By Christopher McKittrick
Few musicians can claim that their 10th album that was released nearly 20 years into their career as their creative peak as a musician. Even the best songwriters have typically run out of creative juices by that point and resort to trying to recapture the sound of their earlier, most commercially popular work.
Tom Petty was not a typical songwriter, and nor is his 1994 release Wildflowers a typical album. Finally, one year after the album’s 25th anniversary, the long-promised expanded edition of the landmark album is available. Of the various reissues of Petty’s material that have come after his unfortunate death three years ago, Wildflowers & All The Rest has been the most anticipated by fans… and, not incidentally, by Petty himself, who worked on the reissue in the final years of his life.
Though 1989’s Full Moon Fever was officially Petty’s first solo album, the nature of the writing and recording of Wildflowers make it more of a solo project than anything else Petty released in his career. The majority of songs on both Full Moon Fever and the Heartbreakers’ subsequent album, 1991’s Into The Great Wide Open, were co-written by Petty with Mike Campbell, Jeff Lynne, or both. In contrast, of the 15 songs on the original release of Wildflowers only two — “You Wreck Me” and “Don’t Fade On Me” — were co-written with Campbell. The rest of the songs are Petty solo compositions, most of them borne out of the emotional turmoil he felt as his marriage to his first wife unraveled (after a period of separation they would divorce in 1996). Famously, after hearing Wildflowers, Petty’s then-teenage daughter Adria asked her father, “So, are you getting divorced or what?” Wildflowers is Petty’s most personal work by a mile, with even the lyrics of the good-time rockers filled with darker lyrical turns (for example, Petty decided to turn the generic “You Rock Me” into the much harsher “You Wreck Me”).
Also uncharacteristic of a typical Heartbreakers album is that Wildflowers features a trove of notable guest musicians. While the Heartbreakers appeared as performers on most of the album (minus drummer Stan Lynch, who would leave the band shortly before the release of Wildflowers), the album’s contributors include Ringo Starr, Carl Wilson, and future Heartbreakers drummer Steve Ferrone. But perhaps of all the additional performers, the most impactful contribution came from composer Michael Kamen, a prolific Oscar- and Emmy-Award nominated film and television composer who provided the orchestrations heard on “Wildflowers,” “Time To Move On,” “It’s Good To Be King,” and “Wake Up Time.” Rick Rubin, then the most sought-after producer in the industry, co-produced the album with Petty and Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, and amassed a vast collection of material.
With 25 finished songs (plus several other song ideas in demo form), Wildflowers had enough material to fill three LPs. After a conversation with Warner Bros. Records about the release, Petty agreed to cut it to a still-long 15 tracks, clocking in at over an hour. The fate of those 10 remaining songs loomed large with both Petty and his fans. Some like “California” and “Hope You Never,” were repurposed for the Heartbreakers’ next album, the soundtrack to the 1996 Edward Burns film She’s The One. Other songs ended up in less familiar places. “Leave Virginia Alone” was recorded by Rod Stewart for his 1995 album Spanner In The Works, which hit #10 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart and #1 in Canada (Petty’s original version was unheard until it was released on October 1, 2020). Petty himself released “Somewhere Under Heaven” in 2015 to promote the upcoming Wildflowers reissue that demonstrates just how long Petty had been working on the project.
Five of the completed songs, like “Leave Virginia Alone” and “Confusion Wheel,” were never heard by fans until this release, and several other outtakes that Petty had worked on as demos had been so deep in the vaults that even his closest collaborators didn’t know that they existed. Regarding the stunning demo for the song “There Goes Angela (Dream Away),” Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench said on Twitter that the song “is such a beauty that I’m kinda mad at him for never showing it to us.” Other revelations and bits of inspiration can be found in the original demos of songs like the title track and “You Don’t Know How It Feels.”
Upon its November 1994 release, Wildflowers received generally strong reviews and peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200, a considerable improvement over what was seen as disappointing sales of Into The Great Wide Open. Its lead single, “You Don’t Know How It Feels,” was Petty’s last Top 20 hit, and three other songs charted in the Top 20 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Chart. Though it sold far fewer copies than Petty’s Full Moon Fever, the reputation of Wildflowers eventually eclipsed the massive sales success of that album. Songs like “Wildflowers,” which had never been released as a single, became among Petty’s most beloved songs.
The popularity of Wildflowers never faded with Petty or his fans. On the contrary, it has grown beyond its initial success. At Petty’s final three concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2017, five of the 18 songs performed each night originally appeared on Wildflowers, more than any other individual Petty album. Before he died, Petty had plans to support the eventual release of Wildflowers & All The Rest with a small venue tour in which the Heartbreakers would play the album in its entirety. For years Petty fans on the internet tried to reconstruct the track-listing of the “uncut” Wildflowers, arguing over which songs were truly meant to appear on what eventually became the Holy Grail for Petty fans.
In a similar way that Brian Wilson’s reputation as a songwriter and producer hinged on the unrealized promise of the Beach Boys’ Smile, many of Petty’s fans believed the full version of Wildflowers to be his lost masterpiece. Perhaps those high expectations got to Petty. On the Broken Record Podcast, Rubin shared some surprising memories about Wildflowers that Petty had shared shortly before he died: “He told me Wildflowers scares him because he’s not really sure why it’s as good as it is. So it has like this haunted feeling for him.” On the expanded reissue, Rubin commented, “He very much wanted to re-release it. He thought it was really important because the legacy of the Wildflowers album loomed large in his career. He knew that the second half of Wildflowers was an important statement.”
Though Petty never finished compiling the reissue, his daughters, Adria and Annakim Petty, his wife Dana Petty, and Heartbreakers Campbell and Tench collaborated over the last few years to complete the project. Fans finally have the opportunity to relish in the full product of Petty’s most prolific period in his career. The deluxe release of the reissue contains the original album, plus All The Rest containing the 10 outtakes, Home Recordings featuring 15 demos of Wildflowers era songs, Wildflowers Live showcasing 14 live renditions of Wildflowers era songs spanning 1994 to 2017, and Finding Wildflowers, featuring 16 alternate versions from the Wildflowers sessions, amounting to over 40 previously unreleased recordings.
Like most expanded reissues by classic rock artists released these days, Wildflowers & All The Rest is available in several editions. Many Petty fans have critiqued the $500 price tag of the 9 LP “Ultra Deluxe Edition” of Wildflowers & All The Rest. After all, Petty fought his record company because it wanted to charge an extra dollar for his Hard Promises album in 1981 and spent much of his career going the extra mile to keep his concert ticket prices affordable compared to those of his classic rock contemporaries. In the case of Wildflowers, even the $500 price is somewhat of a steal for vinyl enthusiasts — Wildflowers has rarely been reissued on vinyl since its first release, which has made original copies one of the most sought-out collectibles for Petty fans frequently selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars.
Though there will likely be more releases of previously unheard material from the Petty vaults in years to come, it’s unlikely that any of those recordings will excite his fans as much as the release of Wildflowers & All The Rest. While it is unfortunate that Petty is no longer here to revel in the outpouring of excitement with the re-release of Wildflowers, it’s still enough to know how much the album meant to him and how important it was to Petty to share “all the rest” with his fans.
Christopher McKittrick is the author of Somewhere You Feel Free: Tom Petty And Los Angeles, which will be released November 17, 2020, by Post Hill Press. His previous works include Can’t Give It Away On Seventh Avenue: The Rolling Stones And New York City.
