Some albums just seem inherently more prone to being mythologized than others. <\/p>\n
When it initially appeared in 1994, Tom Petty\u2019s second solo album Wildflowers<\/i> made a moderate splash, coming on the heels of his mega-successful 1993 Greatest Hits<\/i> release while embracing a broader range of sounds, from pastoral acoustic numbers (the gorgeous title track) to thundering blues (\u201cHoney Bee\u201d) to a piano ballad featuring Petty himself at the keyboard (memorable closer \u201cWake Up Time\u201d).<\/p>\n
Still, it was a bit of an odd bird, a rangy 15-song, 63-minute \u201csolo\u201d album whose sessions featured every single member of Petty\u2019s ace band the Heartbreakers\u2014lead guitarist and frequent co-writer Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, bassist\/harmony vocalist Howie Epstein, and both departing founding drummer Stan Lynch and his replacement Steve Ferrone. When Wildflowers<\/i> first came out, this long-time TP fan struggled with it a bit, in particular the undercurrent of self-pity running through several of its songs.<\/p>\n
Time, however, has been nothing but kind to Wildflowers<\/i>. A number of critics swooned over it early on, and as the years went by it only seemed to gain luster and acclaim, appearing on more and more \u201cBest of the \u201990s\u201d lists. Petty himself seemed buoyed by the groundswell of support for what he had originally envisioned as a 25-track double LP. Five of the 10 unreleased songs ended up being re-recorded for his subsequent Heartbreakers album Songs And Music From She\u2019s The One<\/i>, but the original Wildflowers <\/i>versions, as well as most of the unreleased songs from the album\u2019s sessions, remained in the vaults for more than 20 years. In the months prior to his death in October 2017, Petty had returned to what had by then become a passion project for both fans and artist: assembling a deluxe reissue of Wildflowers<\/i> that would restore the album to its original intended form. <\/p>\n
Petty\u2019s vision was finally realized with the recent release of Wildflowers & All The Rest<\/i>, thoughtfully shepherded by his family, the Heartbreakers, original album producer Rick Rubin and Petty\u2019s personal archivist and late-career production partner Ryan Ulyate. Multiple editions of the set exist; this review is of the four-CD version.<\/p>\n
Disc One re-presents the original 15-track Wildflowers<\/i> album, and it\u2019s well worth listening to again as a preview to the rest of this set. Beyond highlights like exhilarating rocker \u201cYou Wreck Me,\u201d wistful rumination \u201cTime To Move On,\u201d hit single \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know How It Feels,\u201d closing piano ballad \u201cWake Up Time,\u201d and the perpetually gorgeous title track, the main interest this time around is the wonderful track-by-track liner notes from Campbell, Tench, Rubin and others. Just for example: Rubin and Campbell reveal that \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know How It Feels\u201d was the result of Rubin challenging Petty to write a single, specifically suggesting Steve Miller\u2019s \u201cThe Joker\u201d as a starting point. Petty borrowed the latter\u2019s loping cadence and made the rest up on his own.<\/p>\n
Disc Two\u2014All The Rest<\/i>\u2014holds the gold that fans been seeking for so long. And while there are nuggets to be found, it\u2019s worth noting that Petty\u2019s instincts appear to have been good when cutting down his original track list; while it\u2019s all solid material worthy of release, there\u2019s little here that feels more essential than the 15 tracks that did make the cut. The main previously unreleased highlight is the warmly-rendered folk-rock story-song \u201cLeave Virginia Alone,\u201d with Petty\u2019s steady acoustic strums answered by Campbell\u2019s warbly, vibrato\u2019d electric. Another strong cut, the ringing, resonant \u201cSomewhere Under Heaven,\u201d features Campbell covering every instrument in the full arrangement while Petty sings this stately, anthemic number that ended up sitting in the vaults for 20 years before being released on the 2015 Entourage<\/i> film soundtrack. <\/p>\n
The other \u201cnew\u201d tunes amount to a mixed bag. The languid mid-tempo \u201cSomething Could Happen,\u201d the one track here featuring Lynch on drums, never quite lifts off. By contrast, an especially sunny early version of \u201cCalifornia\u201d and a shadowy, harpsichord-heavy alternate take of \u201cHope You Never\u201d offer strong early proofs of the later versions found on She\u2019s The One<\/i>. An intensely focused solo acoustic rendition of \u201cClimb That Hill\u201d is interesting, even if a later, bruising blues-rock take\u2014much closer to the released version from She\u2019s The One<\/i>\u2014feels like a fuller expression of the lyric. All The Rest<\/i> concludes with an earlier alternate take of another She\u2019s The One<\/i> cut, the suitably Abbey-Road-<\/i>by-way-of-Pet-Sounds<\/i> \u201cHung Up And Overdue\u201d with Ringo Starr behind the drum kit, Mike Campbell doing his best George Harrison impression on slide, and Carl Wilson delivering those trademark Beach Boys harmonies.<\/p>\n
Disc Three features Petty\u2019s demo recordings of 15 songs from this era, some of which ended up on the original album, some of which show up on All The Rest<\/i>, and some of which were abandoned, with lyrical and melodic ideas that were later evolved or cannibalized into subsequent recordings. It\u2019s essentially a disc\u2019s worth of home studio artifacts, an intimate look inside Petty\u2019s creative process that\u2019s fascinating for those who care to ponder the questions they raise. <\/p>\n
To wit: what led Petty to abandon a song as strong as \u201cThere Goes Angela (Dream Away)\u201d? How did the hit single \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know How It Feels\u201d emerge almost fully formed in a demo that lacks only the fullness and dimensionality of the released band version? What instinct led Petty to recycle a pair of lines from the otherwise discarded \u201cA Feeling Of Peace\u201d into the germ for the entire song \u201cIt\u2019s Good To Be King\u201d? When and why did a single word change morph the guardedly optimistic line \u201cComing back to you\u201d into the essence of the spooky dirge \u201cCrawling Back To You\u201d? And what magical talisman did Petty rub before sitting down, hitting \u201cRecord,\u201d and improvising the entire song \u201cWildflowers\u201d off the top of his head on the very first take, from nothing but the title and a basic melody? <\/p>\n
Disc Four is a collection of live tracks whose origins date from the Wildflowers<\/i> era, culled from a wide range of shows between 1995 and 2017, including a couple of outtakes. \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know It Feels\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s Good To Be King\u201d get especially expansive readings, full of the sort of exuberant ad-libbing and jamming that only happens live. Petty\u2019s between-song patter adds flavor to numbers like \u201cTo Find A Friend,\u201d heard here in a sprightly acoustic rendering at the 2000 Bridge School Benefit. And the most obscure songs on the live disc\u2014Wildflowers<\/i>-era <\/i>B-side \u201cDrivin\u2019 Down To Georgia\u201d and concert-only novelty tune \u201cGirl On LSD\u201d\u2014are both adrenalin-fueled joyrides. A triumphant, oversized \u201cYou Wreck Me\u201d leads into the only song that could possibly close this set, a luminous reading of \u201cWildflowers\u201d itself.<\/p>\n
Years of anticipation mean that Wildflowers & All The Rest<\/i> was almost inevitably destined to come up short of Petty fans\u2019 highest hopes for it. From this particular reviewer\u2019s perspective, despite being one of the man\u2019s finer outings, Wildflowers<\/i> sits somewhat unsteadily on the pedestal on which many have attempted to place it. What this expanded set illustrates, for the most part, is what we already knew: Tom Petty was an exceptionally gifted songwriter and a natural-born performer whose innate charisma and sly sense of humor meant that every moment he stood in front of a microphone held the potential to turn into something special, even if that potential wasn\u2019t always realized.<\/p>\n
Beautifully packaged and lovingly annotated with track-by-track commentary from those who knew Petty best, Wildflowers & All The Rest <\/i>is essential listening for the devoted TP fan, even if it ends up feeling more celebratory than revelatory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5868],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46074","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tom-petty","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46074"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46074"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}