![]() Was I experimenting with something I’d already written or did I write that and realize it was the wrong mood?” “There will be a demo with the same lyrics but I’m singing in a whole, different way, playing it with a different mood,” Petty told David Fricke. They aren’t just thrown together they’re good versions of these songs the way he had it in his head.” “Tom was good at playing just the right thing on every instrument. “I always thought his demos were really special and sometimes surpassed what we did when we recut them,” said Heartbreaker keyboardist Benmont Tench. ![]() A riff here actually works out better there. Bits of lyrics from one track turn out more pleasing on another track or vice versa. Yes, we know the songs, but now, for the first time, we’ve been offered a glimpse into the piecing together of an album that has stood the test of time. Of course, the latter half of that lyric will sound familiar to most fans, as it ended up included on Petty’s 2002 album, The Last DJ, in a song titled “Have Love Will Travel.”Īnd therein lies the undeniable beauty of Wildflowers: All The Rest. ![]() “There’s a break in the pain, I’m gonna take a ride,” he sings on “There’s a Break In The Rain,” “Honey, I’d love to see you smile, and may my love travel with you everywhere, yeah may my love travel with you always.” Part of that truth included the heartache, but another part of it included the one thing that he thought would pull him through it all: love. But when things began to crumble, Petty - however subconsciously - chose to tell the truth. Petty’s immense success through the 70s and 80s seemed concrete proof of that. We often see our heroes as having most, if not all, of the answers. “So much confusion has torn me apart,” he tenderly sings on “Confusion Wheel,” “And I don’t know how to love, and I don’t know who to trust, and I don’t know why that is.” “Some people just stay in one place, some people take off and run, one jump ahead of whatever’s out there,” he sings on “A Feeling of Peace.” Fellow drifters will relate. Many of the songs, like “California,” “Hope You Never,” and “Hung Up And Overdue” would find their place on Songs and Music from “She’s the One” in 1996, or given to others, like “Leave Virginia Alone,” a song that was passed off to Rod Stewart in 1995.īut the six previously unheard songs echo the same mentality that the original Wildflowers contains: a complex mixture of lost love, solitude, and freedom that is, hopefully, just on the horizon. The reality is that much of what would have been the second LP of Wildflowers has already been heard. Now, after years of talks and teases, “All The Rest” of Wildflowers is out and about in the world - three years after Petty’s death. The initial idea had been to release a double album, but, ultimately, only 15 songs made the final cut. But I was at the top of my game during that record.”Īs we well know, not everything Petty wrote made it onto the record. “My personal life came crashing down, and it derailed me for a while. “I broke through to something else,” he said to Rolling Stone’s David Fricke in 2014. Related: “The 10 Best Tom Petty Songs You May Have Never Heard” The beautiful, bitter irony of Wildflowers came down to something many of us inevitably experience at one point or another: we often create our strongest work at our lowest points. In the midst of dealing with a broken marriage, substance issues, and the overarching unpredictable direction of his life, Petty found himself in the deepest rut he had ever been in - a rut that happened to double as one of the most insightful songwriting periods of his career. Much of what ended up becoming the 1994 Wildflowers album came from a similar point of origin. That’s you singing to yourself what you needed to hear.’ It kind of knocked me back, but I realized he was right. “I told him I wasn’t sure,” he told Warren Zanes for his book Petty: The Biography. “You belong somewhere you feel free.” Where did that come from? Who was he singing to? He spoke to his therapist about it at the time. The lyrics came quickly, the melody followed suit, and before long, Petty had a wonderfully sentimental song in his lap. When Tom Petty sat down to write the title track to Wildflowers, there were no elaborate plans in sight.
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