Dave's Song of the Day
Jessie’s Girl – Rick Springfield
Sunday song of the day: Today’s song was inspired by a hot girl and a football jersey.
It’s hard to say if Rick Springfield is remembered more for his acting or his musical career. Before he became a star, he had recorded the album
Working Class Dog, but it had not yet been released. Neither he nor his management had hopes of it doing well once released, so Springfield decided to concentrate on acting. Then he landed a role on the popular network soap opera
General Hospital in 1981. He quickly became a heartthrob for the show’s female viewers, and to capitalize on this newfound celebrity, RCA Records released the
Working Class Dog album.
The first single from the album made Springfield a rock star on top of his TV popularity. That song was
Jessie’s Girl, in which the singer told of his obsession with the girlfriend of one of his best friends.
Jessie’s Girl was a huge hit, making it to #1 on the
Billboard Hot 100, selling over a million copies of the single, and helping the album sell over three million copies. His records continued to sell well through the mid-1980s, with four straight Platinum albums and numerous Top 40 hits.
There has long been speculation on just who “Jessie’s girl” was. As Springfield later explained, the “Jessie” was not as close of a friend as the song implied, and while he did have an infatuation with the girlfriend, nothing ever came of it. As he tells it, “I don’t know her name. Actually, it was a brief relationship I had when I was making stained glass for a while. I was going to a stained-glass class in Pasadena, and I met this guy and his girlfriend. I was completely turned on to his girlfriend, but she was just not interested. So I had a lot of sexual angst, and I went home and wrote a song about it. Then about four months later I stopped going to the class and lost contact with them.”
He does remember that the guy’s name was Gary, but he changed it to
Jessie because it fit the song better. Also, Springfield was a fan of the Los Angeles Rams, and he got the name from their wide receiver Ron Jessie. “I was wearing his shirt that I had just picked up at a market that said Jessie on the back and it was spelt J-E-S-S-I-E which is a female. I meant to spell it J-E-S-S-E but the rest is kind of history.”
View: https://youtu.be/0Dpg9kkl7aw
Tomorrow: Learn how to hide your feelings