Garth Brooks frequently collaborates with his wife Trisha Yearwood, but many fans might not know that he co-wrote one of his biggest hits with his first wife, Sandy Mahl.
Brooks collaborated with Mahl on “That Summer,” but only after the original idea that he had started with songwriter Pat Alger didn’t quite pan out. In a 1996 television special, Brooks recalled that the original story was about a married woman whose husband is ignoring her at a party, so she goes off and has an affair with a single guy. Brooks’ producer, Allen Reynolds, told him he couldn’t root for the characters in the song, and Brooks agreed.
Driving home from that meeting with his then-wife, he started singing, “She had a need to feel the thunder,” and Mahl helped him craft what came to be the final chorus of “That Summer.”
The final lyrics tell the story of a “teenage kid so far from home” who loses his virginity to a “lonely widow woman” he goes to work for one summer.
“She had a need to feel the thunder / To chase the lightnin’ from the sky / To watch a storm with all its wonder / Ragin’ in her lover’s eyes / She had to ride the heat of passion / Like a comet burnin’ bright / Rushin’ headlong in the wind, out where only dreams have been / Burning both ends of the night,” Brooks sings in the chorus.
“That Summer” reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart on July 3, 1993, after it was released as the fourth single from Brooks’ album, The Chase.
Brooks filed for divorce from Mahl on Nov. 6, 2000, and he’s been married to Trisha Yearwood since December of 2005.
Sterling Whitaker is a Senior Writer and Senior Editor for Taste of Country. He focuses on celebrity real estate, as well as coverage of Yellowstone and related shows like 1883 and 1923. He’s interviewed cast members including Cole Hauser, Kelly Reilly, Sam Elliott and Harrison Ford, and Whitaker is also known for his in-depth interviews with country legends including Don Henley, Rodney Crowell, Trace Adkins, Ronnie Milsap, Ricky Skaggs and more.
