It’s not Dittyday, but we’re doing this anyway, because it occurred to me a couple of weeks back that this song has a particular quality: it’s one that I can listen to anytime, and often, and not get tired of it. And I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this regard.
This is once again from the eighties – what else? – and considered one of the classics of that era, yet I’m not sure how much it reflects that era. Some songs from that time, including many of this artist’s other tracks, have a style and ‘feel’ that was common for their time period, an example of trends and pop culture, but I can’t say that this one does so much. But either way, it’s extremely unlikely that anyone next to you at the stop light is going to think you’re some old geezer mired in the past if you’re playing this loud. Even if they do, fuck ’em – like what you like and be proud of it.
We’re talking about Don Henley’s ‘The Boys of Summer,’ from 1984 and off of the album Building the Perfect Beast. It’s instantly recognizable to a great many people, starting off with a simple beat from the high-hat cymbals, damped to keep the tones short; Henley is mainly a drummer and it shows quite distinctly in this song, since the drums provide a significant part of the character while remaining understated. If I were to say to you a simple phrase like, “drum song,” you’re far more likely to imagine a driving beat with plenty of thumping fills and bridges, perhaps even a solo, but this is instead almost sneaky in its manner. Alongside that we have a lovely three-note keyboard motif that is surprising in its appeal through utter simplicity, some very restrained guitar riffs (at least two different types of guitar, but I think it’s three,) and perhaps the most eighties aspect of it, background synth tones that carry the mood throughout the piece, and really come into their own during the chorus. It doesn’t seem complicated – until you listen closely and catch how lots of simple pieces are blended together. Also, listen for the “seagull” to pop in after the bridge.
Henley’s voice fills it out nicely as well, a little rough around the edges especially in the higher notes, but setting the mood adeptly: reminiscing while a little melancholy, pining for a lost love while recognizing that it might never have been love, and he perhaps should have known better. Is the tragedy here that’s she’s gone, or that he never expected this?
There are two parts of the lyrics that pin the song down in the eighties very distinctly, and might even be confusing to those that grew up afterward. In the fourth chorus he refers to his missing lover as having “those Wayfarers on,” though a clue exists in that this is simply a rephrasing of the first chorus; “Wayfarers” are sunglasses, specifically a Buddy Holly hornrim style that became popular for a few years in the mid-eighties before largely vanishing. The other eighties reference is the opening of the third stanza:
Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac,
Aside from Cadillac being a bygone symbol of American affluence, a “Deadhead” sticker was sported by fans of the band Grateful Dead, a counterculture band popular with hippies and stoners from the sixties to the nineties; the message here is the clash of lifestyles, a status-symbol flaunting a symbol of rejected values – Henley considered this a metaphor for selling out. This part was always lost on me – the Cadillac that I pictured was a beat-up gunboat many years past prime, and it was simply a reminder of his lover’s musical tastes and/or convertible. It’s often extremely easy to miss the writer’s intentions in the lyrics.
So, it’s not ‘timeless,’ but it remains just as strong today as it was when it came out, and is exceptionally easy to listen to – even if it just played an hour ago. Let it flow, and feel the days getting shorter.