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Boomer Anthems: Summer of ’69

50 years? What’s that? An inch of time.

They say that anyone who remembers the Sixties wasn’t there? My problem is that I was there and I remember everything.

I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it ’til my fingers bled
Was the summer of sixty-nine

Me and some guys from school
Had a band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit, Jody got married
I should’ve known we’d never get far

Oh, when I look back now
That summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice
Yeah, I’d always wanna be there
Those were the best days of my life

Ain’t no use in complainin’
When you’ve got a job to do
Spent my evenings down at the drive-in
And that’s when I met you, yeah

Standin’ on your mama’s porch
You told me that you’d wait forever
Oh, and when you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life

Oh, yeah
Back in the summer of sixty-nine, oh

Man, we were killin’ time, we were young and restless
We needed to unwind
I guess nothin’ can last forever, forever, no

Yeah

And now the times are changin’
Look at everything that’s come and gone
Sometimes when I play that old six-string
I think about you, wonder what went wrong

Standin’ on your mama’s porch
You told me that it’d last forever
Oh, and when you held my hand
I knew that it was now or never
Those were the best days of my life

Oh, yeah
Back in the summer of sixty-nine, oh
It was the summer of sixty-nine, oh, yeah
Me and my baby in sixty-nine, oh
It was the summer, the summer, the summer of sixty-nine, yeah

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  • ghostsniper August 4, 2019, 9:05 AM

    Bryan Adams was 9 years old in the summer of 69.
    Last night was my brother in laws 50th high school graduation party.
    My wife and I have another 3 years to go (1972) even though we’ve never been to one and never will.
    I didn’t like school and most of the people that went there and still don’t.

  • theduchessofkitty August 4, 2019, 9:17 AM

    My hubby was there in the summer of ‘69.

    Only, he can’t remember any of it, because he was a newborn then. He reached three months of age right after Good Ole’ Neil stepped on the Moon.

    He has some Bryan Adams CDs, though, in storage.

  • Dr. Jay August 4, 2019, 10:13 AM

    This came to me while reading Bryan Adams’ little tale of self-absorption and ghostsniper comment: The numerical value of Fach in Pythagorean Numerology is: 9

  • Casey Klahn August 4, 2019, 11:31 AM

    I’m on a Sixties roll, myself. Since I was born in the late Fifties, I do remember the decade in question. Moon landing, Vietnam, my fucked-up family. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon. Rock and Roll.

    We just bought a classic trailer; a 1965 Fireball camper trailer. It is cherry and my family is going to enjoy an August vacation to the beach where I grew up in the Sixties, as a matter of fact. Like a complete idiot, when I go on vacation I am then around people, and when I’m at home there are no people anywhere close by. If a people does come close, we go instantly on amber. My dog goes on red.

    I also watched the QT movie about Hollywood in 1969. I recommend it. I was chuckling inside at how Brad Pitt would cruise that big Cadillac onto the freeway and just drive around like he owned the place. No traffic!

  • Skorpion August 4, 2019, 4:05 PM

    As @ghostsniper pointed out: Bryan Adams was too young to have these sorts of experiences in 1969, so it’s not Sixties nostalgia.
    The song is about the *other* 69.

    (And I hear ya re school, Ghost — H.S. was the worst three years of my life.)

  • Mary Ann August 4, 2019, 7:36 PM

    August 16, 1969 I met my husband at the wedding of my best friend at Ma Bell and his best friend in the Navy…Virginia Beach. He died 2 weeks short of our 41st anniversary. 2 great kids. 2 1/3 grands.
    ’69 was a good year.

  • Larry Geiger August 5, 2019, 5:43 AM

    I was on Merritt Island in 1969 in high school in the middle of the Apollo era. It was great fun. Junior high, not so much, but high school was ok. Everyone I knew, their dad was an engineer at the rocket ranch. We had a pretty good time studying geometry, calculus, physics, chemistry and British lit for goodness sake. All the main rocket guys spoke German so we had a German teacher and I took German class for 3 years. Did I learn anything there? Nein! My wife’s 50th reunion is in a month. Shawnee Mission South High School. She went to school with 3,000 of the most button down kids in the country. We at least had a few surfers 🙂

  • Montefrío August 5, 2019, 2:55 PM

    I was 23 for the latter half of 1969 and it was a wonderful time for me in spite of having been a callow youth in certain respects. Would I like to live now the way I did then? Never! Would I enjoy going back in time with whatever wisdom I’ve accumulated and be 23 with a 73 year old mind? No, being 23 when I was 23 was just fine and best left that way.

  • Chris August 9, 2019, 8:15 PM

    Are you guys the only ones that don’t know? Bryan Adams never says the word “nineteen” in that entire song. It has nothing to do with a year. It was probably the most popular dirty song on the radio since “My ding-aling”.