[2] The sessions would prove to be the last to include drummer Stan Lynch before his eventual departure in 1994.

He added that Petty "just couldn't get behind singing about 'hey, Indiana Girl,'" so he changed the chorus a week later.

[6] The music video for the song features Petty as a morgue assistant[7] who takes home a beautiful dead woman (played by Kim Basinger).

[8][9][10] He then acts as if she were alive, putting her in front of a television set and then dressing her as a bride,[11] sitting her at the dinner table and dancing with her.

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.

[13] Later, Petty is shown carrying her to a rocky shore (a scene filmed at Leo Carrillo State Park in California) and gently releasing her into the sea.

It won all those awards, and the kids love it—even today!I did the "Mary Jane's Last Dance" video [in 1993] for one reason: Tom Petty.

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.

Petty responded by saying that he was not going to sue the Chili Peppers and felt that there was no negative intent and that a lot of rock and roll songs sound alike.