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 (23 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

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