

Longtime Petty and Chili Peppers producer Rick Rubin produced both songs. In 2006, a US radio station claimed that Red Hot Chili Peppers hit single, " Dani California" had plagiarized "Mary Jane's Last Dance", even calling for Petty to sue the band. US Hot Rock & Alternative Songs ( Billboard) I'd probably keep her for a day or two, let's go see if she would do it." You can make a joke about it, but you have to act a bit to be dead. I said, "She's got to look really good, or why would he keep her around after she's dead?" I thought, "Kim Basinger would be good. The cave is located at Leo Carrillo State Park, California, where many movies and television shows were filmed. At the end of the video, Basinger, who is seen floating in the water, opens her eyes.ĭuring the final scenes of the video, Petty is seen carrying Basinger through a cave before placing her in the water. Later, Petty is shown carrying her to a rocky shore and gently releasing her into the sea.
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The plot also has similarities with the French movie Cold Moon, itself inspired by a Charles Bukowski short story ("The Copulating Mermaid of Venice" ).
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A scene in the video featuring the dead woman wearing a wedding dress in a room full of wax candles is loosely based on a passage from the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations. He then acts as if she were alive, putting her in front of a television set and then dressing her as a bride, sitting her at the dinner table and dancing with her. The music video, which won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video in 1994, features Petty as a morgue assistant who takes home a beautiful dead woman (played by Kim Basinger ).

JSTOR ( September 2013) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Mary Jane's Last Dance" – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification. Howie Epstein – bass guitar, backing vocals.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." In the rest of the interview, Campbell said that the song was originally titled "Indiana Girl" and the first chorus "Hey, Indiana Girl, go out and find the world." He added that Petty "just couldn't get behind singing about 'hey, Indiana Girl,'" so he changed the chorus a week later. My take on it is it can be whatever you want it to be. Asked if the song was about drugs, Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell said, "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.
