When songwriters want to pour their heart out about a lost love or a love they could never have, they often change the names to protect the innocent, for example The Hollies’ Carrie Anne was written about Marianne Faithfull after Allan Clarke briefly and secretly dated her and to keep it that way they changed it to Carrie Anne. It would have stayed a secret if Graham Nash hadn’t accidentally let it slip during a TV documentary in the 1990s. This week’s suggestion about Jessie’s Girl was not only not written about a guy called Jessie, the song’s writer and singer didn’t even know the name of the girl in question.
Rick Springfield was born in 1949 in a suburb of Sydney, Australia but his ancestry, on his mother’s side, are from the UK. When he was 14, he saw the Beatles live in Melbourne, but he was already taking guitar lessons, so it wasn’t seeing them that necessarily inspired his career path. In 1968, he was invited to join a band called Rockhouse and they were offered a stint in Vietnam to entertain Australian troops. When he returned to Australia, he joined a band called Zoot, but then left a couple of years later to pursue a solo career.
Springfield’s good looks opened a natural path into acting and he began that in the mid-70s when his then-girlfriend, Linda Blair, suggested it. There was a 10-year age gap between them, but he said, “Of all my former girlfriends, Blair is the only one I remain friends with.” This suggests he had quite a number of girlfriends, but not all necessarily at the same time.
Rick was already in his early 30s when he wrote Jessie’s Girl and he explained to Dave Ling at Classic Rock magazine the lead up to it, “As a child I was insecure, I had a problem with too much wanking. At school I was always girl-obsessed but unbelievably shy. I didn’t get a whole lot of satisfaction, so to speak. So, Jessie’s Girl was based on something that happened to me later on.”
Springfield had moved to California and to boost his finances, he enrolled in a stained glass-making class in Pasadena where he lived. One of the guys in his class, who he didn’t really know, was called Gary and he began dating a beautiful girl whom Rick took a shine to from afar. “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,” he told Songfacts. “Then about four months later I stopped going to the class and lost contact with them,” he continued. “The only thing I remember is his name was Gary, so I changed the name, because ‘Gary’ didn’t sing very well. But the whole thing is absolutely what I was feeling. He was getting it and I wasn’t, and it was really tearing me up. When asked how come Jessie? he replied, “It’s a name I spotted on the back of a softball shirt. I almost called the song Randy’s Girl,” he laughed. “I’m so glad I didn’t.”
The opening verse of the song is a complete lie, ‘Jessie is a friend, yeah, I know he’s been a good friend of mine, but lately something’s changed that ain’t hard to define. Jessie’s got himself a girl and I want to make her mine.’ but it sounds very believable. The riff came first and although it’s a pretty simple-sounding song it wasn’t easy to write. It took about two months, working on the guitar and piano. Neil [Giraldo – guitar and bass player] added a vibe to the song, but it was the producer, Keith Olsen, who convinced me to shorten a long guitar solo I’d played on the demo which was right out of the 70s.”
When the song was released in early 1981, it went to number six in Canada, 21 in New Zealand, 25 in Ireland and a disgraceful number 43 in the UK, it did, however, go to number one in Australia and the US which is where Rick now has dual nationality. In the States, it was atop the chart the week MTV launched.
It has appeared in a handful of films including, Boogie Nights (1997), Keeping the Faith (2000), The Year of Getting to Know Us (2008) and Couples Retreat (2009). Just one year after its release a cover version emerged by the Chipmunks and prompted Rick to comment, “I loved that they changed the lyric to ‘I wish that I had Jessie’s squirrel.'”
In 2013, at the Sound City project, Springfield joined the Foo Fighters on stage for a collaboration of the song. The Foo’s lead singer, Dave Grohl, said of it, “It was like a bucket-list moment,” which prompted Springfield to reply, “Dave’s a great guy, a love of music drips from everything he does.”
The one sad thing is that, all these years on, Jessie’s girl is still unknown. Springfield was once invited into the Oprah Winfrey show and even her research team drew a blank.
In that interview with Dave Ling, he concluded, “Nobody ever came up to me and professed to be her, and I guess that’s kind of a shame. I don’t know if she’s aware that Jessie’s Girl is about her. In later years she may have read that Gary was part of the song’s background, seen the reference to stained glass and put two and two together, but it’s more than likely that she doesn’t know. Hey, I got a pretty good song out of it so I’m okay with the deal.”