As with “Crawling,” you can see why the album cuts landed where they did, but these other takes are great listening, with or without knowledge of the choices made for the finished product. Tench is on piano and synth here (the decision was eventually made to use Petty’s take on the keys), but it’s the guitar work from Petty and Campbell that really pops. Listening to the alternate version, though, feels like the best song Whiskeytown never recorded – a mix of country rock and Southern drama. Live, it gets more guitar-ish, with Petty on rhythm and Campbell on mandolin – it has a sweet, “MTV Unplugged” vibe while drawing even more attention to Petty’s almost-wispy vocals. The final cut, which wraps Wildflowers, goes from delicate to theatrical, but it still rests on Petty’s singing and piano-playing (no Tench here). “Wake Up Time,” in its infant form, merely hints at its eventual drama – it’s piano and Petty’s near-ghostly vocals. It’s different, to be sure, but still sad, still gorgeous, and still including one of rock’s all-time lines of regret, “Most things I worry about never happen anyway.” It begins with a Knopfler-esque lick from Campbell before it becomes an actual rock song – faster and moving forward before reaching a guitar/piano trade-off with Tench (side note – Campbell and Tench may be the best pair of outright musicians to ever play in a rock band, and this is coming from a longtime E Street guy). He seems to have grown quite fond of the song by the time of its live recording in 2017 (in what ended up being his last tour), as he tells the crowd, “We don’t often play this one it’s always been one of my favorites.” But the take found on Finding is less mysterious, ominous or resigned. The album version remains one of Petty’s saddest songs (even though he was divorced in 1996, his marriage was falling apart during the writing and recording of Wildflowers, released in 1994). “Crawling Back To You” recorded at home gives us harmonies from Petty and a surprise, ethereal electric guitar solo. It’s a bit more insistent than the eventual album track, but the gorgeous harmony vocals from Heartbreakers bassist Howie Epstein (not present on the final cut) are worth hearing. The rendition on Finding features a busted take and Ringo Starr on drums. “Wildflowers,” captured mostly as Petty was writing it on the home recording (which is beyond stunning), had orchestration added by composer Michael Kamen for the album take, and its live version is augmented with Mike Campbell on mandolin and Benmont Tench on piano (appropriately, the album and live versions bookend the Wildflowers Deluxe Edition). Of the 15 tracks found on the original Wildflowers record, three have gotten the “full” reissue treatment – home demo, album cut, studio alternate, and in-concert – across the box set release cycle, so we’ll start with those: Patience has paid off for us, though, as the new release, Finding Wildflowers (Alternate Versions), includes 15 different cuts from the sessions that produced Petty’s best album, plus a gorgeous new song we’ve not heard before now, all taking us for one last walk among the wildflowers while allowing us to imagine a somewhat different path. Last fall, when the Wildflowers & All the Rest box set was first released, the alternate studio versions were reserved for those who plunked down enough cash for the “super deluxe” version (and don’t think I wasn’t tempted). Following the evolution of 1994’s Wildflowers from demo to studio to album to live shows has been fascinating. In fact, over the past few months of a slowed-down life, I have. I could sit and listen to and read about Tom Petty outtakes for hours.
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