Takin' a break from all your worries sure would help a lot...

March 28, 2014 7:50 PM

Interview with Cheers theme songwriter Gary Portnoy.
posted by paleyellowwithorange (24 comments total)

Just yesterday morning on the way to work I had this song briefly caught in my head, and I boggled at how effective it had been and wondered what it had brought to the writer. And then the light changed and I drove on and forgot.

So thanks.
posted by dilettante at 8:18 PM on March 28, 2014

It is a great song, and one of those songs where everyone remembers at least the opening few verses. Even 30 years later, I love it too.
posted by arcticseal at 9:04 PM on March 28, 2014

I came to "Cheers" late and for YEARS thought the theme was sung by Woody Harrelson. I can't be the only one who thought this.
posted by ColdChef at 9:16 PM on March 28, 2014 [8 favorites]

I can't believe the interviewer didn't think to ask him where the real Cheers is. The place he's talking about in the song.
posted by clockzero at 9:17 PM on March 28, 2014

I'll see ColdChef one and raise him one: when I was a kid, I thought Michael J. Fox sang it, especially with the voice crack on "everything you've got".
posted by Recliner of Rage at 9:39 PM on March 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

I was hoping they'd ask him his thoughts about Simon Petrikoff's rendition. But no such luck.
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:55 PM on March 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

One of my favorite "Hollywood Insider" bloggers is Ken Levine who was a writer/producer for Cheers (and for M*A*S*H, and other shows and a couple movies, plus a radio DJ and Major League baseball announcer), and he got into the Cheers Theme Song a few years back.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:58 PM on March 28, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ipsifendus: "I was hoping they'd ask him his thoughts about Simon Petrikoff's rendition. But no such luck."

Me too. Adventure Time broke the Cheers theme for me. I get a little bit teary eyed whenever I hear it now.
posted by Wemmick at 10:11 PM on March 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Previously, previouslier. There's some discussion in one of those about how the theme song started out being very Boston-specific, and they wisely made the references more generic, giving it broad appeal.
posted by dhartung at 10:49 PM on March 28, 2014

As a kid the I slept in a mezzanine room above the lounge room and the theme to "Cheers" was basically the music I fell asleep to... that and "Hill Street Blues".
posted by ambivalentic at 12:22 AM on March 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Here's the Flaming Moe's parody mentioned in the article.
posted by dephlogisticated at 12:28 AM on March 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I went to see a friend a while back, he plays guitar pretty well. He picked up the acoustic and said, "I worked this out recently, see if you recognise it." I asked for a clue and he said, "You won't need one." He was so right. Such a great theme song.

Also, in the linked previously, above, it briefly - and hilariously - turns into a discussion about boolean algebra. Well, it made me laugh anyway.
posted by marienbad at 1:18 AM on March 29, 2014

One of my most vivid childhood/adolescent memories is sitting on my parents terrible '80s couch, bickering with my little brother and/or my dad, and then we'd all shut up and listen to the opening song.

Cheers was a great television show and all, but that song still sends a little reverent frisson down my spine if I hear it so many years after the fact. I'll talk over the national anthem, but I shut the hell up when I hear that first part.
posted by Sphinx at 6:25 AM on March 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

It's been 20 years since that show left the air, and yet there are still clumps of tourists to be found milling around the Bull & Finch pub on Beacon Street in Boston. Are there any other "real world" exteriors from TV shows that still generate public interest?
posted by briank at 6:42 AM on March 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

What's annoying to me is that on the reruns it's an even shorter version of the song.
posted by tilde at 6:57 AM on March 29, 2014

Hearing the full length version of the Cheers theme is really weird, given that I grew up hearing the short version at the beginning of every episode. It's a bit like if I found out there was a fourth volume of Lord of the Rings.
posted by Kattullus at 7:59 AM on March 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Here's the Flaming Moe's parody yt mentioned in the article.
posted by dephlogisticated

If you prefer a punk version of this tune...
http://music.metafilter.com/355/Flaming-Moes
posted by blaneyphoto at 8:41 AM on March 29, 2014

It's a wonderful song, a wonderful show (well, except parts of the latter seasons), and it's nice to know that Portnoy is living a comfortable life thanks to it. Fascinating to learn some of the details of the legal/financial stuff surrounding such issues.
posted by davidmsc at 8:42 AM on March 29, 2014

This was my senior class song in high school. How weird is that? Good luck, graduates—and hey, if life gets hard and you feel the need to escape it, become a barfly!
posted by heyho at 8:56 AM on March 29, 2014

Are there any other "real world" exteriors from TV shows that still generate public interest?

2104 Kenwood Parkway, Minneapolis, Minnesota
posted by gimonca at 9:26 AM on March 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

Hearing the full length version of the Cheers theme is really weird, given that I grew up hearing the short version at the beginning of every episode.

For me it was the lyrics like "and your husband wants to be a girl", the mega-vibrato Spanish guitar, and the key change. Eek!
posted by iotic at 10:56 AM on March 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

"Sadly, it only took 30 years to be able to sing "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" while bumping off a hooker's ass."
posted by pxe2000 at 3:17 PM on March 29, 2014

Are there any other "real world" exteriors from TV shows that still generate public interest?

Southfork Ranch (it also serves as a conference center, so it has a day job). Coincidentally I know the daughter-in-law of the guy that owns it. Marrying up doesn't begin to describe it.

It's also arguable that Seinfeld helped Tom's Restaurant gain a cachet beyond its role as a neighborhood institution. I knew it before it sold out.

And anyway, good grief. Not to mention.
posted by dhartung at 12:36 AM on March 30, 2014

He could have at least made some threats against Mike Post, or boasted about how he slept with all his girlfriends
posted by thelonius at 6:47 AM on March 31, 2014