Description
Wildflowers & All The Rest rounds up the original 1994 album alongside a bonus discs of outtakes and rarities. The standard 2CD edition includes 10 unheard tracks – intended for a much longer edition of the album which was not encouraged by the Record label at the time.
The sessions to Wildflowers found Petty collaborating for the first of three albums with producer Rick Rubin. Recorded with many of the members of The Heartbreakers (including drummer Steve Ferrone, who’d replace Stan Lynch the following year) as well as several big-name contributors (Ringo Starr sat behind the drum kit for “To Find a Friend,” while “Honey Bee” featured vocals by Carl Wilson of The Beach Boys, the album was nonetheless credited to Petty alone. “Rick and I both wanted more freedom than to be strapped into five guys,” he later said.
Despite a barrage of personal trials at the time – including the collapse of his first marriage and a subsequent struggle with drug addiction – and a late decision to pare down the running time of the album into a still-respectable 62 minutes, fans and critics felt the material was some of his best. It became Petty’s seventh Top 10 album in the U.S., and lead single “You Don’t Know How It Feels” reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. (The track also took home a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.)
