The Boys of Summer 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
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
About
“The Boys of Summer” is track #1 on Don Henley’s 1984 LP Building the Perfect Beast.
It was a huge hit earning numerous awards including the MTV Video of the Year in 1985 and the Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance in 1986.
The song explores the concepts of aging and questioning the past. The subject in the song reminisces about past summer love and things that he has lost as time wears on.
The official video shows the progression of the main character at three distinct phases of his life: young boy, teenager and middle-aged. Each instance shows us how he is considering his past relationships, most likely regrettably.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
About the third verse, Don Henley told NME in 1985:
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!
Songwriter Mike Campbell shared:
I used to have a 4 track machine in my house and I had just gotten a drum machine – 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 (Petty), but at the time, the record we were working on, Southern Accents, 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 with 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. 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.
While the colloquial “Boys of Summer” can refer to baseball players (originating from the 1972 Roger Kahn book of the same name about the Brooklyn Dodgers; of which that name was taken from a Dylan Thomas poem that had nothing to do with baseball). However, the context of the name in this song refers to aging and questioning the past. This was answered directly by Don Henley in a 1987 Rolling Stone Magazine interview.
- 1.The Boys of Summer
- 9.Sunset Grill