- This song is about a guy who gets Jenny’s number off the bathroom wall. He can’t work up the courage to call her, but thinks he can have her if he ever does.Songwriter Alex Call came up with it while sitting under a plum tree. He told Songfacts the story: “Despite all the mythology to the contrary, I actually just came up with the ‘Jenny,’ and the telephone number and the music and all that just sitting in my backyard. There was no Jenny. I don’t know where the number came from, I was just trying to write a 4-chord rock song and it just kind of came out.This was back in 1981 when I wrote it, and I had at the time a little squirrel-powered 4-track in this industrial yard in California, and I went up there and made a tape of it. I had the guitar lick, I had the name and number, but I didn’t know what the song was about. This buddy of mine, Jim Keller, who’s the co-writer, was the lead guitar player in Tommy Tutone. He stopped by that afternoon and he said, ‘Al, it’s a girl’s number on a bathroom wall,’ and we had a good laugh. I said, ‘That’s exactly right, that’s exactly what it is.’I had the thing recorded. I had the name and number, and they were in the same spots, ‘Jenny… 867-5309.’ I had all that going, but I had a blind spot in the creative process, I didn’t realize it would be a girl’s number on a bathroom wall. When Jim showed up, we wrote the verses in 15 or 20 minutes, they were just obvious. It was just a fun thing, we never thought it would get cut. In fact, even after Tommy Tutone made the record and ‘867-5309’ got on the air, it really didn’t have a lot of promotion to begin with, but it was one of those songs that got a lot of requests and stayed on the charts. It was on the charts for 40 weeks.”
- Tommy Tutone is the name of the band, not the lead singer. The group, led by Tommy Heath and Jim Keller, originally called itself Tommy and the Two-Tones. They had a minor hit two years earlier with “Angel Say No,” which went to #38 in the US.
- When a phone number is needed for a movie or TV show, they usually use a fake one starting with 555, which doesn’t exist in the real world. The group didn’t want to use a fake number for this because it wouldn’t sound right. It made the song a lot more intriguing, but made life very difficult for people who had that number. Many of them had to change it because they were flooded with prank calls, usually kids asking for “Jenny.”The next time a real phone number was broadcast so prominently was the 2003 movie Bruce Almighty, which starred Jim Carrey as a regular guy who took the powers of God. When God wanted to contact Carrey, he would page him, and the number that displayed was a real phone number. For the DVD, it was changed to a generic 555 number.
- For years, Tommy Tutone has used a story that there was a Jenny and she ran a recording studio. They have also said it was inspired by a real girl who band member Tommy Heath met in a nightclub and 867-5309 was the phone number of her parents. None of this is true, but it got them a lot more media attention, since it made a better story.
- This song had a profound effect on anyone who happened to have that phone number, as well as many girls named Jenny. Says Call: “I think a high school in Peduca or Louisville, or somewhere in Kentucky had the number, and they got 50,000 calls in a week – ‘Is Jenny there?’ A guy came up to me at one of my gigs – his family is from Florida and they had the number. They loved it, and as they’ve all grown up – it’s a big extended family, they all have on their cell phones 5309, no matter what the prefix is, so all you need to know is what cousin Bob’s prefix is. A lot of women have told me they use the name and number as a brush off, which I think is really great. A guy wakes up with a hangover, he’s been obnoxious to some girl in a bar last night, he opens up a folded piece of paper and it’s ‘Jenny – 867-5309.’ A lot of people who had it were really pissed off about it. I’ve met a few Jennys who’ve said, “Oh, you’re the guy who ruined my high school years.” Most Jennys are happy to have the song.”
