Bryan Adams - Summer of 69 (Live At Wembley 1996)

Thank you, my friend Sgt (Join to see) for posting the music video of Bryan Adams performing the "Summer of 69" live at Wembley Stadium in 1996.
In the summer of 1969, I was almost 13 and Canadian rocker Bryan Adams was 9 years old :-)

Song background "In the Summer of '69, Bryan was 9 years old. He told Songfacts: "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." (Check out our interview with Bryan Adams.)
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."
According to Vallance, many of the lyrics were inspired by other songs:
"I got my first real six string" - from Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero" and the line, "I bought a beat up six-string in a second-hand store."
"Standin' on your mama's porch, you told me that you'd wait forever" - Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" and the line, "The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves. Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays."
"When you held my hand, I knew that it was now or never" - The Beatles "I Want To Hold Your Hand."
Both Adams and Vallance had bands in high school, which provided fodder for the lyrics about the band that broke up. In the line, "Jimmy quit, Jody got married," Jody was Jody Perpik, who was Adams' sound man. He got married around the time this song was coming together, and he appeared in the video with his wife - in a car with a "Just Married" sign."
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/bryan-adams/summer-of-69

Summer of '69 written by Bryan Adams, James Douglas Vallance
Lyrics
"Got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it till my fingers bled
Was the summer of '69
Me and some guys from school
Had a band and we tried real hard
Jimmy quit and Joey got married
I shoulda known, we'd never get far
Oh, when I look back now
The summer seemed to last forever
And if I had the choice,
Yeah, I'd always want to be there
Those were the best days of my life
Ain't no use in complainin'
When you got a job to do
Spent my evenin's down at the drive-in
And that's where I met you, girl
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 '69, uh-huh
Yeah, we were killin' time
We were young and restless, we needed to unwind
I guess nothing can last forever,
Forever, no
Yeah
And now the times are a-changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone
Every time when I play that old six-string
I think about you, wonder what went wrong
Standin' on your mama's porch
(that's right)
You told me it would 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 '69, uh-huh
Me and my baby had 69, oh yeah
Back in the summer of '69"

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