Rick Springfield was featured in an episode of AXS TV’s “Mixtape”and during the episode he discusses the origins of his hit “Jessie’s Girl,” which almost had a completely different name.
“I started going to this stained-glass place in Pasadena,” he shares. “And the reason I kept going was because there was this girl there that was burning hot. And she had a boyfriend, his name was Gary, and she didn’t want anything to do with me. So I took my sexual angst home and wrote a song about her.”
So Springfield first attempted to write “Gary’s Girl,” but didn’t like how it sounded so he changed it to “Randy’s Girl.”"I’d actually started writing ‘Randy is a friend,’ and halfway through that line I thought, ‘You know what? No,’” he offers. “So this name Jessie popped up in my head. I loved it. I went full tilt on the writing and recording thing.”