Sometimes, it all starts with a riff — a singular piece of music that ends up anchoring an entire song.
This is what happened with Tom Petty‘s “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” a track from his 1989 solo album Full Moon Fever. Despite it being a solo project, Petty still enlisted the help of Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, and it was he who first came up with that descending guitar riff.
Petty knew there was something to be made with it.
“I liked the lick a lot, and I’d sit around, playing it on my guitar, experimenting with it in different ways,” he recalled for 2005’s Conversations With Tom Petty. “I came to think it sounded good in a really straight beat, really fast. And I played it for Jeff [Lynne, the album’s producer], one night when he was over at my house, and he said ‘Oh, that’s good. That might be one of those last riffs left. [Laughs]”
One Take Wonder
Eventually, Petty and Lynne filled in the rest of the missing pieces, and when it came time to record the track, they gathered in Campbell’s tiny home studio that fit four people maximum, as Petty recalled it — “If any more came, they had to stand in the garage. You had to pull the cars out to work.”
“Mike was just sitting there with his head down,” Petty continued. “And that bit came and he started to play. And he played that incredible solo. But he looked like a stone statue. He didn’t ever blink or move. And he had his back to us. I remember Jeff looking around his shoulder and looking back at me, and making this face like, ‘Is he really doing this?’ It was one take. One take.”
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Campbell may not have blinked or moved, but apparently he did notice Lynne’s face.
“I remember Jeff was there, and he went like this,” Campbell explained to Guitar Player in 2026, lowering his sunglasses and making an expression of surprise. “It’s hard to impress Jeff. So, yeah, that was a good sign.”
Another good sign was when “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” upon release on July 29, 1989, reached No.23 on the Billboard Hot 100. An animated music video directed by Jim Lenahan — Heartbreakers tour lighting director and a founding member of Petty and Campbell’s first band, Mudcrutch — accompanied the track.
Watch the Music Video for ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’
At nearly four and a half minutes, “Runnin’ Down a Dream” is rather long – it’s the longest song on Full Moon Fever.
“That was because he got on that roll at the end,” Petty explained, “and he just kept playing, and I wasn’t going to edit it out or fade out, because it was just so good what he was playing.”
Lynne was surprised at that moment, but generally speaking, he found the making of the album to be smooth sailing.
“Full Moon Fever came together so easily,” he said to Classic Rock in 2012. “It is still one of my favorite records of all those I’ve worked on.”
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And Campbell didn’t have to try that hard to make the moment happen. His 1962 Gibson Les Paul “SG” Junior was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
“It just happened to be there that day,” he said in 2026. “I didn’t go looking for it. I just picked it up.”
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He’s a rock ‘n’ roll rarity: an artist who was consistent until the very end.
Gallery Credit: Bryan Wawzenek