Tom Petty – Mary Jane’s Last Dance

To tell you the truth…I always thought the title was Last Dance of Mary Jane. I thought the video to this song…lives up to Halloween. 

I like the rawness of the song, and the lyrics are fun. Tom was making his second solo album, Wildflowers, but the record company wanted a couple of tracks to go on the greatest hits album. Mary Jane’s Last Dance is one of  Tom’s most successful songs. This would be the last song Stan Lynch played drums on for the Heartbreakers. 

Petty himself once said he didn’t really know what the song was about when he wrote it, “maybe about leaving behind the past.” The Mary Jane double meaning, weed or woman, kept the mystery alive. Later on, he said that Mary Jane is the same character as the female in American Girl, with a few hard knocks.

Petty made some strange videos, and this was no exception. Tom played a mortician who takes home a corpse played by Kim Basinger. When he gets her home, he puts her in a wedding dress and dances with her. Then he puts her in a pickup truck and throws her into the ocean, and she opens her eyes as she sinks. It won Best Male Video at the MTV Video Music Awards.

The song was released as part of the band’s 1993 Greatest Hits compilation. The song peaked at #14 on the Billboard 100, #5 in Canada, and #52 in the UK in 1994. It was like the end of one era and the beginning of another. Petty was saying goodbye to the jangle rock of his past and heading toward the inward-looking of Wildflowers.

I always liked the line “There’s pigeons down in Market Square
She’s standin’ in her underwear” because it sounds like it could have been off a mid-sixties Dylan album. 

Kim Bassinger: Now that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life. It was classic, wasn’t it? He was a doll, and he was so sweet and asked me to do it, and both of us are extremely shy so we just said three words to each other the whole time. I’ll never forget how heavy that dress was! And I had to be dead the whole time. You know, it’s really one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, because I had to be completely weightless to be in his arms the way I was. It won all those awards, and the kids love it even today!

Mike Campbell: “That song took on a few shapes. It was written in my garage. I didn’t write it, but we were jamming in the garage and Tom was playing one of my guitars. It was called ‘Indiana Girl,’ the first chorus was ‘Hey, Indiana Girl, go out and find the world.’ We liked the song and Rick Rubin suggested we cut it. It had actually been around for a while, just the basic riff and that chorus. We cut the song and Tom was singing the chorus, and he decided he just couldn’t get behind singing about ‘Hey, Indiana Girl,’ so we went back and about a week later he came in and said ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ so he changed the chorus to ‘Last dance with Mary Jane.’ In the verse there is still the thing about an Indiana girl on an Indiana night, just when it gets to the chorus he had the presence of mind to give it a deeper meaning.”

Mike Campbell: “An interesting thing about that record, the same day we did the last overdubs, that guitar and a few little bits, we did a rough mix here at my house, just did it by hand. Then we went to 3 or 4 different studios over the next couple of weeks and tried to do a proper mix, and we could never beat that rough mix, so that was the mix we put out. It’s an interesting track, it’s very inaccurate, it’s kind of greasy and loose. That day we just gelled and every time we mixed it we could clean up the sound and make it more posh, but it just didn’t have the juice that one mix had.”

Mary Jane’s Last Dance

She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good lookin’ momma who never was around
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on an Indiana night

Well she moved down here at the age of eighteen
She blew the boys away, it was more than they’d seen
I was introduced and we both started groovin’
She said, “I dig you baby but I got to keep movin’…on, keep movin’ on”

Last dance with Mary Jane
One more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m
Tired of this town again

Well I don’t know what I’ve been told
You never slow down, you never grow old
I’m tired of screwing up, I’m tired of goin’ down
I’m tired of myself, I’m tired of this town
Oh my my, oh hell yes
Honey put on that party dress
Buy me a drink, sing me a song,
Take me as I come ’cause I can’t stay long

Last dance with Mary Jane
One more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m
Tired of this town again

There’s pigeons down in Market Square
She’s standin’ in her underwear
Lookin’ down from a hotel room
Nightfall will be comin’ soon
Oh my my, oh hell yes
You’ve got to put on that party dress
It was too cold to cry when I woke up alone
I hit the last number, I walked to the road

Last dance with Mary Jane
One more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m
Tired of this town again

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

39 thoughts on “Tom Petty – Mary Jane’s Last Dance”

  1. Pingback: Tom Petty – Mary Jane’s Last Dance – MobsterTiger

  4. This is such a great song Max, and I think it has an incredible story. Mary Jane grew up in a small town in Indiana, where there was not much to do.  Her mother looked real fine, but she was not a great parent, leaving Mary Jane unsupervised most of the time.  In spite of this, Mary Jane learned how to handle herself, so she would not become prey for those Indiana boys who would try to impose their will on her.  At the age of 18, Mary Jane moves out of her Indiana town and arrived at this new place, wherever that was.  The boys in this new place were blown away, as they had never seen a girl like Mary Jane before.

    This guy meets her, and they get along very well, however she tells this guy that even though she likes him she doesn’t want to be tied down, because she needs to keep moving.  Mary Jane has this past, which she is trying to escape from, and she thinks that her future is hopeless.  It is getting close to summer, the weather is comfortable, and she thinks that this might be a good time for her to move again, especially since she has already grown tired of this town.  Mary Jane feels that if she slows down her lifestyle that will make her grow old.  She realizes that she has screwed up a lot, and she says that she is, “tired of goin’ down”, which might be a sexual innuendo.  She is depressed, tired of herself, and tired of this town, but while she is still here, she will put on that party dress, hope someone buys her a drink, and sings her a song.  She knows that this will be her last hurrah and she says, “Take me as I come ‘cause I can’t stay long.”

    Mary Jane is looking out of her hotel window, and she sees that there are pigeons down in Market Square.  She wants to have a good time in this town, knowing that this will be her last night here.  She has not gotten dressed yet, so she’s standing in her underwear in her hotel room aware that nightfall will be coming soon.  It is time for her to put on that party dress.  The next day it is cold and the guy wants to cry, because Mary Jane split and he woke up alone.  He took a hit from his last joint, then he walked to the road, thinking about his last dance with Mary Jane.  He is probably going to get some more weed to kill the pain, as he has also become tired of this town.

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  5. Every time I hear one of his songs now, I wish he was still around. I know he’d be making new awesome music. This is one of his best songs as far as I am concerned, but that’s a long list isn’t it Max?

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  6. great song, definitely makes my top 4 or so by him and the last really great one I heard by him. To me it sounded pretty finished, surprising to find they figured it was raw and it was basically an unfinished mix

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    1. Funny story…well not funny to me…I wrote a song in 1990…our band played it…the chords are very close to this…and guys were telling me…hey…Tom stole your riff! LOL… it was close but not on the nose…but yea I loved this song.

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  12. Such a well-made video! Very disturbing concept, but not unheard of. James Franco made a movie along those lines that I wish I’d never seen as it creeps me out just thinking of it. It’s a good song.

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  14. Pretty good song.
    Yes, the verse ramblings sound like Dylan’s early rap monologues starting with ‘I Shall Be Free No. 10’:
    Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
    The streets in heaven are lined with gold

    Tom Petty – Mary Jane’s Last Dance
    Well I don’t know what I’ve been told
    You never slow down, you never grow old

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      1. I didn’t realise how popular it was in your neck of the woods — bordering on over-saturation, wow.
        Considering I hadn’t even remembered it myself — even more wow-ee! Hehe.

        And congratulations on last night’s big win! It was by far the best MLB game I’ve ever seen. Yamamoto’s performance throughout the series was the stuff of legend — it’s hard to imagine it being surpassed anytime soon.

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