"The Boys Of Summer" by Don Henley
You can never look back.
“Nobody on the road / Nobody on the beach / I feel it in the air / The summer's out of reach / Empty lake, empty streets / The sun goes down alone / I'm driving by your house / Though I know you're not home”
Don was 37 when this song came out in 1984. It sent his career into further hyperdrive, and the man has always had to walk a line between being a hardworking artist and being too successful. His fame is always threatening to turn him into a cliche.
When I was 37, in 2010, I had been without a mailing address for two years. A long series of idiotic career and personal choices had led me to ruin. 2008 ejected me from a tenuous foothold in NYC and I couldn’t really land anywhere for more than a few nights at a time. First I slept on friends’ couches and then occasionally I’d sleep in a car I had bought with gig money. In 2011 I finally moved into a room in Bethlehem, PA. It’s been a slow climb out of the darkness.
Was I born too late? Yes. But I also moved too slow.
So I’ve got nothing in common with Don Henley, but listening to the Eagles makes me happy. So much of the rock, punk, grunge and hip hop that came out during my adolescence sounded like a collective effort to bury the Eagles. And I get it, the 80s and 90s were chaotic decades. The fast lane had taken over.
“But I can see you / Your brown skin shinin' in the sun / You got your hair combed back and your sunglasses on, baby / And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong / After the boys of summer have gone”
I remember, as a young fan of edgy jazz who was mostly friends with punk kids and hippies, feeling very out of touch with Henley’s output. I wasn’t in his target market, he was singing for the Boomers. Grown folks with careers. There’s no not loving the grain in his voice, but the style was totally out of reach for me. It oozed money and nostalgia. Nobody I knew had any money, and we were too young to be properly nostalgic.
The 80s and 90s were a cultural explosion, an acceleration. An economic moonshot. I experienced life at the time as a state of normalized panic, kids running away from whatever had led us to the nuclear brink, scattering in all directions, hoping we’d make it to 1999 in one piece. I was too young to understand life on that level, but the adults seemed to have lost their minds as well.
So as I look back, it stands out that anxiety was so deeply embedded in me that I identified with it. I could not conceive of a life without a perpetual emotional crisis.
“I never will forget those nights / I wonder if it was a dream / Remember how you made me crazy? / Remember how I made you scream / Now I don't understand what happened to our love / But babe, I'm gonna get you back / I'm gonna show you what I'm made of”
“The Boys of Summer” is one of the greatest pop songs, in my opinion. The melancholic verses pushing and pulling with a positively triumphant chorus, the singer is sad but he knows who the hell he is. And he owns his heartbreak. We should all be so well-adjusted.
I was not. I chased a lot of misguided romances, for way too far and long. I wasn’t just addicted to anxiety, I was addicted to longing. Addiction isn’t the right word, of course. Chemical addictions are a whole other ballgame, and someone who is fighting one shouldn’t have to share their recovery space with people who are merely depressed. But at my level of comprehension, anxiety, depression and longing sure felt compulsive. They gave me something to fixate on and I never questioned it. Quitting smoking was easy in comparison.
“I can see you / Your brown skin shinin' in the sun / I see you walking real slow and you're smilin' at everyone / I can tell you my love for you will still be strong / After the boys of summer have gone”
A love for something lost is the easiest thing to feel. It is uncomplicated by the realities of navigating life with someone who might not fully fit our ideal image of them. Life truly begins when you start making big decisions with someone, it brings us slowly out of our heads as reality permeates the relationship.
But I spent a long time in various deserts, without love. Without a person I could trust, because I also couldn’t trust myself. It was out there that I learned not only how to pick up the pieces, but the importance of holding on to them. Respecting the tiny shreds of dignity and grace that kept me from going totally over the edge. Learning how to calm my nerves and soothe my heart, often by singing a song.
I eventually did find love. But before I did, I had to learn to be with myself. It took a long time, and I missed the boat on a lot of things. I had to stop searching for the “right person for me” and slowly strive to become the right person for someone else. Someone I didn’t know yet. Retail dating is a slow death. I had to face myself with clear eyes, get real about what I could and could not change about myself. I finally had to ask why, honestly, was I feeling so much pressure to change things about myself in order to become acceptable, lovable to someone else.
The answer? You don’t.
“Out on the road today, I saw a DEADHEAD sticker on a Cadillac / A little voice inside my head said, "Don't look back. You can never look back" / I thought I knew what love was / What did I know? / Those days are gone forever / I should just let them go but-”
But here we get the kicker. Don Henley sings from a place that only he can inhabit, makes the sound only he can make. And in this perfectly crafted musical moment he assembles a lyric that shines a perfect spotlight on the paradox of his time. And there’s an edge to it: he’s accusing the boomers of being sellouts. You can’t argue with him.
These days, the Cadillac is a spaceship and the deadheads all drive teslas. Change is inevitable, but as the boomer generation ages slowly out of being rebelliously in charge of everything, it’s worth looking back - if only to acknowledge what they taught us about idealism.
The perfect world in our heads, just like the perfect love in our hearts, can never be fully possessed. Perfectionism and possessiveness will kill the inherent perfectness of your gifted existence faster than you can say “Subvert the dominant paradigm”.
But we can dream.
“I can see you / Your brown skin shinin' in the sun / You got that top pulled down and that radio on, baby….”
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