The Boys of Summer

Whoa, fasten yr safety belts, because my interpretation of this haunting song was always way, way different that anyone else's! In the late 1950s I hit the road and got involved in the urban folk scene, doing a lot of writing and backup guitar stuff, deeply influence by the Beat Generation writers but also by the emerging folk-rock sound in LA and New York. I got into the habit of working summers at resorts, usually by a lake or by the ocean, through the summer season, then collecting unemployment in the winter. You'd always have a wonderful and incredibly sweet romantic fling with one of the college girls during the summer--the hottest memories imaginable--then you'd go visit them in their university digs, and they'd show you off to their college friends. Then in a couple of months, when the chilly winds started to blow, they get tired of you and send you on your way. (No complaints here, cause I wrote some nice songs behind it.)

 Anyway, after the last chorus of 'Don't Think Twice' on the summer love affair, ("don't look back, you never look back") you'd hit the road to New York to see what the boys and girls were singing in the Village at Gerde's Folk City and maybe the Cafe Whah, and then you'd go back to California Dreamin' to work all winter on the songs or the novel you were writing, or whatever...until the resort season started the next summer. And when you had a little spare time, you'd be trying to get traction with the folk-rock group you were organizing. Of course, you were poor as a church mouse throughout this entire process, because those were the dues you were paying.

 In those days, late 1950s and on through the 1960s, it was easy to go to a dealership and sign a contract to drive a car across country to a prospective customer on the east coast. (The dealerships even advertized for drivers in the newspaper classified ads.) This practice was commonly called 'deadheading' a car, 'cause you'd only drive it one way, then have to make an arrangement to 'deadhead' another car back wherever you came from. The license plates for such cars were a little weird, so the dealers would commonly put a 'deadhead' sticker on the vehicle so the cops down south wouldn't throw you under the jail, and you didn't have to stop at the weight stations with all the eighteen wheelers...so, long story shorter, I always assumed that's where the line about the "deadhead sticker on the Cadillac" came from. I did the old deadhead with many a Cadillac, I can tell you. Many a make-out session and more with young ladies requesting a road trip with an honest-to-goodness singer-songwriter. Memories, beautiful memories, and again lots of songs came out of it...

 I have made it a point to remember the name of every young lady I kissed or made love to. They were all beautiful, even more so in memory. I am just sorry that I couldn't have written a song for every one of them. They deserved it, for being so young and so lovely.

 Anyway, I got the hell out of the music business in 1967 in San Francisco, when I realized that there were too many substances to abuse, and that I couldn't handle it. I roamed the earth doing every kind of journalism, and writing books as well. One day a beautiful Filipino lady took me off the road, nursed me back to health, married me, and shared her food, her home, and her life with me. I'm one lucky old man, and I know it. 

 But I'll never forget those wild years. Had a partner whose slogan was, "Screw philosophy! People just want to have fun!" And we did. So for me, Don Henley's haunting song reminds me of those nine crazy years between 1958 and 1967. To me the references to empty streets and the empty beaches refers to the end of the resort season, when the beautiful college girls would go back home. (And there's nothing that generates feelings of loneliness and abandonment like a resort town at the end of the season.) The college girls would think about the boys of their summer, and maybe you'd talk on the telephone, then you'd deadhead a car to wherever they were, and carry the torch a bit longer. The brown-tanned skin, the idea of a special love in a special place where the laws of physics and of human societies don't really apply, that's all in the song. It's about thinking about the past, big-time, and appreciating what you had but wanting to go back, just a little. Just enough to have that feeling again. 

 The fact that this song has so many cultural reference points for me that probably don't exist for anybody else, just goes to who how a really good lyric is likely to be completely universal. Don Henley and so many other writers of his generation were great poets, in their own way. But for me the very best will always be the Boss, since Springsteen seemed to accomplish what Bob Dylan wanted to do but never could--Springsteen had the longing, the crazy sexual electricity, but also managed to include the love of social justice that drove people in the 1960s and 1970s. But Henley came close, in this song and also 'Sunset Grill,' which has the same California moodiness. I really like his compassion for people who are sometimes on the losing end of the social spectrum.