"867-5309": Almost 30 years later, still ringing off the hook

There have been many rock songs written about real women; Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe” was written for Joan Baez and Neil Sedaka’s “Oh Carol” was Carole King. But no “Jenny” inspired Tommy Tutone’s 1982 hit “867-5309 / Jenny.”

Tommy Tutone was a new wave band originally formed in the late 1970s by lead singer Tommy Heath and guitarist Jim Keller as Tommy and the Tu-tones. “867-5309 / Jenny” originated with songwriter Alex Call, who came up with the concept while sitting under a plum tree in his Mill Valley, California backyard.

There has been a lot of confusion about Jenny’s true identity. This has not been helped by Heath, who has admitted that he makes up different stories about “Jenny” each time he is asked. But Call has tried to make things clear.

“There was no Jenny,” Call said. “I don’t know where the number came from, I was just trying to write a 4-chord rock song and it came out.”

But Call got stuck. He had written the guitar riff; It even had Jenny’s name and number, but I didn’t know what the song was about. Enter Call’s friend Jim Keller, Tommy Tutone’s guitarist. Keller quickly identified the girl’s number as something you’d see scrawled on a bathroom wall. In twenty minutes, the two of them had the verses written.

Tommy Heath said that the secret of the success of the song is that it is like “control of the thought”.

“You’re repeating this over and over again,” Heath said. “It’s catchy and fun to do … once a day.”

But Tommy Tutone found it impossible to duplicate the song’s success. Nothing that came close to “867-5309 / Jenny.” Dissension grew among the band members and the original group broke up after three albums. However, the notoriety of the phone number has endured.

When “867-5309 / Jenny” made the Top 10, it caused headaches for anyone unlucky enough to have that phone number. And decades after the song’s release, there are still reports of people with that number getting calls from men who are gasping for air and waiting for a date with Jenny.

The phone companies seem to have caught up; today, 867-5309 is no longer a working number in many area code regions. But its scarcity and memorability have created a high demand from businesses for the number. 867-5309 has been offered on eBay for thousands of dollars; two plumbing companies fought in court for the right to use the number. In 2004, a disc jockey from New Jersey got the number. He thought it would be great for his music business, until the 30 crank calls a day he received convinced him to put the number and the business up for sale.

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