When the car the band was using to test out the mixes ended up being rented by another party, it sent everybody into a temporary panic.Īs the sessions progressed, MCA called in their marker for some new material for an impending Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers " Greatest Hits" album.
There was also much attention paid to the mix downs of the tracks with one entertaining story being that a specific car had been rented for the specific purpose of hearing how the songs would sound on a car's speakers. "Wake Up Time" was cut both on the acoustic guitar and on the piano while "Time To Move On" was recorded in a stripped down arrangement (as seen in the documentary "400 Days") and in a lush orchestral version with a score arranged by the late Michael Kamen. "Only A Broken Heart" was given a stripped down approach on the record and a more progressive approach on a take which eventually ended up as the b-side to "You Wreck Me". For example "Cabin Down Below" was cut in both acoustic and electric arrangements. In the studio, the "Wildflowers" tracks were sometimes attempted in several different ways. This was a particularly prolific period for Petty's songwriting as Rubin would regularly come by his house, listen to his demo tapes, give a review and then request that Petty write more songs for the project. These demos would form the blueprint for the tracks themselves as Petty claims that many of the finished versions sound exactly like the demos but in better quality and with better players. The project began with Tom Petty demoing a collection of songs utilizing his 8 track studio in his house. Even though Lynch was still a member of the band while the album was being recorded, he was not invited to play on a single session for the record.
The only exception being drummer Stan Lynch whom Petty was on the outs with at the time and didn't fit Petty's vision for the record. As the project went along, it evolved from being a solo record where each song was cast using different musicians to being an album where The Heartbreakers were basically brought back into the fold as Petty's band on the record.
It was planned as a double-album set and when all was said and done, two full years of work went into the record. The original plan for the record was quite grandiose both in scope and vision. Instead of basing the recording around a plethora of overdubs, they would attempt to capture individual takes of songs live on the studio floor. Another key decision early on was to cut everything live to tape in the studio comparable to the manner in which a director captures a scene on film. This is essentially how initially "Wildflowers" was cast as a solo album instead of a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers project. Instead for "Wildflowers", each song would be cast individually bringing in the musicians necessary to complete that particular track before moving onto the next. The decision was made that the songs for the new LP would be cast in a manner unlike the majority of Petty's previous records where he was locked into a five piece band. Searching for a new direction, Petty was introduced to producer Rick Rubin through Mike Campbell and they decided to make a record together. Then when it came time to start putting down some tracks, it completely fell apart". However according to Petty in the liner notes for "Playback" when speaking about this period: "We had a great time jamming around and working with song fragments and ideas. The band had done an extensive tour of Europe during which Petty had written a number of new songs (all of which can now be found split up between 1995's " Playback" box set and 2009's " Live Anthology" box set). In 1992, Tom Petty attempted to record an album with The Heartbreakers which was to be the follow-up to the previous year's " Into The Great Wide Open" LP. Now in order to continue forward we have to move back in time at this point. So far from what I'm aware of the deluxe edition has been announced as a double-disc set featuring ten unreleased songs with one song title ("Somewhere Under Heaven") confirmed. While there will probably be a thread alone devoted to the deluxe edition of "Wildflowers", I figured why not get a jump start and start some discussion on the album itself as well as some speculation as to what the deluxe edition may contain.
So with the deluxe edition of Tom Petty's " Wildflowers" coming 4th quarter of 2014 (the release date hasn't been officially announced as of yet but it's seemingly a lock) I thought it would be a good time to give this thread a bump.