Don Henley: The Boys of Summer

Radio City Music Hall, September 13, 1985. One music video towered above all others to win the night at the second annual MTV VMAs, surrounded by a Who's Who of the biggest stars: Tears for Fears, David Lee Roth, Grace Jones, Corey Hart, and so many others who could never make it onto today's MTV even if they were catfishing Rob Dyrdek.

Don Henley had no idea what that award-winning video was all about, he just knew that he rode around on the back of a truck getting filmed lip-synching those beautiful lyrics. As you will see from the analysis below, the video is both influential and problematic, but the real story is the song itself. If you do the comprehensive research that I have done on the subject of the meaning of this song you will find the same wrong interpretations splashed all over the internet, some crap about aging, lost love, and a tourist town at the end of the season or whatever. Sorry web detectives, there are three plausible interpretations and none of them is that nonsense.

Post-Apocalyptic Boys of Summer

"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"

The first verse evokes feelings of emptiness, absence, an omega man wandering the deserted landscape after a global plague.

"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."

Rather than the Grateful Dead this reference could refer to Deadhead, the dystopian leader of the Boys of Summer, a gang pillaging the Mad Max-like wasteland. Though Deadhead leaves a trademark sticker on abandoned vehicles in the roadway to instill fear in the scattered survivors of the pandemic, the narrator refuses to look over his shoulder out of fear and even makes a promise to his lost love that he will still feel the same even after this murderous band has been eradicated and the world regains a semblance of normalcy.

Interesting theory, but wrong.

Promiscuous Boy of Summer

"And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong

After the boys of summer have gone"

If you study the lyrics carefully and check your heteronormativity at the door you realize there is never any indication that the love interest in the song is a woman. The boys of summer could therefore be the gay narrator's summer flings that make up his "hot boys summer" before hoping to go back to his more serious romantic relationship.

Before explaining the third (and correct) interpretation of the song I must discuss director Jean-Baptiste Mondino's five minute film. If you came of age in the relevant period you cannot disassociate the song from the video, likely visualizing the song as black & white as well as picturing the people in the song as a white couple happily running along a beautiful deserted beach. Wake up! You have been hypnotized by an artistic whitewashing of the highest magnitude. "But I can see you- Your brown skin shinin' in the sun" cannot be any more clear. Since when does a reference to someone having brown skin with zero other context automatically refer to a white woman with a tan? Apparently only in the world of Mondino, a world where buff twins practice their shirtless volleyball blocks with a chain link fence as their net.

The True Meaning of the Song

"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"

Due to the influence of the video and the word beach in the song, many analysts incorrectly understand the location to be coastal. However, the reference to the empty lake is key. The events in the song take place in either Illinois, Ohio, or Pennsylvania, the beach being a man-made lakefront beach not the Pacific or Atlantic. Summer is ending, the days are getting shorter as fall begins.

"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"

The narrator is picturing the Black woman he loves, the image in his mind of her sun-kissed beauty still vivid despite her not being with him now. He makes his initial promise to keep his love for her strong after the boys of summer have gone, which is the key to understanding the song as you will see.

"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"

A passionate relationship to be sure, with a double-entendre about their big fights and their great physical chemistry. We are also provided the first confirmation that the relationship ended, with the narrator still in disbelief but committed to winning her back.

"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"

Imagining her smiling and happy, walking in slow motion. Again the promise to still love her after the boys of summer have gone, but what does that mean? Analysts have one thing right: "after the boys of summer have gone" refers to the end of the Major League baseball season, in October. Brace yourself for the truth- the narrator is an obsessed fan of college wrestling. The beginning of the college wrestling season coincides with the end of the baseball season, and the narrator has ruined his relationship(s) in the past by all but disappearing from October-March as he followed his favorite team.

Now comes the most pivotal verse, and please note my inserted BANG as the most important part in the narrator's journey.

"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-

BANG

I can see you-

Your brown skin shinin' in the sun

You got that top pulled down and that radio on, baby

And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong

After the boys of summer have gone"

The reference to the counter-culture Grateful Dead sticker on the 1980s establishment symbol Cadillac is the narrator's way of saying some people have figured out how to have it both ways. Why can't he find a woman who will tough out those months when he all but disappears into his college wrestling fandom? Why is he still hung up on her, looking back, not listening to the little voice telling him that he should move on? The self-doubt, what did I even know about love, I should let those days go but... BANG you can hear it as he makes his decision, thinking back once again to this amazing woman, possibly topless though that could be her convertible he is referring to, but she is so perfect for him that he will be there for her all year even if it means less fan trips to road duals and open tournaments. The rugged elemental beauty of college wrestling pales in comparison to his brown-skinned love and he promises to correctly prioritize the two. This is the Boys of Summer.

A final note, the title of Henley's album Building the Perfect Beast might lead one to believe that rather than a fan of college wrestling the song refers to a high school or college wrestling coach. While wrestling coaches are certainly even more busy from October-March, it would be a terrible miscalculation to believe that they are not also busy the other months of the year, including summer with various greco and freestyle events as well as instructional camps. The song is about a fan, the end.