Tom Petty wrote dozens of hit songs over the course of his four-decade profession as frontman of the Heartbreakers, however not all of them impressed his bandmates. Not less than not straight away.
Such was the case with “Mary Jane’s Final Dance,” a tune that Petty began someday and did not end.
“I wrote all however the refrain,” he recalled for 2005’s Conversations With Tom Petty. “I simply had the loop going round and round and actually had a lot of the phrases and the whole lot. And I performed the tape for Rick [Rubin] and he appreciated it quite a bit and prompt I write a refrain. So I attempted to complete it up whereas I used to be making [1994’s] Wildflowers, and there have been perhaps 5 years between the writing of the verses and the refrain.”
When he lastly introduced the tune to his bandmates, the refrain Petty had give you obtained a lukewarm reception at greatest.
“What’s humorous is that when Tom wrote this tune, when he first confirmed it to me, the refrain was, ‘Hey, Indiana lady, exit and discover the world,'” guitarist Mike Campbell informed Vulture in 2020. “It was a very completely different refrain, and all of us hated it.”
A Second Try
That meant going again to the drafting board for a bit. When Petty introduced the tune round once more, he’d made some changes, having rethought the entire “Indiana lady” refrain.
“That tune took on just a few shapes,” Campbell later recalled to Songfacts. “Within the verse there’s nonetheless the factor about an Indiana lady on an Indiana evening, simply when it will get to the refrain he had the presence of thoughts to present it a deeper which means.”
A lot of the work for “Mary Jane’s Final Dance” was performed at Campbell’s own residence studio, the place the guitarist inspired Petty to experiment somewhat.
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“On the finish there’s that little solo he does, I pushed him to try this,” Campbell continued. “I stated, ‘You go forward and play a fuzzy kind of guitar solo,’ as a result of we had this good sound up and he simply put the rhythm down.”
A tough mixture of the tune was made at Campbell’s place, however after making an attempt to high quality tune it at a few completely different precise studios, they ended up deciding the primary combine, imprecise because it was, was the most effective. That was the model the Heartbreakers launched in November 1993.
“It is an attention-grabbing monitor. It is very inaccurate, it is form of greasy and unfastened,” Campbell defined. “That day we simply gelled and each time we combined it we might clear up the sound and make it extra posh, but it surely simply did not have the juice that one combine had.”
“Mary Jane’s Final Dance” Music Video
Then got here time to make a music video, and Petty went with one thing of a morbidly absurd strategy — he solid Kim Basinger as a lifeless lady that Petty, portraying a mortician, brings house and performs fake with.
“I stated, ‘She’s obtained to look actually good, or why would he preserve her round after she’s lifeless?'” Petty informed Billboard in 2005. “I assumed, ‘Kim Basinger can be good. I might in all probability preserve her for a day or two, let’s go see if she would do it.’ You may make a joke about it, however you must act a bit to be lifeless. It is not straightforward.”
And do it she did. “He was a doll,” Basinger stated to The Each day Beast in 2017, “and he was so candy and requested me to do it, and each of us are extraordinarily shy so we simply stated three phrases to one another the entire time. I will always remember how heavy that costume was! And I needed to be lifeless the entire time. , it is actually one of many hardest issues I’ve ever performed in my life, as a result of I needed to be fully weightless to be in his arms the way in which I used to be. “
For individuals who unexpectedly assumed “Mary Jane” was a reference to marijuana, Petty cleared that up afterward.
“I do not suppose I used to be writing about pot,” he stated in 2005. “I feel it was only a lady’s title. I can not think about that I might write a tune about pot. I do not suppose there’s sufficient there to write down about [Laughs].”
Although it took years for “Mary Jane’s Final Dance” to take its remaining type, it clearly paid off. By the point Petty died in 2017, the band had performed the tune stay in live performance over 500 instances, and it is remained an essential touchstone of their catalog.
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Gallery Credit score: Allison Rapp
