It’s been a difficult, but busy few years for Mike Campbell, lead guitarist with The Heartbreakers and now frontman of The Dirty Knobs. The sad passing of Tom Petty in 2017, effectively ended the Heartbreakers, and Campbell entered a period of grieving and reflection.
Somewhat surprisingly enlisted to the ranks of Fleetwood Mac alongside Neil Finn to fill the not inconsiderable boots of the sacked Lindsey Buckingham, he spent a year on the Mac’s world tour, putting his recording of this album further on hiatus. Named after the screeching feedback omitted from a bad mic connection to a dial on an amp, the name, ‘The Dirty Knobs’, is not a double entendre, or is it suggestive, Mike Campbell contends.
If you think it is, that’s your problem!
You can imagine the twinkle in his eye as he issues the clarification, and this sense of fun imbues the whole album. The video for ‘Fuck That Guy’ is a case in point. A human avatar of the Coronavirus, complete with fuzzball virus head walks around annoying all he meets and being met with the titular response by Campbell and everyone else. The song was initially a send-up of annoying people but given the year we’ve had, it’s a perfect sentiment for us all. Asked if “that guy” bore any resemblance to a particular politician or President, Campbell stated it was not really a political gesture:
You can insert your own particular asshole here.
Using the word catchy and Coronavirus in the same sentence is problematic but the song has become a serious earworm.
Many of the songs would not be out of place on a Petty album, and at times Campbell does sound remarkably like his much-missed former band leader. The staunch title track ‘Wreckless Abandon’ could sit neatly beside ‘The Last DJ’ while the lovely lilting ‘Irish Girl’ could be an outtake from the ‘Wildflowers’ album, and will no doubt be a firm favourite this side of the pond.
Elsewhere, it’s a more bluesy affair as on ‘I Still Love You’, and talking blues on the chugging ‘Don’t Knock The Boogie’, which features some of the most blistering solos on the album, and perhaps indeed in Campbell’s recorded catalogue. Elsewhere, the man of the moment in Americana, Chris Stapleton, provides sterling backing and a stamp of approval as if one were needed on the swampy country track ‘Pistol Packin’ Mama’.
Campbell, as well as co-writing some of the classic songs in the Heartbreakers history, has worked with artists of the caliber of Johnny Cash, John Prine, Roger McGuinn, and Stevie Nicks, and one can just hear ‘Anna Lee’ sitting comfortably on Don Henley’s ‘Cass Country’. Despite what the lyrics say, Mike Campbell is the keeper of the flame, and while he continues to produce quality material like ‘Wreckless Abandon’, the spirit of Tom Petty is never too far away.
With solid back up from Lance Morrison on bass and Matt Laug on drums, this sounds like a Heartbreakers album that Tom never got around to making from the first chiming notes of Campbell’s Rickenbacker on the title track, you just know you’re in for a ride, and so it is. A rollicking run through rock and blues with a few ballads and a whole heap of fun thrown for good measure.
On the basis of this rocking offer, we will be hopefully be hearing a lot more from The Dirty Knobs, when we get rid of “that guy” and live shows are a thing again.