Bryan Adams - Summer Of 69

What this video is

Released in 1985 as the fourth single from the album Reckless, 'Summer of '69' arrived at the apex of Bryan Adams' commercial ascent and the height of MTV's cultural authority. The video's black-and-white/color split technique visually encoded the song's dual temporal conceit — a present-day narrator looking back on formative youth — giving the abstract nostalgic narrative a concrete cinematic grammar. Its heavy…

Why it matters

A definitive artifact of mid-1980s mainstream rock music video practice, 'Summer of '69' exemplifies Steve Barron's narrative-driven approach to the form — elevating the clip beyond a performance document into a short cinematic story. Its use of black-and-white flashback intercutting was an…

The director

Steve Barron (born 4 May 1956, Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish-British filmmaker who began his career as a camera assistant on productions including A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Superman (1978). He co-founded Limelight, which became the world's largest music…