[Freddie]

Didn't know that this song was about sex, about 69 not the year 1969

[Living_on_my_Hair]

well, everyone has their own ''unique'' interpreation of a song. the title is ''summer of 69'' and he is singing about ''back in the summer of 69'' so ones would guess he infact talking about the summer of 1969 funny enuff.

ktf
andi

[Jim Bon Jovi]

nope i'd be willing to put money on that he's singing about his 1st summer he ever had a bird that would do stuff with him.

happy times but the summer of 98 doesn't have the same ring to it

[Mr Bluesman]

He was born in November 1959. So "in the summer of '69", he'd be 9 years old, a perfect age to get his "first real six-string".

But to be playing in a band with a guy who goes off to get married, and to be spending "evenings down at the drive-in" and meeting lasses at that age, makes me think that it's a bit of bullshit. The sexual reference could be true.

[Keeper]

I always thought it was a play on words, talking about a bit of everything and leaving it open for interpretation

[Supersonic]

Aloha !

Bryan Adams often has said it's a reference about sex, but this is what Jim Vallance, to co-writer says about it:

I don't want to take undue credit, because the song was very much a 50-50 collaboration. I know Bryan has different memories about what inspired "Summer of '69", but here's how I remember it:

...

> It was the summer of '69
This is where the phrase "summer of '69" appears for the first time ... quite casually, as line #4 of the first verse. It's interesting to note: in our first draft of the song the lyric "summer of '69" appears only once, never to be repeated. In fact, we'd originally planned on calling the song "Best Days Of My Life".

In December 1977, a few weeks before Bryan and I first met, Jackson Browne released the song "Running On Empty" (from the album of the same name). For a number of years afterwards that song spent a lot of time on my turntable, and Bryan's as well.

For me there are two lines in "Running On Empty" that particularly resonate ... "In '65 I was seventeen" and "In '69 I was twenty-one" ... (in my case it was a combination of the two -- in '69 I was seventeen). I think Jackson Browne's lyric may have planted the idea, and subconsciously influenced our decision to use the year "1969" as the basis for a song. Bryan recalls the film title "Summer of '42" as having an influence as well.

...


> Those were the best days of my life
> Back in the summer of '69
Once we'd decided "Summer of '69" was better than "Best Days Of My Life" we had to find a way to reinforce our new title. The most obvious way was to repeat it a few more times ... so, we literally forced the phrase into some gaps in the song. Initially I was concerned that it sounded too forced -- to the point of being awkward -- but it seems to have stood the test of time.

---

Salaam Aleikum,
Sebastiaan

[Living_on_my_Hair]

thanks Seb. So there you go you conspiracy hunters, not a sexual reference in site!

ktf
andi

[Iceman]

Originally Posted by Living_on_my_Hair

thanks Seb. So there you go you conspiracy hunters, not a sexual reference in site!

You obviously missed this part: "Bryan Adams often has said it's a reference about sex". There's two writers, two opinions.

Ice

[~saz~]

Originally Posted by Keeper

I always thought it was a play on words, talking about a bit of everything and leaving it open for interpretation

Yeah, that's what I always thought. Can't wait to see him in Aberdeen

there was a Q & A about the song with Bryan Adams in a recent issue of Rolling Stone and he said it was about sex