rearranged and given another life. By the time “Runnin’ Down a Dream” tore through Symphony Hall, the nerves Campbell joked about beforehand had disappeared, replaced by the realization that after all these years, there are apparently still a few musical firsts left.
