“The Boys of Summer” by The Ataris, Tuesday, August 31, 2021

In the summer of 2003, a rock station in LA started playing an inside cut from The Ataris' So Long, Astoria, an album built on the late '70s and early '80s nostalgia. The band's first single, "In This Diary" reached number 11 on the Modern Rock chart. They were set to release the second single, "My Reply," but the accidental hit "The Boys of Summer" overshadowed anything the band would produce in their twenty-five-year career. A cover of Don Henley's 1984 number 1 hit, The Ataris' punk-rock reworking took the single to number 20 on the Hot 100 and number 2 on the Modern Rock chart, unable to beat Linkin Park's "Faint." Eighteen or thirty-seven summers later, "The Boys of Summer" remains a melancholy reminder that summer is over and that we all are getting older.    

I SAW A BLACK FLAG STICKER ON A CADILLAC. Written by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' guitarist, Mike Campbell, "The Boys of Summer" was intended for a Tom Petty album, but Petty felt it didn't match their current sound. Former Eagles singer/guitarist Don Henley was recording his second album, working with Campbell, who offered him "Boys." Henley took the music and crafted words that painted a vivid picture of the end of summer and that clearly symbolized getting older and longing for the past. In the third verse, Henley gives an interesting juxtaposition. The original line, "a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac" was inspired by something Henley had actually seen. He says: "I was driving down the San Diego Freeway and got passed by a $21,000 Cadillac Seville, the status symbol of the Right-wing upper-middle-class American bourgeoisie – all the guys with the blue blazers with the crests and the grey pants – and there was this Grateful Dead ‘Deadhead’ bumper sticker on it!" Henley is the hypocrisy of the Baby Boomer generation, who went from hippies who protested the corporate-structured life to those who participated in it and later propitiated it. The Ataris' Kris Roe updated this reference--"a Blackflag sticker on a Cadillac." Black Flag is a punk rock band that, like the Grateful Dead, protested materialism. The punk rock of the '80s, in some ways, was a resurgence of Hippy culture, and a new generation's "Boys of Summer" gets an updated band to remind listeners that rock 'n' roll--despite Creed's video budget--is really not all about money. The biggest mystery of the song, though, is who are the "boys of summer"? In the context of the song, they could be the other boys who love the listener for a time. The song borrows the title of a book about the Brooklyn Dodgers, which borrowed the title from the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas's poem "I See the Boys of Summer." Thomas's poem, too, captures the death of summer, although this poem is much frostier than the subtle change in summer to fall captured by Henley. 

AFTER THE BOYS OF SUMMER HAVE GONE. "Mom, I'm going to the magazine aisle," Josh said every time he had to go with his mom to the grocery store. At first, it was car magazines or collectibles, but one day, something caught his eye. Men's fitness. Somewhere between the car magazines and the magazines with girls in bikinis and right next to the steroid body-builder magazines, there was a genre of magazines that featured men with chiseled abs, waxed, muscular pecs, five-o'clock shadows, and pearly white smiles. A chill would go down his spine as he got the courage to pick up one of those magazines. A side glance. But little by little he rationalized, "There's no harm in learning some exercises." Besides Mad for Muscle, the too-big, steroid men's magazine, which repulsed Josh, there were three other fitness magazines. Josh picked up Men's Health from time to time, the most innocuous of the health magazines. Still, he worried that the "sex tips" always marked on the front cover, usually bearing a shirtless Hollywood actor whom Josh often found unattractive, might earn him a scolding from his mother if she caught him. If Men's Health wasn't interesting, he would look at one of the other magazines, Men's Exercise and Lifestyle, which was like Men's Health, but with slightly more provocative photos of better-looking, more muscular men. The magazine had more detailed exercise photos. There were photos of men with sweat glistening their baby-oiled muscles, but it was also easy to find a whey protein recommendation or a Q&A about what you should eat before a workout. In other words, pages to quickly turn to in case of an incoming threat to his reputation. He braced for the situation, "Hi, Allan! What are you looking at?" "I'm, uhh, getting interested in exercise. I'm looking for, um, tips." The cover of Men's Gym Magazine always tempted Josh the most. On the few occasions he had the courage to open an issue, he found very few workout tips and even fewer "safe pages." Inside the magazine, men posed more provocatively than in any of the other magazines. On one page, he saw a man putting a water hose down the front of his short shorts, the water rushing down his thick, muscular thigh. On another page, a man was showing off his glute muscles, his white briefs just below his buttocks. On yet another page, three bulky men were in a kiddy pool, splashing, all of them wearing tiny speedos. At first glance, these images shocked Josh. He hated himself for looking at them. The fear that someone from church would see him, or worse, his mom would catch him and he'd have to explain what he was doing. And he didn't even know what he was doing. So he watched like a gazelle lapping up water from a river full of crocodiles and predators waiting in the forest of the surrounding aisles. Between the pages of sexy hunks, there were advertisements for fitness supplements and underwear, and there was one advertisement for a video series titled The Boys of Summer. Josh wondered what was on that tape, and if Don Henley's song had anything to do with that rush he felt in the magazine aisle of the grocery store?

Don Henley's Original The Ataris' cover

The Ataris' cover: