Throughout the song, he talks of “killing the pain” with Mary Jane and using her to leave his tired old town for a while. I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again While the lyrics seem to point to a lover in Petty’s life, Benyo grew up in Gainesville, Florida in the same neighborhood as Petty, making the lyrics she moved down here at the age of eighteen…I was introduced and we both started groovin‘ a bit of a stretch.Īnother, and more widely accepted meaning, is that “Mary Jane” is used as slang for marijuana, telling the story of how Petty was introduced to the drug by personifying it as a young woman. She said, “I dig you, baby, but I got to keep movin’ on, keep movin’ on I was introduced and we both started groovin’
Though the pair officially got divorced three years after the song was released, in Petty: The Biography, author Warren Zanes revealed that Benyo would call Petty “regularly, obsessively, and threaten suicide if he said he was hanging up.” While he was still alive, Petty himself admitted the couple fought often and even credited his former wife for keeping their family together while on the road. The first sees the group singing goodbye to Petty’s first wife Jane Benyo. Though Petty never explained exactly what the meaning of the song was about, two main interpretations have taken precedence. 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.” 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.
He continued, “Tom was singing the chorus, and he decided he just couldn’t get behind singing about Hey, Indiana Girl. “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.” In an interview with Songfacts, Campbell explained how the song came together. The basic riff for the song had been swirling around in writing sessions for a while but had never found a permanent home. Written in the garage of Heartbreakers’ guitarist Mike Campbell, the track was originally titled “Indiana Girl” by Petty– a reference that stuck around in the song’s opening lines, She grew up in an Indiana town…she grew up tall and she grew up right / With them Indiana boys on an Indiana night. It also topped the Rock Album chart for two straight weeks. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming his first top 20 hit of the 1990s. The song was first released as part of Petty’s Greatest Hits album in 1993. The sessions were the last to include drummer Stan Lynch before his eventual departure in 1994. “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” was recorded by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in 1993, while he was working on his second solo studio album, Wildflowers.
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