Mary Jane’s Last Dance (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) Guitar Lesson with TAB

Mary Jane's Last Dance + TAB
In this guitar lesson, after a chord analysis, there's TAB combining the various parts into one that'll work in a band if you're the only guitarist!


Mary Jane’s Last Dance | TAB


To play along with Tom and the boys, you need to first tune your guitar up 10 Hz, use my online guitar tuner to achieve this, and set it to 450 Hz.

Start off by playing this progression for the intro and verse, using open-position chords.

||: Am G | D Am :||

Mary Jane’s Last Dance chorus chords start on chord VI, like this:

||: Em | Em7 | A (A6) | 1. A (A6) :|| 2. G |

The A6 in brackets indicates that when playing licks over this chord, use the 6th interval, for a full scale, try the A Major Pentatonic.

After playing along for a while, you’ll realize that there are little intricate flourishes that Tom and Mike play and since there are two guitars, they overlap. This is going to be a problem if you’re the only guitar player in the band.

What you’ll have to do is create one guitar part that sums the two guitars up, here’s what I came up with.

Mary Jane's Last Dance TAB, main riff for one guitar.

Start with learning this, then vary it by playing less during the verse, for example, don’t play the Am7. Also, the initial Am is often not hammered on.

Still, start with the TAB above, once you get into it, you’ll discover lots of little variation in that chord riff.

What I found was that after getting the verse to feel right, the chorus part was super easy. Try it!



Mary Jane’s Last Dance TAB | Related Pages


Mary Jane’s Last Dance | Chords + Lyrics

Mary Jane's Last Dance chords lesson.

Learn how to play Mary Jane’s Last Dance by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, a chord chart, and the original recording.

Am G |
She grew up in an Indiana town…


Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics

When you can play the TAB for Mary Jane's Last Dance, try these five tunes from the songbook.


Tom Petty tunes

Tom Petty wrote Mary Jane's Last Dance.

Tom Petty released most of his albums with his band The Heartbreakers although some solo material appeared as well.

His best-known tunes include American Girl, Free Fallin’, Learning To Fly, Into The Great Wide Open, Don’t Come Around Here No More, and I Won’t Back Down.


Tom Petty on the web

Listen to Tom Petty on Spotify.


About me | Dan Lundholm

Dan Lundholm wrote this guitar lesson and TAB for Mary Jane's Last Dance.

This guitar lesson by Dan Lundholm features TAB and covers Mary Jane’s Last Dance. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.

Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.


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