"Summer Wine" is a song written by Lee Hazlewood. It was originally sung by Suzi Jane Hokom and Lee Hazlewood in 1966, but it was made famous by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood in 1967. This version was originally released as the B-side of "Sugar Town" the previous year, before featuring on the Nancy & Lee LP in 1968. It was the first of Sinatra and Hazlewood's string of popular duets.
Lyrically, "Summer Wine" describes a man, voiced by Hazlewood, who meets a woman, Sinatra, who notices his silver spurs and invites him to have wine with her. After heavy drinking, the man awakens hungover to find his spurs and money have been stolen by the mysterious woman; the subtext of which being they experienced intercourse and as repayment she misappropriated his "silver spurs a dollar and a dime". He then declares a longing for more of her "wine". Another interpretation, often cited, is that the song is an allegorical description of drug use (possibly heroin) and that the lyric "she reassured me with an unfamiliar line" specifically refers to cocaine. Another interpretation, is that the man singing the song was date-raped by the woman in order to steal his money and belongings.
Read more about Summer Wine: Covers
Famous quotes containing the words summer and/or wine:
“Taffeta phrases, silken phrases precise,
Three-piled hyperbole, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical—these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.
I do forswear them.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not “Devil’s wine,” but God’s wine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)