By 1981, New York songwriter Gary Portnoy had already written songs for
Air Supply ("
I'll Never Get Enough of You") and
Dolly Parton ("Say Goodnight"). One night in the summer of that same year, his friend Judy Hart happened to be seated next to a Broadway producer at dinner. Upon finding out that Hart was working for a music publisher, he asked her if she could recommend someone to compose the score for a new musical he was producing. On a whim, Hart, who had never written a song, approached Portnoy, who had never written for the theater. Together they set out to compose the words and music for the musical named
Preppies. In the spring of 1982, Judy, now using her full married name of Judy Hart-Angelo, sent a tape of
Preppies opening number "People Like Us" to a friend in California, who then passed it on to television producers
Glen and Les Charles. Upon hearing it they each felt that with a lyric re-write "People Like Us" would be the perfect theme song for their upcoming NBC sitcom,
Cheers. Upon learning that "People Like Us" was legally bound to the musical
Preppies, the Charles Brothers asked Portnoy and Hart-Angelo to take a shot at composing a theme specifically for
Cheers. The song that resulted, "My Kind of People", was somewhat of a reworked version of "People Like Us". It was subsequently rejected. Portnoy and Hart-Angelo then wrote and submitted two more potential themes for
Cheers. One of them, entitled "Another Day", contained a lyric line "There are times when it's fun to take the long way home" that greatly appealed to the Charles brothers. But overall, the song missed the mark and was passed over. The fourth song began with a catchy intro followed by simple alternating chords on a piano. The opening verse lines, both musically and lyrically, were something of a lament. The verse then transitioned into a soaring refrain that seemed to capture the essence of why people might want to go to a place like "Cheers"—a place "Where Everybody Knows Your Name". The two songwriters recorded a simple piano/voice demo of the new song for the Cheers producers. Upon hearing it, the Charles Brothers gave it their stamp of approval, and once Portnoy and Hart-Angelo had complied with a request for a few lyric changes intended to broaden the song's appeal to a more general audience, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" was officially designated the "Theme from
Cheers". The original opening verse, was changed to After several months of mulling over possible outside singers, the producers eventually asked
Gary Portnoy to record the vocal for the opening credits of their new series. (The chorus of the song is six of Portnoy's vocals that he
recorded one on top of the other to create the "group sound" of the hook.) It was also decided to maintain the simple feel of the New York demo in the TV version by keeping the number of instruments to a minimum. The finalized version of the
Cheers theme song was recorded on August 13, 1982, at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles, California. ==Accolades==