How an Ice Cream Truck Inspired The Motels’ Only No. 1 Single in 1979

In 1979, the band The Motels released “Closets & Bullets”, their debut single. Unfortunately, neither that song nor the several that followed had much of an impact on the radio. In 1982, The Motels had their first Top 10 hit with “Only The Lonely”. One year and several more singles later, The Motels released “Suddenly Last Summer”. “Suddenly Last Summer” became The Motels’ only No. 1 single, reaching the top of Billboard’s rock chart. It also hit the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

On Little Robbers, The Motels’ fourth studio album, “Suddenly Last Summer” was written by the band’s own Martha Davis. The chorus of the nostalgic tune says, “One summer never ends / One summer never began / It keeps me standing still / It takes all my will / And then suddenly / Last summer.“

“Suddenly Last Summer” was partly inspired by  Davis’s own grief over the loss of her parents, her mother to suicide and her father to illness. 

“‘Suddenly Last Summer’ woke me up at 3:00 a.m. one morning,” Davis later remembered. “It seems that it is a time travel tune because it conjures up images as far back as when I was 12. I believe the song to be about irrevocable change, the loss of innocence, the melancholy associated with not being able to go home again.”

How An Ice Cream Truck Inspired “Suddenly Last Summer” by The Motels

Davis went on to recall a very specific memory, which ultimately led to her writing “Suddenly Last Summer”.

“When I was still living in Berkeley, in my early 20s, I remember sitting in the backyard of the little house I bought after my parents died,” Davis recounted. “It was the end of summer. From down the street, I heard the sound of the ice cream truck with its haunting little song. As I lay there, the first cold wind of autumn started to blow, and I knew I would not see the truck again that year, and that summer was over.”

“That incident resonated with me,” she adds. “And I think the bells from that truck became the concept for the repeating melodic line that runs through ‘Suddenly.’”

Although “Suddenly Last Summer” seems like an undeniable hit, Davis later revealed that she sat on the song for several years before releasing it. All of Davis’s career, including this song, is an homage to her mother. Davis later found out that her mother wanted to be a writer, a dream that remained unfulfilled for her.

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