The family of Tom Petty has been doing a great job of keeping his music alive by releasing material that includes recordings that are new to his fans. On October 18th, 2024, a Deluxe Edition of the Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ Long After Dark album will be released. Besides the original 10 tracks from the 1982 album, there are another 12 “rediscovered” tracks, including seven that have never been released.
The original album is best known for the hits “You Got Lucky” & “Change Of Heart”, along with “Straight Into Darkness”. On the added second disc is the #1 Country song Tom Petty and Benmont Tench wrote for Rosanne Cash, “Never Be You”. It also includes the great John Sebastian song “Stories We Could Tell”, as well as songs you may have heard on the Tom Petty box set Playback. Those include “Turning Point” and “Keeping Me Alive”. The seven unreleased tracks will be of particular interest to Petty’s fans.
The deluxe version comes in a 2-record set, or a 2-CD set with an additional Blu-Ray audio disc (with the same songs).
Besides the new deluxe album release, there’s a long lost film.
This is the first film from director Cameron Crowe, who eventually gave us Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire. Heart Breakers Beach Party is not in the same league as those other two films, in fact it was only shown once on MTV at 2 A.M.! According to the film’s trailer, it was also rejected by HBO. The filming was done about the same time as the Long After Dark album, and includes the making of the video for “You Got Lucky”. The film looks a little raucous, and could be fun for Heartbreakers fans. There’s a limited run in theaters starting October 17th, 2024. No word yet on whether it’s being picked up by a streaming service.
The release of the deluxe album and hardly-seen film are just the latest posthumous releases developed by the Tom Petty estate. Here are the albums that have been released since his passing.
An American Treasure (2018) is mostly made up of unreleased and live versions of Tom Petty Songs. It accents recordings other than his hits. The standard 2-disc set has 26 songs, and the deluxe 4-disc set has 60 songs.
The Best Of Everything (2019) does a truly excellent job of putting together a double album of all the major hits and some of the significant album tracks from Tom Petty’s group and solo recordings. A minor quibble is that the songs are not in chronological order.
Above is my 4-CD box set of Wildflowers & All The Rest (2020). It’s a wonderful compilation of music recorded around the time of Petty’s 1994 album Wildflowers. On the first 2-CDs are the 25 songs Tom Petty originally wanted to release as a double album. The third CD has great demos Tom Petty recorded on his own, and the fourth CD has live versions with The Heartbreakers. Later I added the fifth disc of alternate studio versions. It’s all a treasure. This collection and The Best Of Everything are the recordings most essential to get to know the music of Tom Petty.
Angel Dream (2021) is a reimagining of the motion picture soundtrack She’s The One. Although this was a modest release, it includes some welcome previously unreleased tracks.
Live At The Fillmore 1997 (2022) is a major release of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ live performances. The 4-CD box set includes 72 live tracks. The band had played together for decades, and their Fillmore concerts showed how impressive they had become on stage. While there are a lot of Heartbreaker’s songs, there’s also an abundance of unreleased covers of classic songs that the group is obviously having fun playing.
(The Heartbreakers in 1982 at the time of Long After Dark)
We can hope Tom Petty’s family will be able to continue providing fans with historic unreleased songs and alternate versions, even though we know the supply will inevitably end. Each new release reminds us of Tom Petty’s greatness.
Extra Info: Just so you know, there are a couple of other purchasing options. There’s a limited edition of fancy vinyl you can find for $80 on the Tom Petty website, or if you’d like the CD set, Amazon is throwing in three stickers.
To the Tom Petty crew: keep up the good work!!!