Well the "Southern Accents" take (as you referred to it) is in actuality the version that was prepared for release on the soundtrack to the film "The King of Comedy", but with the second verse removed and some levels adjusted. It's important to remember that Robbie Robertson's involvement with "The Best of Everything" was not sired to the "Southern Accents" project at all and in fact pre-dated the sessions by around three years. Robertson was the musical director on the film "The King of Comedy" and approached Tom Petty for a contribution. By this point, Petty had realized that "The Best of Everything" was not going to make the cut for "Hard Promises" so he agreed to donate the song to Robertson for use in the film. However, Robertson had his own vision for the song which included a massive brass arrangement which I believe was the first time a Tom Petty/Heartbreakers song had been given such a treatment. As Petty would later explain to author Paul Zollo in "Conversations With Tom Petty", Robertson did his work independent of the band and wouldn't even allow Petty into the studio to supervise as he didn't want the songwriter to hear his song before he had finished his overdubs. When the song was eventually presented to Tom Petty, he liked what he heard and gave the okay for the song to be used on the soundtrack. The problem was as I've previously explained, Warners and MCA were having a clash of the titans going on at the time and MCA wasn't going to allow one of their blue-chip artists to appear on a Warners soundtrack. So the track just languished until the "Southern Accents" project came about and Petty realized that the forgotten song would make a good closer for the record which incidentally also lent itself to the project it terms of it's overall production given that the brass arrangement bore much in common with the rest of the "Southern Accents" album.
For Real is from the sessions for Surrender in 2000. From what I’ve been told, For Real was written during that recording session and not an Echo outtake. But who knows if that is correct.
Handle With Care might be considered a George song, but they are really Wilbury songs... George, Bob, Tom, Jeff, and Roy all had a hand in them.
Am I the only one that finds it odd that two box sets from the same artist are being released at the same time?
I have no issue with "career spanning" collections....heck Toms had a few already.......but I am so done with this crap of sticking a couple of unreleased tracks on them to screw the hardcore fans once again.....especially when there was plenty room to squeeze them on the very recent 4 CD set. Passing on this I'm afraid out of sheer principle.
Actually, it's the third career spanning hits release for Tom Petty. Unfortunately, it's the first since his ability to create new hits has been severely curtailed...
But then they wouldn't be able to utilize the perfect title of Best of Everything for the collection. Unless they put everything together into one massive box set, but then they would eliminate a number of buyers who already have their preferred versions of the hits. From a marketing/sales perspective, this is the smart move.
No it's not. All previously issued Tom Petty/Heartbreakers compilations were part of a deal that Tom Petty struck in the early nineties with MCA which allowed him to exit his contract with them without delivering the final record on that contract (which would've been "Wildflowers"). Petty was both upset with MCA at what he felt was a lack of a promotional push behind 1991's "Into The Great Wide Open" and becoming a "lame-duck" artist on their ledger as he was already contracted to make the jump to Warners after his contract with MCA wrapped up. So MCA and Petty struck a deal where in lieu of a final proper Tom Petty album being released on the MCA label, three compilations (each featuring new material exclusive to each release) would be issued within a given time frame. These three releases were 1993's "Greatest Hits", 1995's "Playback" and 2000's "Anthology: Through The Years" all of which featured material exclusive to the period of time Petty was under the MCA contract with the exception of the song "Surrender" which was a track specifically recorded for the "Anthology: Through The Years" compilation. Aside from that one exception, none of these compilations featured any material from 1994 onward making "The Best of Everything - The Definitive Career Spanning Hits Collection 1976-2016" the first career spanning hits collection for Tom Petty. Edit: FWIW Tom Petty was planning a "Greatest Hits II" compilation in 2004 which would've covered his Warners releases up to that point, but that collection never reached shelves.
I'm not sure alienating the fan base is a smart move. The average dude buying a greatest hits collection does not care that there are two tracks unavailable elsewhere....whereas the average fan wants these two tracks, but doesn't really need yet another version of I Won't Back Down regardless of how amazing it is...it's amazing on the 5 other discs I have already. It's the same record company greed that fed pirating and it's the same record company greed that is driving hoards of people to £9.99 a month unlimited streaming services.....or folks like myself who have just started buying less and less for lack of quality releases. Seems a shame after just releasing such an amazing 4 CD set merely a week ago.
Yeah, this smells pretty bad. I don't understand the appeal of 'Greatest Hits' or 'Hits Collection' compilations. First of all, eyeballing the track list, most of the songs didn't come anywhere close to being a 'hit'. Second, if you want a good Tom Petty 'Best Of' collections, go on iTunes, download your 15 or 20 favorites, and put them in playlist. Oh, that's right, you won't get an essay by Cameron Crow, though.
Well that's cool...a little revisionist history, but cool. Now I wanna hear the remix, though. Was the whole album remixed or just that one tune?
I wonder who is making these decisions now that Tom is gone. Were these things in the pipeline before his death? Or is his family being directed by the record company (or vice versa)?
There's a song to be written about how an artist reaches a tipping point where businesswise they're better off dead than alive. Too bad Tom's not around to write it!