Music Review: Bryan Adams "Summer of 69"

Bryan Adams

Summer of 69

Album: Reckless Year:

1985

(Originally posted March 1, 2013)

Bryan Adams remembers his first love in the nostaglic “Summer of 69.”

An inquiring guitar open the single, setting a fond tone. It was June 16, 1969 and the first week of summer vacation. He’d been eyeing a guitar at the music shop and finally had earned enough money to buy it. Every chance he got, he would strum it, creating half started songs in his bedroom. Eventually, he and his friends decided to form a band. They would practice in Jody’s garage until their throats were sore. The band lasted only for a couple years after they graduated from high school. Jimmy, the drummer, was the first to leave. He had a gotten a full-time job and didn’t have time for it anymore. Jody, the lead singer, got married to his high school sweetheart and moved out of the neighborhood. After Jody left, the band broke up. At the time, he thought they would become famous. He sees now that life would have interfered no matter what happened. The days were endless back then, full of possibility. Hanging out with his friends and playing cover songs of their favorite bands is usually the first thing he thinks of when he’s sitting his cubicle at work, working on a report. (“I got my first real six-string/Bought it at the five-and-dime/Played it 'til my fingers bled/It was the summer of 69/Me and some guys from school/Had a band and we tried real hard/Jimmy quit and Jody got married/I shoulda known we'd never get far/Oh when I look back now/That summer seemed to last forever/And if I had the choice/Yeah, I'd always wanna be there/Those were the best days of my life.”)

He continues there is nothing he can do about it now. Everything is a memory. The girlfriend he dated that summer was his first love and the one he’ll always remember. After practice, he and his friends would go the drive-in to see a movie. While he was there, he would see a pretty, brunette girl at the concession stand. For two weeks straight, he would stand in line just to stare at her and then buy popcorn to have the chance to talk to her. He finally summoned the courage to ask her out and they spent every free moment they had together. (“Ain't no use in complainin'/When you got a job to do/Spent my evenin's down at the drive-in/And that's when I met you yeah.”)

    In the chorus, he would drop her off at her parents’ house and they would kiss each other goodnight. He can still hear her whispering to him that it was more than a summer romance. They would keep in touch and be together again someday. Time was abstract then yet he could still feel the urgency of the private moments they shared. No other woman has been able to get to him like her. (“Standin' on your mama's porch/You told me that you'd wait forever/Oh and when you held my hand/I knew that it was now or never/Those were the best days of my life/Back in the summer of 69”)

      In the bridge, he says they took the time they had for granted. They were seventeen and full of energy. Life was still new with an uncertain future. The ending was always there in the background but he couldn’t see it back then. (“Man we were killin' time/We were young and restless/We needed to unwind/ I guess nothin' can last forever, forever, no.”)

     He’s 37 now and married. He drives down his old neighborhood and sees rows of new subdivisions. There’s a mall where some farmland used to be. The drive-in is closed and the screen has been taken down. Every once in a while, when his wife has gone grocery shopping with the kids, he takes the guitar out of the basement and plays the songs he wrote his girlfriend back then. He thinks of what happened to her and what he could’ve done different. (“And now the times are changin'/Look at everything that's come and gone/Sometimes when I play that old six-string/I think about you, wonder what went wrong.”)

        The chorus is sung again to end the single. Adams’ musing, surveying vocals have a hint of bitterness to them. He’s become disillusioned over the years and his life didn’t turn out the way he thought it would. The last time he remembers being truly happy when was the summer after graduation. Getting married and a job seemed like it was something he had to do.

         The speculative “Summer of 69” grieves for the past, holding onto the memories with a firm grip.

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