The Summer of 69ing

By David Cookson

On a recent trip to Ireland I realized something - they love Brian Adams there. I can’t figure out why, but they do. His songs, especially ‘Summer of 69,’ are played constantly up against classic, indy and even the pop-excessive euro pop that tends to dominate the airwaves.

There’s no accounting for taste, that’s for sure, and my musical taste is incredibly un-evolved when compared with many of my more purist or even fetishistic friends’. I can also relate to liking bad music. I have several favorites I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to divulge.

Still, I find this unabashed ‘Summer of 69’ thing extremely disturbing and here’s why: beyond the utterly mundane and pathetic nostalgia of the song, I was pretty sure Brian Adams couldn’t have been more than an adolescent in 1969. And I’d imagine, most who revel in it, revel in their own fading, time-bloated coolness in that year.

Now I know that a lot of songs are about something more fundamental and frequently not autobiographical, still this song seems incredibly disingenuous and pandering. After hearing it several times in a day on different stations while dodging oncoming cars on country roads in Connemara, Tess suggested the completely plausible explanation that it was probably written by someone else. Prince was her best guess. I liked that. I think it satisfied me until a rambling conversation with Pat on my return that started with T’ai Chi, ran headlong back into Brian Adams all over again.

This prompted us to do some investigating. First, Brian Adams was nine in the summer of 1969 and most certainly a sexual novice. The song was co-written with Jim Vallance in 1984 (he also wrote the Aerosmith hit ‘Ragdoll’). The co writers have a divergent opinion as to the lyrical meaning of the song. In a 2008 interview with thecelebritycafe.com, Adams said:

"I think 'Summer of '69' — I think it's timeless because it's about making love in the summertime. There is a slight misconception it's about a year, but it's not. '69' has nothing to do about a year, it has to do with a sexual position... At the end of the song the lyric says that it's me and my baby in a 69. You'd have to be pretty thick in the ears if you couldn't get that lyric".

If there was even an ounce of irony in this it wouldn’t have been enough to make me like the drively ditty or Adams, but it may have been enough to make me appreciate his flip or self-deprecating humor. No such luck.

Vallance, in a more conventional interpretation of the song, says the title is a reference to a formative year and that he remembers Adams relating to it that way too citing the film ‘Summer of ‘42’ as an example.

"I wish this little "controversy" would just go away. First of all, when Bryan and I were writing the song, it was originally called "Best Days Of My Life". The words "summer of '69" only appeared once, right after "played it 'til my fingers bled". That was it! The song really was about the summer of 1969! It took us a week or two to fine-tune the lyric. At some point we realized that "Summer Of '69" was a better title, so we literally "shoe-horned" that phrase into a few more places in the song. At no time do I recall discussing sexual innuendo with Bryan ' except for one little thing. When we recorded the demo in my basement, towards the end of the song Bryan sang a little naughty bit: "me and my baby in a '69". We had a laugh about it at the time, and Bryan decided to keep it when he did the final recording a month or two later. Nobody seemed to notice, and that was the end of it until a few years ago when Bryan started introducing the song in concert by saying, "This song has nothing to do with the year 1969". The audience reaction was predictable. Let me qualify this by saying I don't pretend to speak for Bryan. Two of us wrote the song. Maybe he was thinking about something completely different ... but I was thinking about that amazing summer when I turned 17. There were brand new vinyl albums released by The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Kinks, Janis Joplin, The Band. It was awesome and I'll never forget it. Bryan Adams is a great writer, a great singer, and a great friend. He's entitled to his recollections as to what inspired the song "Summer Of '69". My recollections just happen to be different than his."

So it’s either a nostalgic, self-congratulatory song of coolness pandering to a scion of the Big Chill set, or it’s just a juvenile sex song about 69ing the summer away with a girlfriend in a year that doesn’t really matter. Neither is appealing.

It’s not difficult to figure out that Adams was probably trying to make a safe song/shit-hit a little more dangerous live and now either prefers to continue the charade or has just come to believe it’s really true.

It doesn’t matter which it is. It still sucks.