1984Released
3:36

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Summer Of '69. By Songfacts®.

In the Summer of '69, Adams was 9 years old. He explained in a Songfacts interview: "It's a very simple song about looking back on the summertime and making love. For me, the '69 was a metaphor for making love, not about the year. I had someone in Spain ask me once why I wrote the first line 'I had my first real sex dream'... I had to laugh."

Adams wrote this with the songwriter Jim Vallance, who wrote several Aerosmith songs and often collaborated with Adams. On his website, Vallance explains that the song went through a number of changes, and it was originally called "Best Days Of My Life," with the line "Summer Of '69" appearing just once in the lyrics. Vallance feels that the Jackson Browne song "Running On Empty," which contains the lyrics, "In '69 I was 21," was a subconscious influence on their writing, and that Adams may have been influenced by the movie Summer Of '42.

Adams had a few hits before this was released, his biggest being "Straight From The Heart," but this song and the rest of the Reckless album made him a star. Vallance reflects: "Looking back, I think 'Summer Of '69' was Bryan and I at our best. We hadn't had any real 'success' yet... that would come when Reckless went to #1 on the charts and sold 12 million copies... but that was a year away. In January 1984 Bryan and I were still writing songs for all the right reasons, for the pure love and joy of it. We had nothing to prove, and even less to lose. We wrote songs to please ourselves. Everything started to unravel after Reckless."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Summer Of '69.
DKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
139BPM

Album

The album Summer Of '69 is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Summer Of '69.
A&M
© 2014 A&M Records
℗ 2014 A&M Records

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