If Tom Petty had lived a little while longer, the latest release from his estate would be old news by now.
The sandy-haired epitome of rock and roll, who could have been celebrating 70 trips around the sun this Tuesday, recorded his second solo album, Wildflowers some 26 odd years ago. Seen as his magnum opus by Pettyheads alike, the album never received a proper commercial reissue, unlike most everything else in Tom’s discography. Rest assured, there’s a perfectly acceptable explanation as to why.
Petty initially wanted Wildflowers to be a double album, but Warner Brothers Records said no. The Beatles had The White Album, and Springsteen had The River. Why couldn’t Petty have one? When the final 15-track album was pressed onto very limited vinyl in the 90s, and in 2016 as a box-set-only addition, it was even presented as as a 2-LP set, naturally. A few of the songs that should have been on Tom’s envisioned second disc were either buried in the archives, or eventually reused in one way or another.
Last decade, Petty took advantage of his legend status, and he began to dig into those Wildflowers archives. Only one unreleased song, “Somewhere Under Heaven,” dropped before the five-year Wildflowers drought, solely because of its presence in the 2015 film “Entourage.” Though he finished most of the set before his shocking 2017 death, Petty’s daughters Adria and Annakim, widow Dana York Petty, and some of his other comrades decided to wait awhile to put the finishing touches on his final project. Now, five years, two posthumous releases, and one lawsuit later, here we are.
Wildflowers & All The Rest released Friday, and the music has finally been repressed onto wax, in sets that go up to 9 LPs. Former Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench III helped to curate the album to the perfection that their fearless leader desired it.
The first part of this set consists of all fifteen tracks from the original Wildflowers album, just remastered. Once you’re done weeping over the original album’s grand finale “Wake Up Time,” All The Rest begins. It kicks off with one of six previously unreleased tunes. “Something Could Happen,” featuring gorgeous piano work from Tench, and a pretty unforgettable chorus, is the only song in the entire set that features original drummer for the Heartbreakers Stan Lynch. Legendary producer Rick Rubin, who took on Wildflowers in 1994, was said to be unimpressed with Stan’s beats.
Another unreleased cut, “Leave Virginia Alone,” sounds like something that could have been on 1999’s Echo, in the good ol’ key of G. Rod Stewart actually begrudgingly covered this one back in 1995, telling Billboard that he originally wasn’t crazy about the song. The song nonetheless still leaves you with a question: After all that talk, who the hell is Virginia?
Quite a few of the selections off of All The Rest can be found on Petty’s soundtrack to the 1996 chick-flick, She’s The One. To me, one of the album’s brightest moments was one of those tracks. The original 1993 recording of “Hung Up And Overdue” had Ringo Starr (yes, the Ringo Starr) on drums, and the late Beach Boy Carl Wilson on backing vocals. Unfortunately, on the version heard on She’s The One, Carl’s vocals were kinda buried in the background behind also-late Heartbreaker Howie Epstein’s own backing vocals. An alternate version closed out Petty’s dream Wildflowers release, per his wishes, this one having those same vocal cords that gave us “God Only Knows” some 27 years prior sticking out much more.
The next portion consists of acoustic home recordings and demos. And you couldn’t possibly ask for more. A Neil Young meets country style “Crawling Back To You” pops up, as well as “A Feeling Of Peace,” which would more or less evolve into “It’s Good To Be King,” and another unreleased cut, “There Goes Angela (Dream Away)”, of which no one in the Petty circle remembered or had heard before.
Closing out the set is a live disc containing most of Wildflowers’ original tracks being played on tour through the years, starting with 1995’s Dogs With Wings tour, leading all the way up to that last 40th Anniversary Tour. In place of a few songs off the record that didn’t make the live cut are a few non-Wildflowers cuts, one of which is goofy fan favorite “Girl on LSD.”
This was the last project approved, and conceived by Tom Petty himself. So, what’s next? Will we get a Damn The Torpedoes box set like this? Maybe a live album from the 40th Anniversary Tour will (finally) drop. Benmont Tench has said that they’ve barely scratched the surface of unreleased songs and demos, so whatever comes next is in the hands of Uncle Tom’s closest of friends.
Dream away, my love.
Josh Bradley Live 