Day 5: The Boys of Summer

Even though I’ve never been a fan of The Eagles, one of my favorite songs came from Don Henley, his solo classic “The Boys of Summer.” It was about the dead center of my high school years, a time in life when favorite songs tend to carry significant weight. The music is predominantly electronic — even the percussion, which, at the time, since Henley was the drummer for The Eagles and I was a high school drummer myself, seemed like an odd, but effective, choice. (I think I just set a personal record for the number of commas included in any one sentence right there.) It wasn’t electronic in the way of so much 80s synth-pop, but it gave the song a dreamlike feel unlike anything else being played on the radio at the time. The lyrics had a storytelling quality to them that appealed to me, though they weren’t straightforward about any narrative or characters; the guy singing was clearly looking back at an earlier time in his life, remembering time spent with a love that consumed him, and finding it difficult to leave those feelings in the past. I was still just a kid, though. The only window I had to relate to any of those lyrics was to remind myself how I was right then living through the times that guy was singing about, and the day would eventually arrive when I’d be able to look back at that part of my life with a hybrid of fondness and heartbreak.

As dated to the mid-80s as “The Boys of Summer” always sounded, it endured. It couldn’t really be called a one-hit wonder since Don Henley is pretty much a legend and has amassed more greatest hits collections than most artists have releases, but it was kind of an aberration in his career, a song so sonically different from his other work and perfectly earmarked for its time that it stands out for its unique quality. Because of that hypnotic combination of hallucinatory melody and anticipatory nostalgia, the song never got old for me.

The Boys of Summer by Don Henley

A few years after the world settled down from Y2K panic, back when the cultural landscape was populated by post-millennial neo-punk emo guitar bands following in the wake of Green Day and Blink-182, a band amusingly calling themselves The Ataris had a cover version of “The Boys of Summer” on the radio. The first time I heard it I was afraid it was intended to be an ironic cover, like when Alien Ant Farm covered “Smooth Criminal” or just recently when Weezer covered Toto’s “Africa.” That wasn’t the case, though. While their interpretation of the song charges at you with a fierce energy, it still carries just enough of the loneliness and melancholy to stay true to the spirit of the original. Other than changing up the lyric of seeing a Dead Head sticker on a Cadillac to a Black Flag sticker, the song stayed surprisingly true to the original. You could enjoy how much the song rocked, but, and probably because the Ataris were at least leaning toward being an emo band, you could still enjoy how much it felt.

The Boys of Summer by The Ataris

A few years later I was browsing my way through the iTunes store one day, looking for any available music I didn’t know about but was probably going to love when I found it. (I will never admit to anyone exactly how much time I’ve spent doing this over the years.) I came across a fairly new album from an old favorite band — The Hooters. Remember? “And We danced?” “Day by Day?” “All You Zombies?” They were a great group of musicians and songwriters with a most unfortunate band name, and they’d had their commercial peak right about the same time Don Henley’s original “The Boys of Summer” was cycling out of heavy radio play. Most people wrote The Hooters off after a couple of hits, but they’d become a favorite of mine. I saw them live, twice. And so many years and decades later in two-thousand-frickin’- eight, here they were again with a new album out. Immediately downloaded without even bothering to preview, and it was great.

One big surprise was another cover version of “The Boys of Summer.” I saw that on the track list and was intrigued. When I heard it, I was overwhelmed. It was the version of the song I’d been promised at sixteen, the version I would need so much at forty. Now I was the guy who could look back at my past, and maybe sometimes for a little longer than I should. I had the authentic nostalgia, magnified by a version of the song that was simpler, quieter, beautiful, and devastating.

The Boys of Summer by The Hooters

Even now, years later, whenever I play “The Boys of Summer” by the Hooters, the version of the song that, due to the passage of time is now the version I connect with the most, I’ll stop what I’m doing and listen. Usually the song ends up sticking with me for the rest of that day. The same holds true to a lesser degree for the other two versions, but that newest one is the one that always breaks me.

I don’t think it happens often when you get to revisit a favorite song from different perspectives spread out for more than thirty years. I’m glad it happened for me.