Eigenlijk was ‘Greatest Hits’, de verzamelaar van Tom Petty and Heartbreakers uit 1993 een verplicht nummer: Petty wilde weg bij label MCA, maar moest volgens zijn platencontract nog een album afleveren.
MCA wilde de groep wel laten gaan in ruil voor een album met de grootste hits, maar dan wel met twee nieuwe nummers erop.
Petty had geen enkele inspiratie voor die verplichte nummers, maar had nog een stel niet uitgebrachte songs en die gaf hij producer Rick Rubin met de vraag of daar misschien nog wat tussen zat.
Rubin hoorde tussen veel middelmatigs ook de riff die ‘Last Dance with Mary Jane’ wereldberoemd zou maken en belde Petty op met een opmerking in deze trant, zo vertelde hij later: ‘Hey, this whole phrase is really good. You may want to write this song.’
Heartbreakers-gitarist Mike Campbell vertelde al in 2003 in heel fragmentarisch een interview met SongFacts de rest van het onwaarschijnlijke verhaal:
‘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’ and the first chorus was “Hey, Indiana Girl, go out and find the world”.
We liked the song, 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 he 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.
My take on it is it can be whatever you want it to be. A lot of people think it’s a drug reference, and if that’s what you want to think, it very well could be, but it could also just be a goodbye love song.’
Aan Petty’s befaamde gitaarsolo aan het eind leverde Campbell ook een bijdrage:
‘We did all the overdubs at my house, I don’t know if I forced him or suggested, I probably suggested he play the part at the end, he doubles the lick. At the end there’s that little solo he does, I pushed him to do that.
I said, ‘you go ahead and play a fuzzy sort of guitar solo,’ because we had this good sound up and he just put the rhythm down. He actually played a nice little bit at the end of that.
An interesting thing about that record, we did a rough mix at my house, I guess the same day we did the last overdubs, that guitar and a few little bits. Then 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.’
Eerdere berichten over Tom Petty met en zonder zijn Heartbreakers vind je in de categorieën nieuws, aangekondigde albums, roostmuziek op radio, tv en internet, Dossier: Politiek en popmuziek en Dossier: ook al dood….