“Through the years, you’ve never let me down,” Kenny Rogers sang on his 1981 single “Through the Years.”
The ballad — about a longtime couple who’ve stuck together through thick and thin — became one of Rogers’ career-defining songs.
You are viewing: Who Wrote Through The Years
“You turned my life around/ the sweetest days I’ve found, I’ve found with you/ through the years.”
Those lines came from the pen of songwriter Marty Panzer. When he went over to collaborator Steve Dorff’s house for dinner, he showed Dorff the lyrics in progress. They rushed over to the piano, and the rest is history.
Dorff shared the story behind the song to Bart Herbison of Nashville Songwriters Association International.
Bart Herbison: Through the years, we’ve all laughed and cried and enjoyed the soundtrack to our lives that you wrote. But that’s the story behind the song this week for The Tennessean, the great Kenny Rogers hit. You wrote it with Marty Panzer. Take us back. Do you remember the day?
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Steve Dorff: I remember it like it was yesterday. Because all these songs have great stories, and the fine line between incredible success and dismal failure, which I’ve experienced a lot of. But (with) “Through the Years” — true story — Marty and I had just met and we had written maybe two songs together. We invited him over for dinner one night. He came over and had a little brown envelope. I said, “What’s in the envelope?” He says, “A new lyric I wanted to show you.”
I yelled to my wife at the time, Nancy, “How long till dinner?” And she said, “Oh, about 15 minutes.” I said, “Oh cool, let me see it.” And he pulls this thing out.
As Marty always does, he reads me the lyric before he gives it to me. … 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.”
We go to the piano. I wrote it in 15 minutes.
BH: Before dinner. Seriously?
SD: Yeah. … We had a couple of big artists pass on it before Kenny got ahold of it. And that’s a whole ‘nother story.
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BH: Well, let’s hear that story.
SD: Well, the way it’s been told to me, by two different people, I’ve heard four different versions. But I’ll tell you my version that’s in my book. Lionel Richie had heard the song from the president, Jim Mazza, of then Liberty Records. And Lionel loved the song and wanted to cut it. He was also producing Kenny Rogers. They had just come off “Lady,” which was arguably one of the biggest monster hits of that year. Kenny was arguably one of the biggest artists on the planet. … Mazza tells me that he pitched the song to Kenny and Kenny passed. Lionel told me that they were having a song meeting and Kenny was not digging anything that they were being played that day. And 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.”
He started to play my demo, “Through the Years.” Kenny’s wife at the time was coming through the room at Kenny’s house, and she heard the chorus and walked over to Kenny and said, “You’re recording that one.”
And they did.
BH: I can only imagine the people that have come up to you through the years saying how that song touched them.
SD: I was at some kind of an event and I played “Through the Years.” I closed my show with it. There was a cocktail hour afterwards and a woman came over to me and she said, “Can I tell you how much that song means to me?” I said, “Oh, thank you.” She said, “No, no, you don’t understand. My mother, who we recently lost, that was her favorite, favorite song of all time. She used to sing it every day to us.” And the lyric is on her gravestone. I grabbed two glasses of red wine off the waiter that was passing by. I said, “Let’s drink to mom.”
About the series
In partnership with Nashville Songwriters Association International, the “Story Behind the Song” video interview series features Nashville-connected songwriters discussing one of their compositions. For full video interviews with all of our subjects, visit www.tennessean.com/music.
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Category: WHO
