Author: Ergo, the Ogre

It’s time for Song Lyric Sunday! This week, our host Jim Adams, has asked us to choose a song from a solo album made after an artist left a band. So, I chose Boys of Summer by Don Henley. The album is Building the Perfect Beast.

The Story

“The Boys of Summer” is a song released in 1984 by Eagles vocalist and drummer Don Henley, with lyrics written by Henley and music composed by Mike Campbell. The song is about is about looking back on a past relationship and wanting your ex back – wanting to return to what you had. The first verse depicts how the writer is left behind. His ex has moved on, but he hasn’t and still hangs onto hope:

But babe, I’m gonna get you back
I’m gonna show you what I’m made of
Those days are gone forever
I should just let them go but…

At first, he is hanging onto hope but then he realizes that he must let go. The “boys of summer” could refer to the boys his ex is now seeing, and how they are just summer flings, while he is in it for the long haul.

Don Henley told the NME that he really did see a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. Said the Eagles frontman: “I was driving down the San Diego freeway and got passed by a $21,000 Cadillac Seville, the status symbol of the right-wing upper-middle-class American bourgeoisie – all the guys with the blue blazers with the crests and the grey pants – and there was this Grateful Dead ‘Deadhead’ bumper sticker on it!”

The opening lines, “Nobody on the roads, nobody on the beach,” refer to the California coast as summer turns into fall. It becomes a much quieter place when the weather gets cold.

• The title comes from a 1972 baseball book by Roger Kahn called Boys of Summer, which is about The Brooklyn Dodgers, who broke the hearts of their fans when they moved to Los Angeles. That book got its title from a Dylan Thomas poem called I See the Boys of Summer, which was published in 1939.
• The music was written by Mike Campbell, who was Tom Petty’s right-hand man. The two were together in Mudcrutch, then in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Campbell co-wrote a lot of songs with Petty, including “Refugee,” “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,” and “Don’t Do Me Like That.” Campbell offered his track for “The Boys of Summer” to Petty, but he turned it down and the song went to Henley, who wrote the lyrics. Campbell played guitar on the song and also produced it.
• In a Songfacts interview with Mike Campbell, he talked about recording this song: “I used to have a 4-track machine in my house and I had just gotten a drum machine – it’s when the Roger Linn drum machine first came out. I was playing around with that and came up with a rhythm. I made the demo on my little 4-track and I showed it to Tom, but at the time, the record we were working on, Southern Accents, it didn’t really sound like anything that would fit into the album. The producer we were working with at the time, Jimmy Iovine, called me up one day and said he had spoken to Don, who I’d never met, and said that he was looking for songs. He gave me his number, and I called him up and played it for him and he called me the next day and said he put it on in his car and had written these words and wanted to record it. That’s kind of how it started. Basically, he wanted to recreate the demo as close as we could. We ended up changing the key for the voice. We actually cut it in one key, did the whole record with overdubs and everything, and then he decided to change the key like a half step up or something, we had to do the whole record again, but it turned out pretty good.”
• MTV exposure from this song’s video raised Henley’s profile but cost him a degree of anonymity. With the Eagles, he was tucked away behind a drum kit, and rarely on TV. Only one video was made for his first album – that was “Johnny Can’t Read,” and MTV rarely played it. Once “The Boys of Summer” got in hot rotation, Henley found himself suddenly recognizable, which often made him uncomfortable.
• The music video to “The Boys of Summer” is a French New Wave-influenced piece directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Shot in black-and-white, it shows the main character of the song at three different stages of life (as a young boy, a young adult and middle-aged), in each case reminiscing about a past relationship. Interspersed with these scenes are segments of Henley singing the words of the song while riding in a pickup truck. The boy is dressed in a style typical of the 1950s, the teenage lovers are dressed in a style characteristic of the early 1960s while the middle-aged man is dressed in the style of the 1980s. As a boy in the 1950s, the protagonist practices playing the drums, suggesting musical aspirations; as a teenager in the 1960s, he walks down a beach with his girlfriend whom he kisses passionately; and as a middle-aged man in the 1980s, he appears to be an executive of some sort who is comfortable, but unhappy in life as he sits at his desk remembering his youth. The young boy in the video is played by a seven-year-old Josh Paul,^[21] while the girl is played by Audie England. Interspersed with these scenes are segments of Henley articulating the words of the song while driving in a convertible. At its conclusion, the video uses the post-modern concept of exposing its own workings, as with a wry expression Henley drives the car away from a rear projection screen.
• The video won the Video of the Year at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards (leading Henley to comment at the Awards the following year that he had won for “riding around in the back of a pickup”).^[22] It also won that year’s awards for Best Direction, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography. The Best Direction award was presented to Mondino by Henley’s then-former Eagles bandmate Glenn Frey.

The Lyrics

Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer's out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets
The sun goes down alone
I'm driving by your house
Though I know you're not home

Chorus]
But I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got your hair combed back and your
Sunglasses on, baby
I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

[Verse 2]
I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you made me crazy?
Remember how I made you scream?
Now I don't understand what happened to our love
But babe, I'm gonna get you back
I'm gonna show you what I'm made of

[Chorus]
I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
I see you walking real slow and
Smiling at everyone
I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

[Instrumental Break]

[Verse 3]
Out on the road today
I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said
“Don't look back, you can never look back”
I thought I knew what love was, what did I know?
Those days are gone forever
I should just let them go but...

[Chorus]
I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got the top pulled down and the
Radio on, baby
I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got your hair slicked back and those
Wayfarers on, baby
I can tell you, my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

The Video