Right from the beginning, Petty knew he wanted to make a solo album, and he wanted to do it in a way that was totally different from how he’d created records in the past. “He was ready to take the mantle of being a more serious and respected artist at that point.” “He felt more of a part of his label than he had ever felt before,” Adria said. He ultimately chose to go with two giants of the music industry, Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker, and their label, Warner Bros. After recording seven blockbuster albums for MCA during the preceding decade, he decided to seek out a deal with a new company a few years prior. To say that Tom Petty’s life was in a state of flux around 19 would be putting it mildly. Spread over five discs in its most expansive form, this collection offers the fullest glimpse yet into the process and brilliance of one of America’s greatest songwriters working at the very apex of his powers. Thanks to the new, massively expanded Wildflowers & All The Rest box set out Friday, we can finally hear some of those seemingly divine inspirations for ourselves, along with a bevy of thrilling live recordings and totally unheard songs that have remained locked in the vaults for decades. It was never not interesting … was kind of one of those written-in-stone things.”

“Everything was right,” the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench said when discussing the heady 18 months that resulted in the creation of Petty’s triple-platinum magnum opus. “Wildflowers,” the title track to what Petty himself considered to be his greatest album, is an exquisite example of that exceedingly rare phenomenon. Some things are born into this world perfect and simply remain that way. Everything was just right there, off the top of my head.” “Then sat back and went, ‘Wow, what did I just do?’ And I listened to it. When the song came to its seemingly natural conclusion he reached over his guitar and clicked the stop button. In the next three minutes, Petty waxed poetic about love and freedom, heart and home while the reels on his recorder spun around in a steady rotation. “I swear to God it’s an absolute ad-lib from the word ‘go,’” he told author Paul Zollo for his book Conversations With Tom Petty. Who knows where those tenderly delivered words came from. “You belong among the wildflowers / You belong on a boat out at sea.” As the jaunty acoustic guitar in his hands filled the room with a capoed, sonorous chime, he opened his mouth and started to sing.

So, he hit the big red record button on the tape machine, took a deep breath and began to strum. He didn’t have any lyrics written down to guide him, just a simple three-chord progression and some vague visions of the Santa Barbara countryside in all its lush, colorful springtime splendor. On this particular day, he had a new idea that he wanted to get down on tape. But he had that room and he’d just go in that room every single day and work and close the door.” “My dad spent most of his time in his life quarantined in his house or on the road, basically. “You didn’t open that door unless the house was on fire,” his daughter Adria Petty said. The one part of the house where everyone knew better than to tread while he was in there by himself dreaming, and writing, and recording.

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