Tom Petty’s estate has shared a previously unheard song, “There Goes Angela (Dream Away),” that was recorded during the Wildflowers sessions.
The only catch is that hearing it requires either having a subscription to Sirius/XM, successfully completing a five-question quiz on Petty’s website or entering your e-mail address and zip code so they can update their fan list. The quiz shouldn’t be too difficult for Petty fans or anyone with access to Wikipedia.
“There Goes Angela (Dream Away)” is a tender ballad that would have fit seamlessly on Wallflowers. “One day I’ll be back,” Petty sings, “One day I’ll be home/Right now I got some things/To do out on the road/But dream away my love/Let your heart be free/And if ever someone should break your will/Have a dream on me.”
“I don’t remember hearing this,” Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench said on SiriusXM. “I think this is one where I would have said, ‘Oh, come on. Let’s cut this.’ I don’t remember even trying it. When it came on, I was so thrilled. But I was also mad like, ‘What? We didn’t cut this?’ When I first heard it, I was so happy that it almost made me cry because I was hearing him do something I hadn’t heard.”
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Wildflowers was originally envisioned as a double album and Petty was forced to cut several songs when it was cut down to a single LP. Some of the lost songs appeared on the She’s the One soundtrack in 1996, but others were placed into Petty’s archive and never heard by the public. At the time of his death in 2017, Petty was plotting out a massive Wildflowers box set that would have restored his original vision for the album.
The singer was also thinking about playing it straight through on a special tour. “Single album concerts often don’t scan right for a concert,” he told Rolling Stone in 2016. “But with the amount of material I have for the Wildflowers double album, I think I’ve got enough tempos and types of songs that I could do a live show … And it’ll be fun for the audience since there’s a bunch of songs they’ll know.”
Sadly, Petty never had the chance to bring Wildflowers to the stage. But his estate has been plotting out a Wildflowers box set for quite some time. There is no release date at this moment, but they’ve already shared a demo of “You Don’t Know How It Feels” and Petty’s Instagram references a “forthcoming Wildflowers project.”
In 2018, Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell told Rolling Stone that the surviving members of the group might play Wildflowers with guest singers once the box set finally arrives. “It would be a great tribute to Tom to just do that album,” Campbell said. “We’d probably have four or five different guest singers with us. We don’t know who they might be though or when this might happen.”
From Rolling Stone US
