The song that took Tom Petty nearly 30 years to release
The musical legacy of Tom Petty cannot be understated. He delivered his iconic, raspy vocals in a balm of heartland rock and pop that made him one of America’s most cherished artists. In a career that spanned four decades, Petty recorded and wrote countless anthems that never failed to resonate with his audience, continually solidifying himself as one of the most influential voices in rock and roll.
Just three years after his tragic death in 2017, Petty’s track ‘Leave Virginia Alone’ was released as part of the extended edition of Wildflowers & All The Rest. Petty’s family and bandmates had arranged the re-release of the 1994 album, which included unheard songs, demos, and live tracks from the artist.
Written in 1993, the single was initially set to be included in 1994’s Wildflowers but didn’t make the cut. Instead, Petty gave it to Rod Stewart for A Spanner In The Works. That was the most well-known rendition of the track until 2020 when listeners finally got to hear the track as Petty envisioned it.
The reception was dazzling, with audiences expressing immense gratitude it got to see the light of day thanks to Petty’s band, The Heartbreakers, playing on it – as well as various other songs from the Wildflowers sessions. It wasn’t the first time an album billed as a Tom Petty solo overture saw them bought into the fold, as Petty did something similar on his solo album Full Moon Fever.
Petty always had an immense gift for weaving narrative stories throughout his songs, and ‘Leave Virginia Alone’ is another luminous example of that. Similar to ‘American Girl’, the track’s protagonist retains an air of mystery, just enough that listeners can piece together their own version of her story. Petty’s lyrics point to her being a fiercely independent outsider (“She’s a loser / She’s a forgiver / And she still finds good / Where no one could”).
The ambiguity of the lyrics is mirrored in the video, directed by Petty’s daughter Adria and Mark Selinger. Selinger had shot Petty on magazine covers before, so the collaboration between him and Adria meant they could both speak to his unique vision and distil it in the visuals.
The video starred Casimere Jollette as the elusive Virginia, who seems to struggle with the trappings of fame but escapes by dancing, maybe in a nod to the lyric: “Well they chased her down the ally / And over the hill / To steal her will.”
Adria didn’t want to over-contextualise the character in the video, so the storyline is somewhat vague, but the perfect parallel to the song is open to interpretation. Part of Petty’s universal appeal was always his ability to speak for the underdogs and outliers, which he did on ‘Leave Virginia Alone’ and countless other tracks. It was that, paired with the unrefined purity of his voice, which made him one of rock music’s most down-to-earth icons.
