I-95 Drive Home Featured Artist [VIDEO]

Tonight’s featured artist’s song was the biggest for a band of a friend and is shrouded by the mystery around the identity of the girl and the phone number  Truth is  she was actually thought up by this artist, according to him,  while sitting in his back yard under a tree. Any guesses?

Let’s start with our mysterious girl by the name of Jenny, whose number as you might have guesses is 867-5309.  The songs tell about a guy who finds this number and wants to call but never works up the courage to do so.  Written by Alex Call a friend of Jim Keller of Tommy Tutone, according to songfacts.com, Alex says he came up with it while sitting under a plum tree. He told them: "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."