by Lydia Pudzianowski (@doritoshangover)
It’s fairly well known that Tom Petty wrote his critically acclaimed 1994 record Wildflowers as a double album, but Warner Bros., then his new label, nixed that plan, saying it would be too long. Petty trimmed down his intended set of songs, and the album was released with fifteen excellent tracks. They’re not quite mainstays of classic-rock radio save for “You Don’t Know How it Feels,” written partly because producer Rick Rubin suggested the album needed a hit single and Petty reciprocated with “Let’s get to the point / let’s roll another joint” (honorable mention to “You Wreck Me,” recognizable in its own right). If you ask a lot of die-hard fans, though, Wildflowers is his best work; you’d be hard pressed to find a better Petty album that’s not a greatest-hits compilation. He’d been releasing the remaining songs here and there before his death in 2017, and Wildflowers & All the Rest finally puts them where he wanted them: in the same place.
All the Rest opens with the 2014 remasters of the original tracks, featuring all the Heartbreakers at the time minus drummer Stan Lynch, who was at a creative and personal standstill with Petty and preparing to depart the band for good. Sonically, it’s marked by crisp, sparkling acoustic guitars and ringing piano. It’s an album that feels organic and honest, like it was recorded by someone in a denim shirt worn to softness and a ball cap (which it was). The Wildflowers recording sessions began right after Petty’s 40th birthday, and the material reflects where he found himself at that place in his life, most notably at the beginning of the end of his marriage of 20+ years to his wife Jane. “You’re just a poor boy alone in this world, and it’s wake up time / Time to open up your eyes and rise / and shine,” Petty sings to himself, his voice just a little more strained than it used to be.
The remasters are followed by new songs (a handful of which aren’t actually that new: “California,” “Climb That Hill,” “Hope You Never,” and “Hung Up and Overdue” were included on the soundtrack to the 1996 movie She’s the One, effectively a Petty studio album). The new material is full of characters: the subjects of “There Goes Angela” and the catchy “Leave Virginia Alone” (originally given to Rod Stewart for his 1995 album A Spanner in the Works), Jenny dancing in the rain in the lush “Somewhere Under Heaven” (a standout, with swirling guitar and orchestral arrangements), and “Harry Green,” an unexpected turn in the tradition of dead-teenager songs of the 1950s and ’60s, but not quite. With his trademark clarity and straightforwardness, Petty tells the story of a kid he knew in high school who played on the football team but was “not like everyone else” and “had to hold so much deep inside himself.” The song ends with Harry crashing his new Pontiac into a tree on purpose. “One day I’ll go back and say a few words / Over Harry Green,” Petty sings as he keeps his word to his old friend. (For what it’s worth, there’s a record of a Harris Harding Green Jr., who died at the age of 16 in 1966 in Gainesville, Florida, where Petty grew up.)
The expansion closes with a stellar set of home recordings and a collection of live performances ranging from 1995 all the way through the Heartbreakers’ last tour in 2017; another She’s the One song, the essential “Walls,” makes an appearance here. The live songs are assembled so that the applause from the end of one carries over into the beginning of the next, sewn together for the full experience. The sad reality is that we’ll never get to see Petty do this in person again, but this set serves as a joyful reminder of how much he loved playing Wildflowers-era material live—and how often he did so.
When Petty sings, “Excuse me if I / have some place in my mind / where I go time to time” in “It’s Good to Be King,” you get the feeling he means Wildflowers, which he never really stopped working on. It was his refuge, his escape from a drawn-out divorce, his house in the woods. He was immensely proud of it, as he should’ve been. If the Heartbreakers’ bigger hits, like “American Girl” and “Free Fallin’” and “Refugee,” are among the greats in American rock and roll (and they are), then Wildflowers is a not-so-well-kept secret. This, of course, is silly to say; it went platinum three times over and peaked at #8 on the Billboard Top 200, with “You Don’t Know How It Feels” sitting atop the Mainstream Rock chart. But somehow, there’s an “if you know, you know” aspect to the album that makes it a fan favorite—maybe the fan favorite. It’s a shame that Petty doesn’t get to see it released the way he intended, but it’s safe to say he knew he was sitting on a gold mine.