!["To this day, I believe it’s an amazing lyric—likely the finest I’ve ever crafted. The opening four lines are the most unforgettable in all my work": The iconic rock anthem from the '80s and its '70s inspiration.]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/To-this-day-I-believe-its-an-amazing-lyric—likely-the-758x427.jpg "\"To this day, I believe it’s an amazing lyric—likely the finest I’ve ever crafted. The opening four lines are the most unforgettable in all my work\": The iconic rock anthem from the '80s and its '70s inspiration.] 1")
In 1981, after his debut album had flopped, Bryan Adams joked about naming his second album Bryan Adams Hasn’t Heard Of You Either. But four years later he had one of the biggest selling albums of the ’80s in Reckless – and among its many hit singles was the classic rock anthem Summer Of ’69.
Originally titled Those Were The Best Days Of My Life, the song was inspired by a great American rock hit from 1976, Bob Seger’s Night Moves.
“That’s such a brilliant song,” Adams said. “It always pissed me off that I didn’t write it.”
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Speaking to Classic Rock magazine, Adams praised the lyrics in Night Moves, in which Seger portrayed adolescent rites of passage, with images of cars and girls and long, hot summers.
“It’s a nostalgic song,” Adams said. “Romantic. Teenage blues, that awkwardness of trying to figure out sexuality – it’s all there.”
And that was exactly what Adams himself delivered in Summer Of ’69 – beginning with four lines of which he’s especially proud: “I got my first real six-string/Bought it at the five and dime/Played it ’til my fingers bled/Was the summer of ’69.”
“I still think it’s a great lyric,” Adams said an interview with Vox magazine. “Probably the best I’ve ever written. Those first four lines are probably the most memorable in my entire catalogue.”
As for the song’s title, it was a rude joke that stuck. “I always got a laugh out of it,” Adams said.
For Adams, it was important that this and other key tracks on Reckless had the energy and vibe of a live performance. To that end, when recording began in March 1984 at Little Mountain studios in Vancouver, he cut most of the tracks ‘as live’ with his touring band – lead guitarist Keith Scott, bassist Dave Taylor and keyboard player Tommy Mandel – plus session drummer Mickey Curry.
However, when operations moved to New York City and The Power Station – the famous recording studio on West 53rd Street in Manhattan – Adams told his producer Bob Clearmountain that something was missing. He couldn’t quite figure out what the problem was until he played a few tracks to his manager Bruce Allen.
Allen’s verdict was straight to the point: “Where’s the rock?”
The very next day, Adams flew back to Vancouver and hooked up with Jim Valance, the co-writer of every track on Reckless and pretty much every other song Adams had recorded up to that point.
His instruction to Vallance was simple: “We need to pump up the volume on this.”
The pair worked to toughen up Summer Of ’69 and another song, One Night Love Affair. They then wrote a new song from scratch – a song that answered Bruce Allen’s question in the most emphatic fashion. Its title: Kids Wanna Rock.
The inspiration for Kids Wanna Rock came to Vallance in a moment of evangelical fervour after he and Adams had attended a concert by synth-pop boffin Thomas Dolby.
As Adams recalled: “After that show, Jim was so emphatic about the fact that people just weren’t getting into the keyboard thing. Jim’s a rocker, man, and he wasn’t gonna have it. He just said: ‘The kids wanna rock!’ And I thought that was so funny.”
With the addition of Kids Wanna Rock and re-recorded versions of Summer Of ’69 and One Night Love Affair, the Reckless album was completed in August 1984.
Jim Vallance told Classic Rock: “In Bryan’s career, up to Reckless, each album had done better than the one before. I was confident Reckless would do better than [1983 album] Cuts Like A Knife. I just wasn’t prepared for how much better.”
Reckless went to No 1 in Canada, New Zealand and the US. Incredibly, six singles from the album made the US top 15 – a feat previously achieved only by Michael Jackson with Thriller and Bruce Springsteen with Born In The USA.
Summer Of ’69 peaked at No 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. And just like Bob Seger’s Night Moves, it’s a song that never gets old.
