It started with a dinner invitation and an unseen lyric in a nondescript envelope. Fifteen minutes later, Steve Dorff and Marty Panzer had written a career-defining love song for Kenny Rogers.
However, it might not have happened if Rogers’ wife, Marianne, hadn’t overheard and stepped in.
Rogers included “Through the Years” on his Share Your Love album and released the love ballad in 1981.
Lyrics include: Through the years, you’ve never let me down/ You turned my life around, the sweetest days I’ve found/I’ve found with you through the years/I’ve never been afraid, I’ve loved the life we’ve made/ And I’m so glad I’ve stayed right here with you/ Through the years
“I realized that there were a hundred (if not a thousand) songs about falling in love, memorable affairs, losing love, regrets, and the pain of lost love,” Panzer says. “But… I couldn’t think of a song that spoke about the great joys and benefits of long-term relationships. The only relationships I knew and valued. That’s why I wrote the lyric to ‘Through The Years.’”
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A Lifetime in 15 Minutes
Dorff remembers writing the song like it was yesterday. He didn’t know Panzer well back then, and he invited him over to his house for dinner. He brought a little brown envelope with him, and Dorff asked what was inside. Panzer said it was a new lyric he wanted to show him.
Dorff yelled to ask his wife how much time they had before dinner. She said about 15 minutes. Dorff asked to see the lyrics, and Panzer removed them from the envelope.
“As Marty always does, he reads me the lyric before he gives it to me,” Dorff told NSAI’s Bart Herbison. “He’s like acting it out like a Shakespearean actor. As he’s reading me the chorus, I’m hearing the tune. So, I ripped it out of his hands, I said, ‘Great.’”
Dorff is a pianist. The men went to his piano and finished the song in the 15 minutes before dinner.
The song topped out at No. 12 on the charts, but it remains a staple of Rogers’ catalog decades later.
A couple of artists turned down the opportunity to record “Through the Years” before it got to Rogers. And if it wasn’t for one of them, he may not have cut it, either. Dorff said he’d heard four versions of the story from two different people, but he shared the version he used in his book.
From Lionel Richie to Kenny Rogers
According to Dorff, Lionel Richie had heard the song from Liberty Records president, Jim Mazza. Richie loved “Through the Years” and wanted to cut it, but he was also producing Rogers at the same time. They were on the heels of Rogers’ “Lady,” arguably one of the biggest hits of the year. Given the song’s success, Rogers’ career was also soaring. Mazza told Dorff he had already pitched Rogers the song, and Rogers had passed.
Richie told Dorff he and Rogers were having a song meeting at Rogers’ house, and Rogers wasn’t liking anything he heard.
“Lionel said, ‘Let me play something that I’m gonna record, and if you like it, at least I’ll have a better direction of where to go,’” Dorff said. “He started to play my demo, ‘Through the Years.’ Kenny’s wife at the time was coming through the room at Kenny’s house. She heard the chorus and walked over to Kenny and said, ‘You’re recording that one.’”
“You’re Recording That One”
Decades after the song’s release, Dorff said fans still comment on “Through the Years.” He closed an event with the ballad, and at the following cocktail hour, a woman asked if she could share how much it meant to her.
“No, no, you don’t understand,” she said. “My mother, who we recently lost, that was her favorite, favorite song of all time. She used to sing it every day to us.”
The lyric is on her gravestone.
“I grabbed two glasses of red wine off the waiter that was passing by,” he said. “I said, ‘Let’s drink to mom.’”
(Photo by David Redfern/Redferns)
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