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Boomer Anthems: Boys of Summer

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
Don’t know you’re not home

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

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
I don’t understand what happened to our love
But, baby, 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 you’re smiling at everyone
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

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 ’em go, but

I can see you
Your brown skin shining in the sun
You got that top pulled down
And that radio on, baby
And 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 that hair slicked back
And those Wayfarers on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

The music video to “The Boys of Summer” is a French New Wave-influenced piece directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Shot in black-and-white, it shows the main character of the song at three different stages of life (as a young boy, a young adult and middle-aged), in each case reminiscing about the past relationship. This is shown during the line “A little voice inside my head said don’t look back, you can never look back” at which point, each of the three people look back in turn. The young boy in the video, played by seven-year-old Josh Paul, resembles a young Don Henley. The girl in the music video is played by Audie England.
Interspersed with these scenes are segments of Henley miming the words of the song while driving in a convertible. At its conclusion, the video uses the post-modern concept of exposing its own workings, as with a wry expression Henley drives the car away from a rear projection screen.

The video won “Video of the Year” at the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards (leading Henley to comment at the Awards the following year that he had won for “riding around in the back of a pickup”). It also won that year’s awards for Best Direction, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography. The Best Direction award was presented to Mondino by Henley’s then-former Eagles bandmate Glenn Frey.

Comments on this entry are closed.

  • Skorpion August 22, 2019, 11:58 AM

    A great song, wrecked by the drum-machine and synths, and general overproduction. Apparently it was originally offered to Tom Petty for his SOUTHERN ACCENTS album; I’m sure HE would have brought out the soul and guts that this rendition buried under a ton of studio sludge.

  • H August 23, 2019, 6:06 AM

    That was all over the air waves when it first began to become clear that my first marriage was going down the tubes, and nothing to be done about it, which I was not particularly in favor of and fought hard against. It took a while but eventually I came around to the conclusion that whilst divorces are expensive, sometimes they’re worth it.