Tom Petty – “Confusion Wheel”

Mark Seliger

Tom Petty – “Confusion Wheel”

Mark Seliger

When he was working on his great 1994 solo album Wildflowers, Tom Petty recorded a whole lot of extra songs. He used some of them on his soundtrack to the Ed Burns movie She’s The One a couple of years later, but many of those songs have gone unreleased. That’s about to change.

Next month, Petty’s estate will release the archival collection Wildflowers & All The Rest. Different versions of the album will include the original Wildflowers LP, as well as the unreleased tracks, demos, and live songs. We’ve already posted the unreleased track “There Goes Angela (Dream Away),” as well as the demo versions of “You Don’t Know How It Feels” and “Wildflowers.” Today, we get to hear another previously unreleased banger from those sessions.

On “Confusion Wheel,” Petty goes full mystic folk-rock, something he didn’t do that often. The Byrds were a huge influence on Petty — maybe the hugest — but he rarely sounded ready to follow them onto the astral plane, the way that he does on “Confusion Wheel.” It’s a slow, mythic song about uncertainty and longing, and it’s a chiming guitar solo that would’ve done Roger McGuinn proud. Great song. Listen below.

Wildflowers & All The Rest is out 10/16 on Warner Records. Pre-order it here.

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