Mike Campbell

“There are places in the Knobs where well just make stuff up at the end of a song. Maybe we wont end it. Maybe well go on another three minutes and see what the guitar does. You go into it with reckless abandon and hope that some kind of magic might happen. And usually it does.”

“Listen to the melody and the feel of the singer, and try to get inside the character of the guy who's singing to find an answer to that or an accompaniment that is in that same pocket, that's not showing off or playing above the song, or trying to put too much into it. Try to serve the song.”

“I never wanted to be a solo artist. I always wanted to be in a band.”

“I love AC/ DC and I love Led Zeppelin and I love guitar riffs.”

“Electric Gypsy' was really raw. I was literally sketching out the lyrics as they walked in the door. I jumped up and had a sheet of paper and I showed them the chords, which are simple. We counted it off, I got the lyrics off the sheet into the song and played a solo at the end - done!”

“Youre right, I do write a lot. In some ways, staying home and not being able to tour was kind of normal for me. Because when Im home, Im very active with writing and I have a studio here.”

“If I had to pick one guitar to take to a desert island, I'd pick my '67 Rickenbacker 12-string, which I bought a couple of tours ago in New Jersey. The '67 is George-style from A Hard Day's Night, with the double binding. It's just like heaven. It sounds incredible.”

“Top Of The Pops' was the show to be on. Youd go in in the afternoon, re-record the track for them, and then youd mime to the track that you cut that afternoon.”

“I grew up in the 60s, and before the 60s, my father was into Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, so I heard those records all the time and soaked that up.”

“There are songs that do get lost along the way, but as soon as you pull them out it all comes back to you.”

“The Heartbreakers got kind of stuck with these hits and we had to play them like the records, which is a great balance too and we were really good at that.”

“The album format is what we grew up on. Its what we aspired to when we were first discovering music - its what's what we know. We actually talked about this because nowadays, with iTunes and everything, there's a lot of pressure to get this track and that track, whatever.”

“Im a product of my influences, and those are the 60s. All analog. I loved the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Stones - and then later on, of course, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix.”

“But its almost like church - were going to show up and preach the gospel of rock and roll. And its a great place to come and get away and get in touch with whats really important in life - which is love and music and fun, you know?”

“I try to get into a headspace where I pretend like this is the first time Im ever hearing this song, and I get into that and I just try to discover it. I found that if I really put my head in that space then I can get into it. I can discover it all over again.”

“Madison Square Garden is a big deal.”

“But there was no specific discussion when we came to make 'Hypnotic Eye' that were going to draw from a specific part of the well, because each song just comes in from wherever it comes. If it fits into a certain bag or feel, I think generally thats an accident!”

“Well, every nights gonna be different. I dont even know what were going to play the next two nights. But thats the exciting part of it.”

“A lot of times we would do covers - Chuck Berry or J.J. Cale or all kinds of cool songs - and whenever we did that I would always listen to the original record and really try to figure out what made it a great record and bring that to the floor.”

“Almost every time, if the vocal is really good, the band is almost always good too.”