History of

The history of the Cheers theme song is actually a long story.  In early 1982, Judy Hart Angelo and Gary Portnoy were working on their new musical called “Preppies.”  Judy sent a tape cassette of several of the songs to a friend in California, who, coincidentally, was the brother of co-creator of Cheers, James Burrows.  James, who was developing the show with the Charles brothers at the time, heard the tape, and liked the opening number, “People Like Us,” thinking that it could be the theme song for his new show.  He called Judy and told her, and she told Gary.  They were happy, but realized that they had a tough choice.  This song was already an important part of their play, and they couldn’t take it out to use elsewhere, so they agreed to write a new one for the show.  Judy quoted, “Now, it would be nice to be able to say that we went to the piano and promptly tossed off the theme to ‘Cheers’ as it is known today. In actuality, since they already wanted our other song, we did what any songwriter would do: we sat down and attempted to clone it.”  This second song was rejected, but the trio creators told the song writers not to be boxed into their original concept, to try new things that they felt might fit.  They wrote two more possibly-to-be-used themes.  They liked one of them so much, they wrote a much longer version, with verses which they “speculated on all sorts of life situations that might compel a person to take refuge at a place like Cheers.”  (Hint: One of these verses began with ‘Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee’s dead…”)  They immediately went out into a tiny eight-track studio, and made a piano-voice demo of the song.  If you haven’t guessed already, this song was “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” but it wasn’t how we knew it yet.

Singing the blues when the home teams lose

It’s a crisis in your life

On the run ‘cause all your girlfriends

Wanna be your wife

Wouldn’t you like to get away?...

 

This was the original first verse to the song.  If you can’t tell, they wrote it with Sam Malone as the inspiration (home team = sports, baseball/girlfriends = uh, girlfriends! lol).  However, the producers, who weren’t sure how this show would go, asked Judy and Gary to write more general lyrics.  Finally came “Making your way in the world today…”  Since there weren’t any real big stars in the show, they couldn’t get anyone famous to sing it, so they asked Gary, who sang the demo, to sing it for the show.  He did, and Theme 1.1 (on this webpage) was ready for the show.  The first 3 seasons (seasons 1-3) on NBC used this theme only, but though sometimes it may have seemed to be different.  That was only because the show was filmed on low-quality (cheap) tape, and in monaural sound, so the sound varied, sometimes sounding loud but muffled, or sometimes sounding clear but quiet, but it was always the same theme (usually sounding ‘flatter’ because it was in mono).

For season 4, since the show was to be filmed, then in stereo (but still on the low-quality tapes), they decided to rerecord the theme.  This became Theme 1.2 (on this webpage), probably the most known version.  An unknown time later, they recorded ‘the’ short theme.  All of these versions were later used in many other variations.  For details, check out the “Sounds and Explanations” page.

 

The song, with its series of infamous drawings and photographs, won an Emmy after season 1.  The song itself was also nominated, but didn’t win.

The original demo, today, has probably been lost, or at least in some Cheers archive hidden away somewhere.  The other possible-themes have also disappeared.  I have actually never heard of a musical called “Preppies,” and have never heard “People Like Us,” though now I want to!  Gary and Judy DID sing a majority of the song for the 200^th anniversary episode (but not all), and more on the post-finale Jay Leno show, but never sang the original first verse again.  So the story of the theme is a little long…but it’s what makes Cheers, Cheers.

Return to Homepage