On a lark he asked if 867-5309 was available. Potter, who was living in Weehawken, N.J., and working as a disc jockey for weddings and parties, needed a phone number for his business. In 2004 a New Jersey disc jockey named Spencer Potter requested 867-5309 as his phone number and got it, then he also got first-hand experience with the maxim of being careful what you wish for:
Some ask for Jenny, some play the Tommy Tutone song on the girls’ answering machine, and some males even leave their phone numbers in hopes of finding a date. Unfortunately, the problem is not getting better, and people just keep calling. “It’s as if they are really expecting Jenny to pick up the phone,” Clemente said. The girls receive an average of five “stupid” messages every day on their machine, in addition to a slew of hang-ups. “It’s the worst number to have in the world.” The biggest complaints about the new phone exchange come from Nina Clemente ’03 and Jahanaz Mirza ’03, the two students with the telephone number 867-5309. An article from Brown University’s newspaper explained what happened when the school added an 867 exchange in the fall of 1999: The joke quickly became old for those who had the number and weren’t interested in talking to horny teens.Įven decades after the song dropped off the charts, phone customers unfortunate enough to have been assigned an 867-5309 number were still getting plenty of crank calls. Its relentless chorus, “Jenny don’t change your number - eight six seven five three oh nah-eeh-ah-ine,” pounded the phone number into the minds of teenagers everywhere, resulting in waves of kids dialing it and asking for Jenny. “Jenny (867-5309)” caused nothing but grief for telephone customers unlucky enough to have that combination of numbers as their own. Though not explicitly stated in the lyrics, it’s strongly implied the name and number were harvested from a bathroom wall, which also implies “Jenny” is a gal of easy virtue and can be had for the price of a phone call:
In “Jenny,” a young man laments not having the courage to dial a number found scribbled on a wall but finds some comfort in the notion that he can someday call this girl and sweep her off her feet.
If you are under 65 and have ever turned on a radio, for better or worse you know the rest.
A friend, Jim Keller, who was in a band called Tommy Tutone, helped him figure out what the song was about and they had fun with it, assuming it would never see the light of day. He came up with four chords (E minor/C/G/A), seven numbers and one name. Our story begins one spring morning in 1981, when a musician named Alex Call was sitting under a plum tree in Marin County, Calif., hoping to write something that sounded like the Kinks or the early Stones. The 1980s produced a number of one-hit wonders in the pop music areana, including the infamous Tommy Tutone and their 1982 hit song “867-5309 / Jenny.” This San Francisco band led by Tommy Heath and Jim Keller didn’t make much of a mark on the music world, and they likely wouldn’t be much remembered now were it not for the furor raised by their use of a particular phone number in their one memorable song, the idea for which came from Keller’s musician friend, Alex Call:
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