Tom Petty's Wildflowers as a double album

Do you people think it would be a better album than what we already have, had Tom and Rick Rubin achieved their goal of a double album?

 

As for me, considering the outtakes and tracks re-recorded later, absolutely. As it is, it's already great, but when we add those tunes, it becomes his best album. Take a look at the tracklist I assembled:

Side One (24:17)
01 Wildflowers – 3:11
02 You Don't Know How It Feels – 4:49
03 Time to Move On – 3:15
04 You Wreck Me – 3:22
05 It's Good to Be King – 5:10
06 Only a Broken Heart – 4:30
Side Two (24:01)
07 Honey Bee – 4:58
08 Don't Fade on Me – 3:32
09 U Get Me High – 4:11
10 Hard on Me – 3:48
11 Cabin Down Below – 2:51
12 Hope on Board - 1:18
13 It's Hard to Find a Friend – 3:23
Side Three (24:22)
14 Climb that Hill – 3:57
15 I Hope You Never – 3:02
16 Girl on LSD – 3:34
17 California – 2:39
18 Supernatural Radio – 5:22
19 Hung Up and Overdue – 5:48
Side Four (24:29)
20 A Higher Place – 3:56
21 House in the Woods – 5:32
22 Somewhere Under Heaven – 4:37
23 Crawling Back to You – 5:05
24 Wake Up Time – 5:19

I added the re-recorded stuff for the lack of a better version, and tried to separate the She's the One tracks into their own side, as they work better together. And that's it

 

I consider it one anyway.
It's close to 63 minutes long. On vinyl it is a 2 LP set. Each side averages around 15ish minutes. One side is closer to 13 and another is like 17 minutes. That would be not too far off of traditional double LP length anyway.

 

I love Wildflowers, but it was bordering on too long as it was. I also love She's The One, but I'm glad they exist as two separate albums...I love Tom but I think a two-hour double CD at the time would've been too overwhelming, and the individual songs wouldn't have stood out as much.

 

I would love to see a 2-side, double album of Wildflowers.....and hope they include "Girl on LSD".....and "California". I love the tracklist Dr. Robert posted. Hope it comes to fruition. Petty was the best singer/songwriter I ever heard.

 

Anyone know if there will be a 2-sided album?

 

It's supposed to come out sometime in the future, but god only knows when that is

 

forgive my ignorance, Wildflowers is the only Petty album I have together with a 2cd anthology.

I frequently read (here) mentions to this "lost" version of the wildflower double album, where can I find some info about it, how it was supposed to be, and the relative "behind the scenes" about the production?

thanks

 

Has the two LP project been abandoned or just postponed ? I was under the impression it was completed in Tom's lifetime and he planned to do a concert tour based on it. Maybe why the single disc was not available except in the box set. Fortunately I was able to obtain WF single disc (broken box?) and it's an improvement on the excellent sounding original.

 

Are you referring to vinyl?

 

Yes but of course the expanded edition would be 3 or 4 Lps I suppose.

 

Wildflowers is one of the best albums...I just love "Wildflowers", "Hard to Find a Friend", "Time to Move On" and "Cabin Down Below" and "You Wreck Me".....so many great songs on that album - but those are my favorites.

 

Next year on the 25th anniversary of first release would be a natural for a giant box set including uncompressed CD, high-rez download, vinyl and 5.1 Bluray.

Hey, a guy can dream....... Anything a la carte would be nice too..

 

13 page discussion on this:

New Tom Petty album dropping "Wildflowers - All the Rest"

 

Postponed. In actuality the "Wildflowers: All The Rest" project is completed and was completed during Tom Petty's lifetime and as you noted, he did plan to build a future tour around it. For numerous reasons, the project keeps getting put on the back burner with the latest word being that it was decided to issue the upcoming "An American Treasure" box set instead of "Wildflowers: All The Rest". So basically everything relating to the "Wildflowers: All The Rest" project is being held in dry dock until some future date including the standalone reissue of the original vinyl album which is currently available for purchase as part of "The Complete Studio Albums Volume 2 1994-2014" vinyl box set.

That said if you are unable to or are reluctant to spend the bread required to obtain the aforementioned vinyl box set, patience would be the prescription of choice as at some point in the future, you should be able to obtain "Wildflowers" as a standalone vinyl issue with relative ease from either the official Tom Petty website or the stockist of your choosing.

Short answer: If/when "Wildflowers" gets released inclusive of the material that was omitted back in 1994, it will be the standard bearer in Tom Petty/Heartbreakers' catalog. Better than the original single disc version that was released in 1994, better than "Full Moon Fever", better than "Damn The Torpedoes". Simply put, it is Tom Petty's best work period and one that has remained unfathomably unheard to this day.

Long answer: The first thing that needs to be implicitly understood is that the period in which "Wildflowers" was being recorded, was Tom Petty's most prolific period of songwriting. He had stockpiled more material than even a double disc could contain in that there were songs that Petty wrote for "Wildflowers" that were not considered part of the completed canon of tracks for no other reason other than the sheer amount of quality material that he/Mike Campbell/Rick Rubin had to choose from.

The second issue that is equally important to understand is that "Songs and Music From The Motion Picture She's The One" is not a sequel to "Wildflowers". I understand that Tom Petty mentioned a few times that the soundtrack is almost a part two to "Wildflowers" but the connection between the two projects basically hinges on the four songs that are common to both albums ("Climb That Hill", "Hope You Never", "California" and "Hung Up And Overdue"). But in terms of overall conception, the soundtrack is it's own project which likely supplanted an early lineup of "Wildflowers: All The Rest" which was mooted about in early 1996. I've also been made aware over the past several years that some of the unreleased "Wildflowers" material (perhaps the aforementioned quartet?) was accessed for "Playback" but left ultimately unused on that collection. The remaining cuts on the soundtrack are gleaned from different periods in Petty's songwriting. "Angel Dream" was the first song that Petty wrote for Dana York, the woman who would eventually become his second wife. "Supernatual Radio" is believed to have been a part of Petty's songbook as early as 1994. "Walls", "Zero From Outer Space" and "Grew Up Fast" were new additions to the canon. That taken into account, you can see how "Songs And Music From The Motion Picture She's The One" was somewhat of a hodge-podge affair, even before the covers, deviating versions and instrumental score tracks were added.

Finally in terms of whether or not a proposed track listing for a double-disc version of "Wildflowers" ever existed in the first place is a matter of some conjecture. As I understand it, Petty/Campbell/Rubin did achieve their goal of compiling enough completed works for a double album, but their proposal was either rejected by Lenny Waronker or to quote Petty's biographer Warren Zanes "Lenny Waronker talked Petty and Rubin out of making Wildflowers a double album". Either way, it seems that at the very least some retooling of the project occurred at some late stage in the game as it was during this period where "You Don't Know How It Feels" was rescued from obscurity and given a reappraisal in terms of falling back into favor with Rubin who initially was not a supporter of the track. It is generally accepted that this process involved the siphoning off of ten tracks from a queue of twenty-five completed tracks, resulting in the fifteen cuts that appeared on the single disc issue. Of those ten remaining songs, four ended up on "Songs And Music From The Motion Picture She's The One", another as the b-side to "You Don't Know How It Feels", another was gifted to Rod Stewart for his 1995 album "A Spanner In The Works", yet another featured as part of the soundtrack to the film "Entourage" and yet one more is slated to be released on the upcoming "An American Treasure" box set next month. This leaves two of the ten titles still completely unheard by the masses, with the caveat that there was a lot of material emanating from this period that could/should be considered part of the canon regardless of whether or not it is part of the "Wildflowers" bumper crop.

 

Wildflowers has some amazing material, but is too long. I also find the rockers very sterile. Honey Bee never sounded right to me. It’s got this big blues riff with raunchy guitar, yet the production is so clean and sterile. Some of the lyrics border on parody too. If I’m in the right mood they’re classic Petty, but if I’m in the wrong mood, I wind up laughing.

I bought this album the day it came out but ultimately got rid of it. I repurchased last year when I saw it for a dollar. Still feel the same way I did almost twenty years ago. Lots of good songs, but I have trouble making it the whole way through.

 

Great writeup! Helped me understand a lot of things I was in doubt about

But are you sure Supernatural Radio wasn't recorded by the time of Wildflowers's release? As I read, it was recorded back then, but re-recorded for She's the One, for whatever reason (as was U Get Me High for Hypnotic Eye)

 

Always felt like Honey Bee had its tongue in its cheek. Petty knew what he was doing.

 

'U Get Me High' and 'You Get Me High' are two different songs.

 

Yes, "You Get Me High" was written (as Tom claims) on stage during the March 1992 European tour and performed at most of those shows. A studio version with slightly altered lyrics eventually surfaced on Playback (1995). As for "U Get Me High," Mike Campbell revealed in a 2014 interview that it was a Wildflowers outtake or demo of some sort that Petty resurrected for Hypnotic Eye (2014). Significantly, "U Get Me High" shares a verse of lyrics with another track off of Wildflowers: "Don't Fade on Me."

As for the All the Rest edition or re-issue of Wildflowers -- or if it will even be called that by the time it comes out? -- there are plenty of songs leftover from these sessions that also didn't make it onto the She's the One soundtrack (1996), as @McCool said. In a Rolling Stone interview, Petty confirmed that there's probably six or so songs no one has ever heard before. Upon consulting copyright listings submitted for Petty around the time Wildflowers was recorded, one will realize that that number is about correct, as there are a few songs listed that haven't surfaced in any form before, such as "Lonesome Dave," which will fortunately appear on American Treasure in about a month!

And it doesn't seem like "Lonesome Dave" is the last song we will hear from these sessions. In his recent interview on Tom Petty Radio, Ryan Uylate confirmed that though there are Wildflowers outtakes and demos on the American Treasure set -- including an alternate version of "Don't Fade On Me" (with a haunting extra verse) and an early take of "Wake Up Time" (guitar and drum heavy) -- this does not mean that the All the Rest collection has been abandoned. Perhaps we will see a release on the 25th anniversary of the album's original release next year? Who knows.

That some of these demos and alternate versions from this era surfaced on American Treasure is curious, however, as Petty said in an end of 2016 interview with Rolling Stone that Warner Bros. was interested in making Wildflowers - All the Rest into a box set with demos, but he wasn't really as interested in the demos as others at Warner Bros. and the Petty camp were.

 

"U Get Me High" and "You Get Me High" are two different songs but they both date from relatively the same period. "You Get Me High" ("Playback") was one of the songs that Tom Petty was writing during the Heartbreakers' jaunt across Europe in the spring of 1992 and was recorded with the band later that year. I've personally always been of the opinion that "You Get Me High" was somewhat cannibalized into "Girl On LSD" at least topically.

"U Get Me High" is a very interesting song. It's a song that Tom Petty composed for "Wildflowers" but was not released until it was re-recorded for 2014 album "Hypnotic Eye". It's one of those songs where lyrically, there is a lot of intriguing things going on. To begin with, the song itself post-dates "You Get Me High" so it could be considered an attempt to refine the lyrical themes of that song. It also contains a verse which is nearly identical to a verse found in "Don't Fade On Me" (I remember feeling this way/You can lose it without knowing/You wake up and you don't know which way/The wind is blowing), so that particular verse was obviously popped out of "U Get Me High" and inserted into "Don't Fade On Me". Additionally there is a verse that seems to have found it's way into "Crawling Back To You" albeit in a far more succinct manner as I ain't afraid of what people say/Ain't afraid of the great deception/Every bad dream comes my way/Turns to smoke on closer inspection reads appreciably better as I'm so tired of being tired/Sure as night will follow day/Most things I worry about/Never happen anyway.

"Supernatural Radio" is interesting as well. The version which appears on "Songs And Music From The Motion Picture She's The One" was clearly recorded in 1996 as there is footage of the band recording that track which circulates amongst collectors. That said, for years it was believed that both "Climb That Hill" and "Supernatural Radio" were recorded specifically for the soundtrack but that isn't the case. The confusion resulted from the fact that the version of "Climb That Hill" that appears on the soundtrack does not jive with the one that was slated to appear on "Wildflowers". Evidently an outtake of "Climb That Hill" was selected for the soundtrack, leading fans to believe that it was a new version of the song recorded specifically for the film, when in actuality it's merely an alternate presentation of the "Wildflowers" cut. As far as "Supernatural Radio" is concerned, it was part of Tom Petty's collection of works as early as 1994, which would place it amongst the "Wildflowers" recordings. However, it is not believed that it was amongst the twenty-five completed tracks that have been referenced several times in this thread.

To my knowledge, Tom Petty revised his initial hesitant stance regarding the inclusion of the demos, much as he did his initial hesitant stance about performing the album live in it's entirety. As the song says If you can change your mind/You can change your feeling.

 

All I can remember Tom confirming in Rolling Stone was that he had change his mind about touring behind an entire album, not that he changed his mind about including demos. But if he somehow confirmed that he changed his mind in that or another interview, that would have been cool! I personally would like to hear anything that the Petty camp decides to release from that era.

To have Norah Jones and other special guests join Tom and the band on an intimate Wildflowers tour would have been amazing (she has a stunning live version of "Only A Broken Heart" in case others are interested). One of the many great losses experienced as a result of Petty's untimely death was that this tour was in the midst of being planned and unfortunately could never see fruition.

Regardless of what he or Warner Bros. eventually decided the All the Rest collection should look like, it is known that the Petty camp has always been very careful about curating the material released, and has been careful to not over-release things, as Ryan Ulyate confirmed in his recent TP Radio interview. I think most fans are looking for and excited about the new material, which we will luckily get a taste of very soon with "Lonesome Dave," but alternate versions and demos are equally fascinating to a deep Petty collector.

 

What was the song given to Entourage, and did it appear on the CD or just in the film? A quick check of Amazon didn't show any Petty songs on the two soundtrack CDs (one for the show, one for the film). Thanks!

 

"Somewhere Under Heaven" appeared in the credits to the 2015 film Entourage and was released by the Petty camp, advertised as the first single from Wildflowers: All the Rest, a few days before the film's release. It did not wind up appearing on the soundtrack. In the Warren Zanes biography, Tom mentions that he initially didn't even remember the song, let alone recording it. More info here.

 

Since it is already a 2 LP set wouldn't the extra tracks make it a 3 LP set ?