Bryan Adams: rhythm guitar, vocals
Keith Scott: lead guitar
Dave Taylor: bass
Pat Steward: drums
Jim Vallance: percussion

Produced by Bob Clearmountain and Bryan Adams.  Associate producer, Jim Vallance. Recorded by Bob Clearmountain, March/April 1984, at Little Mountain Sound, Vancouver. Mixed by Bob Clearmountain, September 1984, at the Power Station, New York.

Also recorded by Bowling For Soup, DJ Otzi, Emily's Toybox, Janet Theory, Jive Bunny, MxPx, WC Experience

Bryan and I wrote "Summer Of '69" in my basement studio in January 1984.

During the next month or two the song went through a number of changes ... and we still weren't convinced it was strong enough to include on Bryan's "Reckless" album.

I don't want to take undue credit, because it really was a 50-50 collaboration, but here's how I remember the writing of "Summer Of '69", line by line ...

I got my first real six string

There's a line in the Foreigner song "Juke Box Hero" where Lou Gramm sings "I bought a BEAT UP six-string in a second-hand store". The first few times I heard it on the radio, I thought he was singing "I bought a REAL six string".

Bought it at the Five and Dime

When I was growing up in the 1950's and 60's there were shops called "Five and Dime" where you could (supposedly) buy anything for five or ten cents, which wasn't always true. Now they call them "Dollar Stores"! 

Neither Bryan or I ever bought a guitar at the "Five and Dime".   I got my first guitar from my parents, Christmas 1965, when I was thirteen. Bryan bought his first guitar at a pawn shop in 1972, age twelve.

Anyone who's ever played a guitar knows the strings can be brutal on your fingers when you're first learning. I played my new guitar all Christmas day and half that night. I remember my dad coming down about one o'clock in the morning, telling me to get to sleep because I was keeping everybody up. I actually played it 'til my fingers bled.

It was the summer of '69

This is where the phrase "summer of '69" appears for the first time ... quite casually, as line #4 of the first verse.  It's interesting to note: in our first draft of the song, the lyric "summer of '69" appears only once, never to be repeated.  It was just another line in the song. In fact, we originally planned on calling the song "Best Days Of My Life".

In December 1977, a few weeks before Bryan and I first met, Jackson Browne released the song "Running On Empty" (from the album of the same name).  For a number of years afterwards that song spent a lot of time on my turntable, and Bryan's as well. 

For me, there are two lines in "Running On Empty" that resonate ... "In '65 I was seventeen" and "In '69 I was twenty-one".  In my case it was a combination of the two (in '69 I was seventeen). 

I'm certain that Jackson Browne's lyric planted the idea, and subconsciously influenced our decision to use the year "1969" as the basis for a lyric. Bryan recalls that the film "Summer of '42" had an influence as well, but I don't remember discussing that film with him while we were writing the song.

Bryan's first band "Shock" played Top-40 songs in Vancouver night clubs ... it was 1976 and Bryan was 16. My first band, "The Tremelones", was formed in 1965 in Vanderhoof, with some "guys from school". I was 13 and the other fellows were a bit older, maybe 16 or 17.

Wayne Deorksen and Gordy Keith played guitar, and I played drums. Gordy's friend Dave Snell played bass with us for a while.  Dave ordered a Silvertone bass guitar and amplifier from the Sears catalogue, but as I recall, he only played one or two dances with us.

We changed our name to The Fourmost, and my neighbour Chuck Davies joined the band for a while too. Chuck was really old (twenty-one), plus he'd recenlty travelled to England, so he had instant credibility!

Chuck had an electric guitar with a silver sparkle finish -- a marvelous thing to behold -- and a Fender amp. None of us could sing, so we mostly played instrumentals by The Ventures and The Shadows. "Walk Don't Run" and "Wipeout" were a couple of our favourites.

Before joining The Tremelones or The Fourmost, I'd spend most lunch-hours in the school music room with "Woody" Whitmore.  Woody is the first musician I ever played with, and I have fond memories of those mid-day "jam sessions". Lacking a drum kit of my own, I'd pound on the school's snare drum and cymbal while Woody played his electric guitar through a small amp. 

When the music room was occupied, Woody and I would use the school library, which was closed for the lunch hour.  But our "rock music" annoyed my Grade 8 French teacher, Mrs. Morrissey, whose classroom was directly across the hallway from the library.  In a futile attempt to enlist my parents and shut me down, Mrs. Morrissey put a nasty comment in my report card:  "Jim's mind is never on the job.  He can't just drum his life away".

It didn't work. Fourty years later I still play the drums!  Loudly!

I remember Bryan and I going back and forth on this line. I suggested "Woody quit and Gordy got married", like the guys in my high-school band, but Bryan thought "Jimmy" and "Jody" sounded better, and I had to agree.

I'm not sure where Bryan got the name "Jimmy" -- we didn't discuss it at the time -- but in a recent interview he said it was a reference to one of his early drummers.

"Jody" is definitely Bryan's sound-man, Jody Perpik, who got married around the time we were working on the song. Jody and his wife appear in Bryan's video for "Summer Of '69", driving away with a "Just Married" sign on the back of their car.

I shoulda known we'd never get far

When we were writing "Summer Of '69" I suggested the lyric "I got a job at the railway yard", because that's what Chuck had done: he got a job loading two-by-fours into box-cars at the Vanderhoof railway yard ... terribly hard work!

The "railway" lyric survived the first three "rough drafts" of the song ... but then Bryan's radar went up. He thought the lyric sounded too much like Bruce Springsteen, so we scrapped it.  Maybe he was right, but I still prefer "I got a job at the railway yard".

Oh, when I look back now that summer seemed to last forever

1969 was a great year -- especially the music ...

And if I had the choice I'd always want to be there

Imagine ... brand new vinyl releases from The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, The Band and Led Zepplin!

Those were the best days of my life

As I mentioned, this was originally going to be our title, rather than "Summer Of '69".  In our first draft of the song the phrase "best days of my life" appears seven times, while the phrase "summer of '69" appears only once. Several months later, on the final recorded version of the song, "best days of my life" has been demoted, appearing only three times, while the phrase "summer of '69" appears five times ... a deliberate change of emphasis.

Ain't no use in complainin' when you got a job to do

I was thinking about Chuck and his job at the railway yard.  Bryan was probably thinking about his brief stint as a dish-washer at the Tomahawk Restaurant in North Vancouver.

Spent my evenin's down at the drive-in, and that's when I met you

There aren't many drive-ins left, and I wonder if kids these days even know what they are? When I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s there were two kinds of drive-ins: the big outdoor movie screens, and the drive-in restaurants that served burgers and soda while you sat in your car, like in the film "American Graffiti". They're pretty much gone now, but I have fond memories of going to both kinds of drive-ins as a kid.  That sentiment popped up in the song.

In 1969 I was living in Terrace, another small town in northern British Columbia. I was seventeen, and sometimes my dad would let me borrow his pick-up truck. I'd drive my friends Ron and Howard down to the Dog & Suds, and we'd order root beer and fries and sit in the truck for hours talking about music and girls.

What else matters when you're seventeen! 

Interestingly, as I write this, my own son has just turned seventeen.  And what matters to him most? ... music and his girlfriend! (not necessarily in that order). 

Standin' on your mama's porch, you told me that you'd wait forever

This is where a bit of "Springsteen" finally finds its way into the song. I was listening to a lot of Bruce's music at the time -- Bryan was too -- and one of my favourite songs was "Thunder Road".  In that song, Bruce paints an amazing picture with his lyrics.  I can see it, plain as day:

"The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves ... like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays".



I'm quite certain that's where we got the "porch" idea for "Summer Of '69".

Oh and when you held my hand, I knew that it was now or never

The Beatles' first "hit" in North America was "I Want To Hold Your Hand".  Great song.  If you don't already know it, check it out.

Those were the best days of my life / Back in the summer of '69

Once we'd decided "Summer Of '69" was better than "Best Days Of My Life", we had to find a way to reinforce our new title. The most obvious way was to repeat it a few more times ... so, we literally "shoe-horned" the phrase into some gaps in the song. Initially I was concerned that it sounded too forced -- to the point of being awkward -- but it seems to have stood the test of time.

Man we were killin' time, we were young and restless, we needed to unwind

A few years before we wrote "Summer of '69" my old band "Prism" released an album titled "Young And Restless". The album jacket had a photo from the 1950s showing a group of Vancouver teenagers with an old jalopy, just hangin' out and killin' time, or so it seemed.  I'm quite certain that image, and that album title, had some influence on our choice of lyric here.

I guess nothin' can last forever

At this point the song goes to an electric twelve-string guitar break that's really a nod to The Beatles, The Byrds and The Searchers (songs like "Ticket To Ride", "Tambourine Man" and "Needles And Pins") -- some of my favourite music from the 1960's.



On our very first basement demo of "Summer of '69" we started the song with the 12-string riff, exactly like the "break down" section in the middle of the song ... but on subsequent demo's we replaced the 12-string with a chunky 6-string intro. In fact, we toiled over the musical arrangement for several weeks, maybe longer. We recorded the song three or four different ways, and we still weren't convinced we had it right! Bryan even considered dropping the song from the Reckless album.

Now, 20 years later, when I hear "Summer of '69" on the radio, I honestly can't remember what bothered us.

Looking back, I think "Summer Of '69" was Bryan and I at our best. We hadn't had any real "success" yet ... that would come when "Reckless" went to #1 on the charts and sold 12 million copies ... but that was a year away.  In January 1984 Bryan and I were still writing songs for all the right reasons, for the pure love and joy of it.  We had nothing to prove, and even less to lose. We wrote songs to please ourselves.

Everything started to unravel after "Reckless".