The world might suck right now, but thankfully, Tom Petty’s state recently released a 1993 unearthed demo of “You Don’t Know How It Feels”, the first taste of the long-awaited wild flowers project file.
Petty recorded the sparse acoustic take in her home studio, providing a slower, more intimate feel. Listen carefully and you will be surprised to find a verse that would later appear in “Crawling Back to You”, the penultimate heartbreaking song in wild flowers That song, along with the rest of the album, reflects Petty’s crumbling marriage to Jane Benyo, his wife of more than 20 years. “I am so tired of being tired,” he admits. “The night will surely follow the day / Most of the things that worry me / Never happen anyway.” Compared to its later use in “Crawling Back to You”, the verse here feels looser and more emotionally fleeting, woven through the harmonica. It is as if Petty is raising his hands in the air, deciding to roll a joint and let go of the pain for now.
Those lines are among the largest Petty wrote, and he knew it. “It was one of his favorite letters he had written,” Petty’s daughter Adria recently said. Rolling Stone. “When we did the Running for a dream book, he wanted to put some quotes in and I mentioned that and he said, ‘That’s one of my favorites, yes let’s do it.’ My father was a great storyteller and just as good at being economic with words: he saw more potential in that vein than the climax of the album. “
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