I recently received an email from Canadian songwriter Jim Vallance. You may not know his name, but you probably know his work: songs he cowrote include Aerosmith’s “Rag Doll,” Glass Tiger’s “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” and Heart’s “What About Love?” And he collaborated on dozens of songs with Bryan Adams, including “Summer of ’69,” which is what prompted his email: he read my exegesis of the song (also included in my book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed) and wanted to set the record straight.

When asked if “Summer of ’69” was actually about the sixty-nine sex act, I pointed out that Adams was only nine in the summer of 1969, making him young for the song’s starting-a-band narrative, and found a quote from Adams himself saying, yes, it was about oral sex–which seemed to settle matters.

However, Mr. Vallance writes:

Gavin,

I co-wrote “Summer Of ’69” with Bryan Adams.

The two of us sat in a room for a few days back in 1984 and at the end of it we had a song titled … “Best Days Of My Life”. That’s how it started. The song’s only reference to the summer of ’69 was the 4th line of the first verse: “It was the summer of ’69”.

A few days (or maybe a few weeks) later we decided “Summer Of ’69” was a better title than “Best Days Of My Life”, so we inserted the “Summer Of ’69” phrase in a few gaps in the song.

After the last chorus, for a lark, Bryan sang, “Me and my baby in a 69” … way at the end, the part of the song that would have faded and been gone. We had a laugh, not intending it to be on the finished record, but it stuck, and the rest is history.

It wasn’t until years later (mid-90s?) that Bryan started introducing the song in concert by suggesting the song wasn’t really about the summer of ’69 (wink-wink). The audience’s response was predictable, Bryan and the band got a chuckle out of it, and that particular bit of banter has remained part of Bryan’s stage show ever since.

All I can say is: as I remember it, when we were writing the song, just the two of us, at no point did we discuss implied meanings or inferences. The song’s lyrics and story-line were inspired by our school-years: friends, music, bands, girls. I admit, there’s a naughty bit at the very end, but it was a 3-second, improvised afterthought. It’s not the whole song. Never was.

Just sayin’.

Jim Vallance

I asked a follow-up question: at any point while writing the song, did they think about Bryan’s age in 1969, or was that factual impulse subordinate to the demands of making a good song?

The reply (warning–Canadian spelling ahead!):

One of my favourite songs is “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” by The Band. If you know the song, it’s about the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). Robbie Robertson wrote the lyrics in 1969, including the line: “In the winter of ’65, we were hungry, just barely alive”. To my knowledge, no-one has ever asked Robbie how old he was in the winter of 1865.

Apparently I was led astray by Adams tarting up the history of his own song; I’ll be updating the relevant page in the “Secret Rock Knowledge” section of this website. Thanks to Jim Vallance for taking the time to write to me (and being gracious about the whole thing).

posted 12 July 2012 in Tasty Bits. 3 comments

If you’re a Rolling Stone subscriber, you have probably already received a copy of “The Big Issue,” a tribute to all things humongous and a reminder of how appealing the magazine looked when printed on larger pages. If not, do not despair–even though the issue isn’t available on newsstands, you can read the whole thing online here. If you are so moved, you can check out a cornucopia of articles by yours truly, on pop clowns LMFAO (pp. 16-17), director Josh Trank (p. 47), actor Benjamin Walker (p. 51), comic goddess Maya Rudolph (p. 62), and Parker, the ruthless thief invented by Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark (p.67). Big ups.

posted 29 May 2012 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet

Quick byline alert: I had a short article in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, a profile of the clever and congenial Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass, the filmmaking brothers responsible for Cyrus; Jeff, Who Lives at Home, and The Do-Deca-Pentathlon. An amusing side note that didn’t fit into the piece came when I spoke with Jason Segel, who plays the title role in the excellent Jeff: “If you’re going to shoot in New Orleans, you should really restrict your diet. I put on 25 pounds. The movie takes place over one day. We tried our best to shoot chronologically, but there’s some shots where I put on weight as I walk through a doorway.”

posted 21 May 2012 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet

Donna Summer wasn’t the diva of the dance floor for me: she was an unearthly voice coming through my AM radio when I was a sixth-grader, my elementary-school channel to the divine. A couple of decades later, she got on the phone with me to talk about the history of disco, and was kind enough to discuss the recording of “Love to Love You Baby” and the inspiration behind “Bad Girls.” The world’s a poorer place without her. Toot-toot, beep-beep.

posted 17 May 2012 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

This is one of those articles that was in the works so long, I missed the moment when it actually saw print: my profile of aspiring golfer Dan McLaughlin. But although the April issue of Men’s Journal has left newsstands, I encourage you to click over to their website, because McLaughlin is a fascinating guy: a former photographer of dental equipment who at age 30, despite never having played golf in his life, decided to devote 10,000 hours of his life to practicing the sport in an effort to join the PGA Tour. The odds are good that while you’re reading this, he is practicing somewhere.

posted 14 May 2012 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet

The Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (to Party!)” isn’t just the rare song with two parentheses in the title, or the MTV debut of Tabitha Soren. Even after a three-decade Beastie career, it remains the cornerstone of their work. So five perspectives on a #7 single:

1. Public Enemy, “Party for Your Right to Fight”–a brilliant inversion, turning “Party” into a noun, specifically, the Black Panther Party.

2. Coldplay’s live cover: a mournful joke (on both the Beasties and Coldplay), but genuinely moving.

3. Fight for Your Right (Revisited): a half-hour fantasia (directed by Yauch), released last year to promote Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, starring Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood, and Danny McBride as the Beasties circa 1986, and John C. Reilly, Will Ferrell, and Danny McBride as the Beasties of the future. Spoiler alert: They have a dance-off.

4. Baseball infographic artist Craig Robinson did a wonderful chart breaking down the vocals in the song.

5. Adam Yauch, in the liner notes to the 1999 compilation The Sounds of Science, remembers the track as “a joke that went too far.” The end of his thoughtful essay on the song as the harbinger of the early wave of Beastie fame:

But it was too late to turn in any other direction; we were caught up in the frenzy. The shows were sold out. It seemed like there was nothing to do but keep coming out on stage every night drinking beer and playing the role. The strangest part about it was that after a short time I think we actually became just what it was that we’d set out to make fun of. By drinking so much beer and acting like sexist macho jerks we actually became just that.

So I guess that the story could have a couple of possible morals. One might be, “Be careful of what you make fun of or you might become it.” But the other one, the one that I like is, “All of the sexist macho jerks in the world are just pretending cause they’re caught in a rut, and maybe, at some point in the future, when the planets line up in a certain way, they’ll all just snap out of it.”

posted 9 May 2012 in Links, Tasty Bits. 2 comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about Adam Yauch, and how, aside from everything else, his life was a testament to how much a person can change during their time here on Earth.

I never met the man (although I did interview his bandmates last year). I’ve been remembering the times I saw the Beastie Boys play live. I missed the Licensed to Ill tour–no inflatable penis for me, apparently–but I did see one of the few shows they did to support Paul’s Boutique, an excellent secret gig at the short-lived New York club called The Building. (My future wife was also in attendance, although we hadn’t yet met.)

The last time I saw the Beastie Boys in concert was back in 1994–I had no idea it had been that long ago. I joined the Lollapalooza tour for seven shows, on assignment for Details. I was mostly writing about the technology tent, but I took a break every day so I could see a different act in the lineup (Nick Cave, the Breeders, A Tribe Called Quest, L7, George Clinton, the Flaming Lips–it was a very strong bill). The tent folded up in the late afternoon, leaving me at liberty to see the last two bands if I wanted. I never made it through more than a couple of songs by the headlining Smashing Pumpkins, but I saw every single set by the Beasties.

Their hour in Kansas City had one of my favorite moments ever at a concert (or in life), which wouldn’t have happened if the crowd had not been eating lots of personal pan pizzas, served by a vendor in small cardboard boxes. When the Beastie Boys started playing “Sabotage,” everybody went nuts–not only did the crowd pogo, but they threw the pizza boxes up in the air, and kept hurling them up for the duration of the song, making the field look like an immense popcorn machine. It was three of the most joyful minutes I’ve ever been a part of, and Adam Yauch was playing bass at the center of the maelstrom.

posted 8 May 2012 in Tasty Bits. 3 comments

My apologies for the unplanned hiatus: I’m in book crunch mode, which has been soaking up every free minute, and many that aren’t free. But I wanted to let you know about an interview I did for Playboy with Grant Morrison, who has been one of my favorite comic-book writers for many years now. I took a ferry across the River Clyde to visit him and his wife Kristan at their home outside of Glasgow–thanks to both for their hospitality–and we spent hours breaking down many of the characters he’s invented and reinvented. Click here to read it (that’ll take you to the Playboy website, and while the article is SFW, the marginal ads may feature scantily clad women). The paper edition, on newsstands now, gives you an even better look at that excellent Frank Quitely illustration. (For the record, Morrison is not particularly wrinkled in real life.) If this just whets your appetite, go pick up Morrison’s autobiographical history of comics, Supergods.

Bonus track! Morrison’s perspective on Iron Man:
The most popular comics characters right now are Iron Man and Batman, who are both millionaire playboys. That’s the dream man of our society–the guy who’s bigger than the military-industrial complex. He doesn’t have to answer to anyone because he’s got so much money, there’s nothing you can do to stop him. People don’t care about the socialist hero; these days, they want to be the socialite hero.

posted 30 April 2012 in Articles, Outside. no comments yet

A short Q&A with the mighty Joe Perry.

posted 30 March 2012 in Outside. no comments yet

Is this: my short report on the Aerosmith press conference today. While I was waiting to interview the band afterwards (followup article soon), I wrote a rough draft on paper, typed it up, emailed it in, and hello world.

posted 28 March 2012 in Outside. no comments yet