Wildflowers (Tom Petty album)

Wildflowers is the second solo studio album by American musician Tom Petty, released on November 1, 1994. The album was the first released by Petty after signing a contract with Warner Bros. Records (where he had recorded as part of the Traveling Wilburys) and the first of three albums produced by Rick Rubin. The album was certified 3× platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Wildflowers
Studio album by Tom Petty
Released	November 1, 1994 (1994-11-01)
Recorded	July 20, 1992 – April 29, 1994
Studio	Sound City, Van Nuys Ocean Way, Hollywood
Genre	Heartland rock folk rock^[1] blues rock^[2]
Length	62:48
Label	Warner Bros.
Producer	Rick Rubin Tom Petty Mike Campbell
Tom Petty chronology
Greatest Hits (1993) Wildflowers (1994) Playback (1995)
Singles from Wildflowers
"You Don't Know How It Feels" Released: December 3, 1994 "You Wreck Me" Released: 1995 "It's Good to Be King" Released: 1995 "A Higher Place" Released: 1995

In 2020, the album was ranked at number 214 on Rolling Stone's Greatest Albums of All Time list.^[3]

Production

Wildflowers was credited only to Petty and not to his usual band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers because, in Petty's words, "Rick [Rubin] and I both wanted more freedom than to be strapped into five guys."^[4] Nonetheless, the Heartbreakers predominantly served as the musicians on the album. The album features all the band's members with the exception of drummer Stan Lynch. Petty auditioned numerous drummers for the album, and eventually chose Steve Ferrone. Petty fired Lynch from the Heartbreakers just before the album's release, and Ferrone officially joined the touring band the following year, and later became a full band member. (Lynch did play on one outtake from Wildflowers, "Something Could Happen").

Petty wrote and recorded numerous songs for the album, and the original plan was to have Wildflowers be a double album, with 25 songs in total. However, Lenny Waronker of Warner Bros. Records felt that the album was too long, and it was decided to reduce the album to 15 tracks.^[5] Of the 10 tracks left out, one, "Leave Virginia Alone", notably became a hit single the following year when it was recorded by Rod Stewart, while another four were included, in modified form, in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' next album, the soundtrack album to the 1996 film She's the One. All ten songs, in their original form, were finally released in the 2020 re-released edition of Wildflowers, Wildflowers & All the Rest.

Outtakes

• "Girl on LSD" was released as the B-side of the "You Don't Know How It Feels" single (1994).
• "Leave Virginia Alone" was another song written and recorded during the sessions and left off the finished album. It was given to Rod Stewart for his album A Spanner in the Works (1995).
• The songs "California", "Hope You Never", "Hung Up and Overdue", and "Climb That Hill" were all included on the She's the One soundtrack album (1996), with various edits across the first three tracks, while "Climb That Hill" was a complete remake.^[6]
• In 2018, outtake "Lonesome Dave," recorded July 23, 1993, was released on Petty's posthumous box set An American Treasure.
• In 2021, a cover of J.J. Cale's "Thirteen Days," recorded July 22, 1993, was released on the reimagined version of She's the One soundtrack album, Angel Dream.

Release and reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	^[7]
Christgau's Consumer Guide	B−^[8]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	^[9]
Entertainment Weekly	B−^[10]
The Guardian	^[11]
Los Angeles Times	^[12]
NME	8/10^[13]
Pitchfork	8.8/10^[14]
Rolling Stone	^[15]
Uncut	8/10^[16]

Four singles were released from the album between 1994 and 1995, the most successful of which, "You Don't Know How It Feels", reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Album Rock Tracks chart for one week. It was followed by "You Wreck Me", "It's Good to Be King" and "A Higher Place" which reached Nos. 2, 6, and 12 respectively on the Mainstream Rock chart.^[17] The title track, while not released as a single, charted at #16 on the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart^[18] and at #3 on the Billboard Lyric Find.^[19] and became one of Petty's most streamed and popular songs.^[20][21]

Rolling Stone placed Wildflowers at number 12 on their list of the best albums of the 1990s.^[22] Guitar World placed the album at number 49 in their "Superunknown: 50 Iconic Albums That Defined 1994" list.^[23]

In April 2015, when Petty's back catalog was released in high-resolution audio, this was one of only two albums not included in the series (Songs and Music from "She's the One" was the other one), but a hi-res version was available on Pono Music.

The title of the 2020 book Somewhere You Feel Free: Tom Petty and Los Angeles comes from a lyric in the album's title song "Wildflowers".^[24]

Wildflowers & All the Rest

Petty's family and bandmates arranged a 2020 re-release of the album that includes deleted songs, demos, and live tracks, entitled Wildflowers & All the Rest.^[25] Disc four, Wildflowers Live consists of fourteen previously unreleased tracks, two of which had only been distributed to Fan Club members. These live tracks were recorded on various tours from 1995 to 2017.^[26] The super deluxe edition of the box set included a fifth disc of alternate versions of the Wildflowers tracks, called Finding Wildflowers. In April 2021, Finding Wildflowers was released individually.^[27]

Documentary

The making of Wildflowers is the subject of the 2021 documentary film Tom Petty: Somewhere You Feel Free – The Making of Wildflowers, directed by Mary Wharton. The documentary includes a significant amount of archival footage from the recording sessions, recorded by Martyn Atkins, which had only recently been unearthed following Petty's death; as well as new interviews with many of the producers and musicians who had been involved with the album. The film was released in November 2021 on YouTube.^[28][29]

Track listing

Wildflowers

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"Wildflowers"	Tom Petty	3:11
2.	"You Don't Know How It Feels"	Petty	4:49
3.	"Time to Move On"	Petty	3:15
4.	"You Wreck Me"	Petty Mike Campbell	3:22
5.	"It's Good to Be King"	Petty	5:10
6.	"Only a Broken Heart"	Petty	4:30
7.	"Honey Bee"	Petty	4:58
8.	"Don't Fade on Me"	Petty Campbell	3:32
9.	"Hard on Me"	Petty	3:48
10.	"Cabin Down Below"	Petty	2:51
11.	"To Find a Friend"	Petty	3:23
12.	"A Higher Place"	Petty	3:56
13.	"House in the Woods"	Petty	5:32
14.	"Crawling Back to You"	Petty	5:05
15.	"Wake Up Time"	Petty	5:19
Total length:			62:48

All the Rest

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"Something Could Happen"	Petty	4:35
2.	"Leave Virginia Alone"	Petty	4:16
3.	"Climb That Hill Blues"	Petty Campbell	2:33
4.	"Confusion Wheel"	Petty	4:20
5.	"California"	Petty	2:38
6.	"Harry Green"	Petty	3:54
7.	"Hope You Never"	Petty	3:03
8.	"Somewhere Under Heaven"	Petty Campbell	4:37
9.	"Climb That Hill"	Petty Campbell	3:34
10.	"Hung Up and Overdue"	Petty	6:03
Total length:			39:33

Personnel

• Tom Petty – vocals (all tracks), acoustic guitar (1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 16–19, 20, 21, 25), electric guitar (2–5, 7, 10, 13, 14, 20, 22, 24), harmonica (2, 12, 20, 21), bass guitar (2, 12, 20), harmony vocals (2, 5, 14, 20–22, 24), Hammond organ (14), piano (15), percussion (16), harpsichord (22)
• Mike Campbell – electric guitar (tracks 2, 4, 5, 7, 9–14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22–25), bass guitar (1, 3, 5, 6, 12, 13–15, 20, 23, 24), slide guitar (3, 25), acoustic guitar (8), coral sitar (11), harpsichord (1), piano (20), Hammond organ (23), drums (23)
• Benmont Tench – piano (tracks 1, 3–7, 9, 10, 12–14, 16, 17, 25), grand piano (2), electric piano (2, 24), Hammond organ (4, 6, 9, 12, 14, 22), Mellotron (6, 14, 25), tack piano (11), harmonium (1, 6, 12, 16, 17, 19), zenon (11), orchestron (12)
• Howie Epstein – harmony vocals (tracks 2, 4, 5, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 24), bass guitar (4, 7, 10, 16, 19, 22, 25), backing vocals (7)
• Steve Ferrone – drums (tracks 1–7, 9, 10, 12–15, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24)

Additional musicians

• Lenny Castro – percussion (tracks 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 25)
• Brandon Fields – saxophone (track 13)
• Greg Herbig – saxophone (track 13)
• Jim Horn – saxophone (track 13)
• Kim Hutchcroft – saxophone (track 13)
• Phil Jones – percussion (tracks 4, 10, 20, 22)
• Michael Kamen – orchestration, conductor (tracks 1, 3, 5, 12, 15)
• Stan Lynch – drums (track 16)
• John Pierce – bass guitar (track 9)
• Marty Rifkin – pedal steel guitar (track 13)
• Ringo Starr – drums (tracks 11, 25)
• Carl Wilson – backing vocals (tracks 7, 25)

Production

• Joe Barresi – assistant engineer
• David Bianco – engineer
• Mike Campbell – producer
• Richard Dodd – engineer, mixer
• Steve Holyrod – assistant engineer
• Kenji Nasai – assistant mixer
• Tom Petty – producer
• Rick Rubin – producer
• Jim Scott – engineer
• Jeff Sheehan – assistant engineer

Charts

Chart performance for Wildflowers Chart (1994) Peak position Australian Albums (ARIA)^[30] 38 Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)^[31] 13 Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)^[32] 75 German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)^[33] 15 New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)^[34] 29 Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)^[35] 20 Swedish Albums (Sverigetopplistan)^[36] 7 Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)^[37] 17 UK Albums (OCC)^[38] 36 US Billboard 200^[39] 8 Chart performance for Wildflowers & All the Rest Chart (2020) Peak position Austrian Albums (Ö3 Austria)^[40] 9 Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)^[41] 14 Belgian Albums (Ultratop Wallonia)^[42] 52 Canadian Albums (Billboard)^[43] 40 Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)^[44] 24 Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)^[45] 43 German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)^[46] 4 Hungarian Albums (MAHASZ)^[47] 5 Irish Albums (OCC)^[48] 22 Italian Albums (FIMI)^[49] 66 New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)^[50] 35 Norwegian Albums (VG-lista)^[51] 14 Scottish Albums (OCC)^[52] 6 Spanish Albums (PROMUSICAE)^[53] 11 Swiss Albums (Schweizer Hitparade)^[54] 10 UK Albums (OCC)^[55] 19 US Billboard 200^[56] 5 US Top Rock Albums (Billboard)^[57] 1 Chart performance for Finding Wildflowers Chart (2021) Peak position Swedish Physical Albums (Sverigetopplistan)^[58] 11 Swedish Vinyl Albums (Sverigetopplistan)^[59] 10 US Billboard 200^[60] 112

Year-end chart performance for Wildflowers Chart (2020) Position US Top Rock Albums (Billboard)^[61] 64 Chart (2021) Position US Top Rock Albums (Billboard)^[62] 78

Chart performance for singles from Wildflowers

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1994	"You Don't Know How It Feels"	US Mainstream Rock Chart	1^[63]
1995		US Billboard Hot 100	13^[63]
	"You Wreck Me"	US Mainstream Rock Chart	2^[64]
	"It's Good to Be King"		6^[65]
	"A Higher Place"		12^[66]

Certifications

Certifications for Wildflowers

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
United Kingdom (BPI)^[67]	Silver	60,000^‡
United States (RIAA)^[68]	3× Platinum	3,000,000^^
^^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ^‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.

References

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2. Pitchfork Staff (September 28, 2022). "The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s". Pitchfork. Retrieved April 26, 2023. ...his second solo record was a turning point for the then-44-year-old rocker into a wiser era, strolling through folk, blues, and rock...
3. "Wildflowers ranked 214th greatest album by Rolling Stone magazine". Rolling Stone. September 22, 2020. Retrieved August 5, 2021.
4. Petty, Tom: Conversations with Tom Petty, page 142. Omnibus Press, 2005.
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6. Article in Ultimate Classic Rock
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External links

• Wildflowers at Discogs (list of releases)