Before he began working on his new solo album Wildflowers, Tom Petty worked on a few new songs with his band The Heartbreakers. One of those songs was called “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.” The song ended up on the Greatest Hits package released in 1993, and when it was released as a single, it topped the Billboard Album Rock charts and hit number 14 on the Hot Singles Chart. You could say it was a pretty big hit. The song ended up being the final song for Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch. Keyboardist Benmont Tench tells us why drummer Stan Lynch looms large in the story of that song.
“I was told that Stan and Tom had just been jamming together and Tom had come up with that riff and Stan had locked into that rhythm. So Tom said, ‘Look, I think we can make a song out of this.’ We went in with Rick Rubin before the Wildflowers record was made. It was actually the last stuff we recorded with Stan and he went out with a bang. He’s astounding on that track. The groove on that track is really swampy and just so fine.”
The crazy fact about that story is that less than a year later, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain committed suicide, leaving Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl without a gig. So Tom asked Dave to play with them on Saturday Night Live, which he did, and it was glorious. After that gig, he turned down joining the Heartbreakers in order to concentrate on a new project that ended up becoming Foo Fighters.
