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José González: A Matter of Time
Дата публикации: 04-05-2026 14:50:50


Don’t be fooled. Yes, José González’s mellifluous folk-pop, powered almost exclusively by Spanish acoustic guitars, sounds like it must have been a breeze to make. But if it were, a lot more of it would exist. As things stand, the acclaimed Swedish singer, songwriter, and guitarist (a child of Argentinian parents who emigrated to Scandinavia in the 1970s) has managed to put out just five solo albums in the past 23 years. Because his work is truly a solo production—González plays, sings, and records all the parts either at his home in Gothenburg or in a private studio space nearby—he has nobody to blame for this but himself. And as he explains during a recent Zoom interview with Premier Guitar, a key issue is that he starts the creative process for each of his albums intending to attain a noble ideal, of which he inevitably and invariably falls short.“The first ambition always is to do everything, the whole album, with one guitar and one voice,” González says. “But then I’ll have a song that I feel will still be good enough for the album [that way] but I’ll just try adding one more guitar, or some vocals, or some clapping, or some looping. It’s cheating,” he acknowledges, “but you know, I’m old enough to not care that much about it. So that becomes part of the new ambition, which is to make it all sound like it was done with just one guitar and one vocal.”
A bemused grin flashes from behind the 47-year-old González’s dark, scraggly beard. “But then I run into another problem,” he continues, “which is that if the album sounds like it was done with just one guitar and one vocal, it’s a bit too homogeneous and boring for many people. So that’s when I start pushing each song in different directions, adding echoes and reverbs, changing the style of guitar playing. When I put my producer’s hat on, then it’s a different ambition: to make the album more interesting.”​José González’s GearGuitarsEstevé Adalid 11 classical acousticEstevé 9CB classical acoustic (one with spruce top and one with cedar top)Loriente Clarita classical acousticCórdoba Rodriguez classical acousticAlhambra classical acoustic
EffectsBoss OC-3 Super OctaveBoss GE-7 Equalizer Roland RE-201 Space EchoAbleton Live software (for live looping)Strings & CapoD’Addario Pro Arté EJ46 Silverplated Wound/Nylon CoreShubb C2 capoPickups, Mics, & DIFishman Prefix Pro Blend pickupsNeumann U 67 and SM 69 microphonesRadial Engineering Firefly tube preamp/DIRecording SoftwareLogic ProUniversal Audio plugins, including A-Type Multiband Dynamic Enhancer, EP-34 Tape Echo and Precision De-EsserDoes González foresee a time when he might actually achieve his first ambition of making a literal solo album? “That could happen,” he says. “I don’t know, there’s many things I want to do with life. If I look into my future, when the kids [an eight-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son] are older and they move from home, I might play every day and all of a sudden have 10 songs that are amazing and just put them out on an album like that. But then again, I might just be happy on my porch by the water. And I might not have an audience that wants to see this old dude.”One has a hard time imagining the latter situation ever coming to pass if González keeps making music that matches the consistent quality of his latest release, Against the Dying of the Light. Like its four predecessors, the new album sounds simple at first, quiet alt-folk spotlighting González’s gentle, reedy voice and mellow nylon-string plucking. But it reveals greater complexity the more closely you listen: in the tricky rhythms that course through each song, derived from West African, Caribbean, and Brazilian sources; in the harmonic richness of the chord progressions; and in the advanced philosophical concepts referenced in the lyrics.“The first ambition always is to do everything, the whole album, with one guitar and one voice.”Indeed, Against the Dying… could legitimately be called a concept album—not in the rock-opera sense, but in the more basic definition of a linked group of songs that explore kindred ideas. The album opens with “A Perfect Storm,” which presents a problem: Human consciousness and well-being are threatened by artificial intelligence, algorithms, memes, and other human creations. The implications of that problem are examined more deeply as the album progresses, until 13 songs later, we arrive not at a solution but at an awareness with which a solution might be found—an awareness of our own humanity. The closing song, “Joy,” concludes with these words: “As we cognify everything/We’re still conscious souls/Who can’t help but sing.”Each song on Against the Dying… flows into the next one naturally, like the evolution of an argument or the telling of a tale. Some of this is the product of post-facto track sequencing, but sometimes González wrote the songs with their order in mind from the start. For example, the lightly skipping “For Every Dusk” is followed by the more introspective “Sheet” because the songs were originally written as two sections of the same composition. The former track, with three subtly interlocking guitar parts, is also the one that strays farthest from its author’s opening play-it-all-on-a-single-instrument mission.According to González, “For Every Dusk” was composed in a manner similar to the way he writes most of his songs, but ended up sounding different due to certain performance realities. “I always start with guitar,” he says, “and then I start humming. And then I start writing, and when I start writing I do the words and the melodies, partly on their own and partly by sitting with the guitar. That’s the part where I give up sometimes, because I raise the bar a bit too high for myself. With some songs, I’m not able to play that well and sing at the same time. I could sort of lower the bar for the guitar part, but usually I record the guitar separate. ‘For Every Dusk’ was one of those songs. I basically did full takes and felt like they had some highlights, but none of them were good enough, even if I tried to edit them. It sounded way better if I just put two of the takes together [running simultaneously]. Then it sounds like two guitarists hanging out. The guitars are almost playing the same thing, but you get these variations that are nice, and they also sound similar to the music from Mali, where usually a couple of people with guitars are playing.”“It became obvious that people were liking my acoustic guitar and vocals. That was what I was doing best.”González has been a fan of Malian music for the past two decades; guitarist Ali Farka Touré and kora player Ballaké Sissoko were his gateway drugs. “Later, I got to hang out with [fellow guitarist] Sidi Touré and Bombino [Omara Moctar] from Niger. It was a pleasure to see how they play, and it’s just fun to jam with that sort of music. And I recently sang on a track for [Saharan “desert blues” band] Tinariwen’s new album—I’m really happy with how that turned out.”Another highlight of Against the Dying…, “Ay Querida,” features an ear-grabbing alternate tuning. With a nod to legends Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake, the guitarist cranks the low E string of his Estevé Adalid 11 down, way down, to B. That, however, is the song’s only deviation from standard. González employs several similar tunings, all of which share a minimum of retuned strings. “I never retune the A, D, B or high E,” he points out. “It’s only the low E and the G that go down, or up—there are many songs that are E-A-D-A, for example. But it’s fun to have those downtuned songs. The first one that became popular was ‘Far Away,’ that was used in a video game [Red Dead Redemption]. And since then, I have a couple of songs that are in that tuning. They’re really fun to play live, because you have a P.A. with subwoofers, and when you tune down, all of a sudden you’re not playing guitar, you’re playing bass.”Besides the transglobal rhythms and the altered tunings, the most distinctive elements of González’s guitar style are what he plays (nylon-string acoustics) and how (always with a combination of the flesh and nails on his right-hand fingers, never a pick). That’s the way he played when he first took up the instrument at age 13; he even studied classical guitar for a while in his youth. “I went to a private teacher here in Gothenburg,” he remembers, “and I asked him, ‘Could you teach me jazz guitar?’ He told me, ‘No, I can’t, but I can teach you classical guitar.’ So I started learning all these Spanish classical tunes, like [Francisco Tárrega’s] ‘Recuerdos de la Alhambra,’ [Isaac Albéniz’s] ‘Asturias,’ some Bach even. I went to see my teacher once a month for a couple of years, but it took too much time to learn. So I let that go, but I learned a lot during those years.”It wasn’t long before González had made a significant stylistic break from his early classical studies. By age 15, he was playing bass in the first of three hardcore punk bands that occupied his spare time for most of the ’90s, eventually switching over to electric guitar. “The hardcore songs weren’t bad,” he says now, “but they weren’t that good, either. And we didn’t have much success with them.” His next band, formed in 1998, was Junip, a trio that reunited him with the classical acoustic in a new indie-rock context: “It became obvious during those years that people were liking my acoustic guitar and vocals. That was what I was doing best.”“I always start with guitar, and then I start humming. And then I start writing.”Five years into Junip’s career, González released a solo seven-inch single, which unexpectedly hit No. 4 on the Swedish pop chart. The band proceeded to go on the backburner (though it reconvened for albums in 2010 and 2013), and González dropped his university studies—he’d been working toward a PhD in biochemistry—to focus on music full-time. “All of a sudden, I was famous in Sweden,” he recalls.And the nylon-string guitar had played a major role in making this happen. “At that point it became a thing for me to not switch to steel-string, even though that would have meant louder sound when we were playing live,” González says. “My sound engineers were trying to get me to play steel-string, but to me that sounded like what everyone else was doing. I wanted to do what I liked, and in a way that wasn’t new either, because in the ’60s and ’70s there were Spanish guitars everywhere, in the folk traditions and the protest singers and the music that I listened to when I was young.”That vintage sound has informed not only González’s writing and playing but also his approach to recording. Although he works strictly in the digital domain with Logic Pro, he’ll add analog-style ambience to his tracks whenever he deems it necessary—which is most of the time. “I’ll record through a tube amplifier, so I get that distortion that you can’t really take away later,” he says. “After that, I’ll add some saturation in different steps, depending on the type of song, and some tape emulator. And then, one of my favorite things to do is to add noise. The Universal Audio A-Type plugin has a noise generator that’s pretty round in its sound. I’ve got some nice mics—on the new album, I used Neumann’s SM 69 stereo mic a lot—but I don’t want things to be too bright or hi-fi, so I try to make it sound more old-school.”Add every hour spent looking for just the right kind and amount of tape-style distortion to every hour spent struggling with the relative complexity of guitar arrangements, and you begin to understand why it generally takes five-plus years for a José González album to be completed. And of course, those aren’t the only things that can eat up a lot of time. “I’ll tell my label, ‘The album’s almost done, I have all the demos so I’m gonna start recording soon,’” González says. “So they start booking tours and setting up interviews. But then, you know, life catches on. Someone in the family gets sick, and I’m not rehearsing guitar as much, and then I need another month, or two more months. But eventually,” he concludes with a shrug, “I get to a point where I feel like this is good enough.”He’s being humble here. For most listeners, José González’s “good enough” is way more than that.

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Mike Campbell’s Dirty Work

Photo by Sheva Kafai

You know it within seconds: those priceless “song within a song” solos, that impeccable phrasing (never too much or too little, with lots of space between notes), a subtle Bigsby shimmer at just the right moment, the evocative 12-string jangle, and an overall style that blends the sweet melodicism of George Harrison with the blues-rock grit of Keith Richards. All it takes is but one of those elements and you know you’re hearing Mike Campbell, who has, since his time as lead guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, established himself as one of the most identifiable guitarists in modern history.

“Well, I certainly know me when I hear me,” Campbell says with a laugh. “Honestly, I’m aware people say I have a recognizable style, and while it’s nice to hear that, it’s also nothing I planned on. I play the way I play. I just look at the song in front of me and say, ‘How can I enhance this?’”

He breaks down his approach thusly: “I’ll listen closely to the melody of a song, and I’ll try to emulate it on the guitar. Because the singing fits with the chords, the notes that I play should fit with those chords, too. I’ll use the singing voice and the melody as a spin-off point, but I try to stay within a certain range. I do like to improvise during solos, but it’s never to distract from the song. It’s what I’ve always done, and the players I respect—George Harrison, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards—all do that. Those are people I learned from.”

Campbell formed the Dirty Knobs as a side band back in 2000 with the idea that it would be simply that—a side band. One that offered him a relaxed, no-pressure space to work out songs away from the Heartbreakers, do a bit more singing, and let off some steam. Occasionally, he and the guys (guitarist Jason Sinay, bassist Lance Morrison, and fellow Heartbreaker drummer Steve Ferrone) would go play at a bar for fun. “I guess I thought, ‘If the Heartbreakers ever break up or if Tom quits, this is what I’ll do,’” he says.

Four musicians sit together in a cozy room, playing guitars and smiling, with colorful decor.Mike Campbell & The Dirty Knobs’ Mission Of Mercy Out June 12Photo credit: Sheva Kafai

​Mike Campbell’s Gear

Guitars

  • 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard sunburst
  • 1956 Fender Telecaster w/ B-Bender
  • 1963 Rickenbacker 625/12 12-string
  • Mid-’60s Fender Telecasters, Fender Stratocasters and Gibson Les Pauls

Amp

  • Ampeg Rocket

Effects

  • Way Huge Camel Toe Triple Overdrive MK II
  • Vox wah
  • Line 6 DL4
  • Electro-Harmonix POG2 Polyphonic Octave Generator

Strings, Picks, & Cables

  • D’Addario strings
  • Dunlop picks
  • custom Canare cables with Neutrik connectors

Following Petty’s tragic passing in 2017, Campbell joined Fleetwood Mac along with Neil Finn as replacements for Lindsey Buckingham, but after a 2018-19 world tour, he made the Dirty Knobs his main focus. In 2020, he finally wrangled the band into the studio to record an incredibly solid debut album, Wreckless Abandon, which he followed with two equally strong releases, 2022’s External Combustion and 2024’s Vagabonds, Virgins & Misfits. There have been several personnel changes over the years, but the current lineup—Morrison, Ferrone, and guitarist Chris Holt—recorded the band’s latest release, Mission of Mercy.

Much of the album is rooted in tough-minded rock—“Let Me Back in My Dreams,” “Vicious Hangover,” and “My Mama Told Me” are rude, untidy, and fun as hell, and the aptly named “Bongo Mania,” which, yes, features bongos a-plenty along with the luminous background vocals of the B-52s’ Kate Pierson, is a full-throttle knockout, brimming with Campbell’s sparky leads and solos. But there’s nostalgia and melancholy in the Americana ballad “More Than Gold” and the psychedelic title track, and the reflective opening cut, “No Regrets,” is a winning variation on the classic Heartbreakers sound. All told, it’s the strongest effort from the band—now billed as Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs—to date.

“I’m aware people say I have a recognizable style, and while it’s nice to hear that, it’s also nothing I planned on.”

A veteran of the album-rock era, Campbell co-wrote a number of Petty classics, including “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl” and “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” and he composed the music for Don Henley’s Grammy-winning hit, “The Boys of Summer” (a song Petty turned down, and later regretted). By his own account, it’s taken him a while to recalibrate his songwriting to suit the Dirty Knobs and his own vocal style, but with this album he’s starting to get the hang of it. Even so, he admits to some growing pains.

“It was daunting at first because Tom was so good, and I never had an ambition to sing or put my lyrics out front,” Campbell says. “I could just give him music and he would turn them into these great songs. I never worked at it. Also, Tom could be a little intimidating, because he was so good. But I started writing my own songs and recorded them in private, and slowly I got to singing. A lot of it was about building my confidence and feeling like I can do this. Being around Tom and watching how he would write words, I picked up a few tricks from him.”

Avoiding the obvious is one such skill, especially when it comes to wordplay. “Tom was kind of like Dylan in that way,” Campbell says. “He would set up a rhyme, and you’d think, ‘Oh, he’s going to use this word next,’ but he’d come up with something much cooler. I always thought that was something I’d like to emulate. Also, in the Heartbreakers, the songs’ characters were real and believable, and in most of our songs the characters may be lost or struggling or going through some kind of trauma, but there’s redemption at the end, like, ‘This is going to be okay.’ Tom had that element in his songs.”

Campbell onstage in 2010 with Petty, the Heartbreakers, and trusty Rick 625/12

Photo by Tim Bugbee

It’s been nine years since Petty’s passing, but in some strange and beautiful ways, Campbell feels like he can summon his friend’s spirit whenever needed. “It’s all part of the grieving process,” he says. “Even though he’s gone, he’s still here and I feel like he’s sitting on my shoulder as I write. I’ll go, ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, that’s not right. You can do better.’ So he’s around in my psyche.”

As musical partners, Campbell and Petty enjoyed an uncomplicated, intuitive musical bond. In most cases, Petty would come in and play a new song on acoustic guitar, and Campbell would immediately get to work on ways to enhance it. “I think that’s something I was pretty good at, or at least Tom always told me I was,” Campbell says. His manner of working with Chris Holt, who joined the Dirty Knobs in 2022, follows a similar pattern: “I’ll play a song and be like, ‘Here’s the rhythm and the chords,’ with no leads or guitar parts—those will be determined later.”

He laughs. “In a sense, I’ve become Tom and Chris has become me. He’ll interact with me, and if I like something, I’ll say, ‘Yeah, more of that.’ Or if I don’t like it, I’ll say, ‘You know that thing you did? Don’t do that anymore.’ But you know, he’s an incredible musician and I’m so fortunate to have him in the band. I can’t get over it—he sings great, he plays keyboards, and he’s so good on guitar.”

“I play the way I play. I just look at the song in front of me and say, ‘How can I enhance this?’”

So good, in fact, that Campbell now has to share Holt with the Eagles—the Dallas-born musician, who has toured with numerous big-name artists including Don Henley, was recruited by the veteran band to replace long-serving guitarist Steuart Smith in 2025. Campbell says the workaround hasn’t been too problematic.

“Chris came to me and said, ‘I’m going to play the Sphere [in Las Vegas], if that’s okay,’” he recalls. “I said, ‘As long as you don’t get in the way of our gigs, go for it.’ I think I moved our tour back a week or two to allow him to play a few Eagles gigs. The thing with Chris is, it’s great that he’s playing with the Eagles because he gets a lot of money. He gets to play those songs, but he doesn’t have much freedom—it’s pretty well-scripted music. With the Knobs, it’s like anything can happen. Chris loves the spontaneity and the unexpected. I’ll change the setlist in the middle of the show. I’ll just throw a song on—‘How about this one?’ Or ‘Chris, take a solo!’ He doesn’t get that in the Eagles.”

Campbell’s impetuous nature extends to the recording studio, as well. He points to the song “Vicious Hangover” as a one-take wonder that was written “totally live, in, like, two minutes,” and he raves about Holt’s wicked, off-the-cuff soloing. “How about this guy? He plays two solos, and they’re incredible. No matter what I ask of him, I feel like I can count on him to do something good.”

The sweeping, soaring solo on “No Regrets” is a full-glory blast of prime Campbell—set against a bed of chiming 12-string rhythms, it evokes the iconic splendor of his breathtaking lead break on “The Waiting.” To match the defiant tone of “Let Me Back in My Dreams”—it’s almost an extension of Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”—he breaks out a hard-ass, thrill-laced solo, and doesn’t let up til he empties the tank. It sounds meticulously composed, but like so many of his leads, it’s a moment of unpremeditated wonder.

“I rarely work solos out,” Campbell says. “Even going back to ‘Breakdown,’ I didn’t work that one out. ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream,’ I didn’t work that out, either. It’s like, ‘Put the track up and let me play along.’ I just react to the music, and then I’ll try to emulate the melody so I know I’m in the game. Sometimes it’s a train wreck, but the next time it might be a beautiful thing that surprises me.”

A self-described “child of the ’60s,” Campbell drew inspiration from Brian Wilson for the dramatic title track, on which he consciously tried to mirror certain aspects of the late genius’ production approach. “It needed those sonics, with the background vocals and the odd chords in the middle,” he says. After recording basics with the band, he thought it was a little light on guitar, so he pulled out a wah pedal and added an end solo with a Fender Telecaster equipped with a B-Bender. “I just played it one time to give the song a little edge. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album. I hope people see it as a tribute to Brian Wilson. It wasn’t like I was trying to copy him or anything.”

“Even though [Petty]’s gone, he’s still here and I feel like he’s sitting on my shoulder as I write.”

Over the years, Campbell has amassed an enviable collection of guitars, but for Mission of Mercy, he relied on a small group of mid-’60s Teles, Strats, and Les Pauls, along with his treasured ’59 Les Paul ’burst. “I have guitars in the hallway, and occasionally we’ll go, ‘This might sound good with that one,’” he says. “Mostly we’re in a hurry, and I don’t want to waste time looking for guitars. It’s like, ‘Here, this one’s in tune. Play this one. Let’s get the track down.’”

Throughout the recording process, he found plenty of opportunities to strap on his 1963 Rickenbacker 625/12 12-string, the same guitar Petty borrowed for the cover of Damn the Torpedoes. “I just love the Rickenbacker 12-string,” Campbell says. “I can’t get away with putting some of it on an album.”

He briefly toyed with amp modeling, but he’s gone back to physical amplifiers, and in the studio he called upon a trusty Ampeg Rocket that he’s used since his Heartbreaker days. As for pedals, in addition to a Vox wah, he played through a Line 6 DL4 delay, an EHX POG2 Polyphonic Octave Generator, and a Way Huge Camel Toe Triple Overdrive MK II. “I don’t think they make the Camel Toes anymore,” he notes. “It’s got two overdrives—loud and louder.”

Campbell describes longtime confidante and co-producer George Drakoulias as “a big, lovable, and intelligent grizzly bear” who keeps things moving in the studio. “George knows how to put everybody in a good mood, and the main thing is, I trust him,” he says. “If I’m doing something that I’m not sure about, or maybe I am sure about it, he’ll say, ‘Maybe you should do that again,’ or ‘Maybe that bridge should come later in the song.’ He’s got great instincts and he knows me. He makes me feel comfortable with the microphone.”

One might assume that every item on the guitarist’s bucket list was checked off years ago, but who would imagine that the diehard rock and roller has secretly yearned to play with an orchestra? “It’s a dream I’ve had, and it’s finally come to the point in my life where it’s now or never,” he says. And so, following a summer tour with the Dirty Knobs, Campbell will join the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for a performance of select Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers hits at Atlanta Symphony Hall this September.

“I have an orchestrator who’s writing out all the string parts for the high-point songs of my career with the Heartbreakers,” he says. “He’s writing parts for cellos and oboes and all that to present the songs in a more magnificent way as opposed to just a rock band. I love orchestra. I love Beethoven, Bach, Mozart—I’ve always listened to that stuff a lot. It’s exciting for me to finally realize an idea I had when I was younger. I’ll probably play a little guitar here and there in the show. I mean, I don’t know yet—we’re still formulating the idea. But some of the charts have been written, and they sound amazing.”

All of which raises the big question: What will he wear for his orchestral debut? Campbell laughs and says, “I don’t know if I should dress up or dress down. I might go against the grain and just go out in cut-offs and a ripped t-shirt.”

He pauses. “No, I’ll probably dress nice. I don’t want to let the people down.”

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