WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

"'With a Little Help from My Friends'" (originally titled ''A Little Help from My Friends'') is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, released on The Beatles album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' in 1967. The song was written for and sung by Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.

Contents

Origins

Billy Shears

Cover interpretations

Joe Cocker version

Wet Wet Wet version

Track listings

Sergio Mendes version

Cultural legacy

Notes

External links

Origins

The song was written specifically as Starr's track for the album. It was briefly called ''Bad Finger Boogie'', later the inspiration for the band Badfinger. Lennon and McCartney deliberately wrote a tune with a limited range - except for the last note, which McCartney worked closely with Starr to achieve. Speaking in the Anthology, Starr insisted on changing the first line which originally was ''"What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you throw ripe tomatoes at me?"'' He changed the lyric so that fans would not throw tomatoes at him should he perform it live. (In the early days, after George made a passing comment that he liked jelly babies, the group was pelted with them at all of their live performances.)^[1]
The song's composition is unusually well documented as Hunter Davies was present and described the writing process in the Beatles' official biography.
The song reads like a conversation between the singer and a group of people. For example, ''"Would you believe in a love at first sight/Yes I'm certain that it happens all the time"''. In the preceding quotation from the lyrics, the other three Beatles sing the first line, with Starr answering in the following one.
The band started recording the song the same day that they posed for the Sgt. Pepper album cover (30 March 1967). The session finished at 7:30 the following morning.

Billy Shears

'Billy Shears' was Starr's alias on the Beatles' 1967 album ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.'' Billy Shears is mentioned in the title song and, implicitly, as the singer of the segued-into "With a Little Help from My Friends." The cheering between the songs was taken from stock sound effects at the EMI studios. They had stopped touring by then.

Cover interpretations

The song has been number one on the British singles charts three times; once when it was recorded by Joe Cocker in 1968, a second time when it was covered by Wet Wet Wet in 1988 and finally when it was sung by Sam and Mark in 2004. A second recording of Cocker singing the song was made at Woodstock in 1969 and can be seen in the documentary film about the concert, "3 Days of Peace and Music". The drummer on the 1968 Joe Cocker hit single version of the song was Procol Harum's B.J. Wilson. In 1976, Jeff Lynne of ELO recorded the song for the evanescent musical documentary ''All This and World War II''.
In 2007, Razorlight re-recorded the song for ''It Was 40 Years Ago Today'', a television film with contemporary acts recording the album's songs using the same studio, technicians and recording techniques as the original.

Joe Cocker version

Joe Cocker's version was a radical re-arrangement of the original, in a much slower blues tempo, in a different key, using different chords in the middle eight, and a lengthy instrumental introduction (featuring memorable guitar lines from Jimmy Page). It was used as the opening theme song of the American television series ''The Wonder Years''. This cover has become one of Joe Cocker's most famous songs. It was played during the Woodstock Festival. This is one of the few Beatles covers that the Beatles themselves reportedly loved.

Wet Wet Wet version

Wet Wet Wet's version was released on 1 May 1988. The proceeds from sales of the single, which spent four weeks at Number One in the UK chart, were around £600,000, all of which was donated to ChildLine, the UK-based charity for abused children. Billy Bragg's performance of "She's Leaving Home" was the B-side. Keeping his part of the deal, Bragg included "With a Little Help..." as the B-side on his "She's Leaving Home" single.

Track listings

'7":'
#"With a Little Help from My Friends"
#"She's Leaving Home" (performed by Billy Bragg)

Sergio Mendes version

Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 picked up the title line of the song and made their own jazz inspired tune at about the same time Joe Cocker did. The song, which goes by the same title became an instant hit.
The song also appears on the album ''Herb Alpert's Ninth'', rendered in the band's mariachi style.

Cultural legacy

It became well-known in the late 1980s and early 1990s when Cocker's cover version was the theme song for the television series ''The Wonder Years''.
The song is ranked #304 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The song was performed by the characters on the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends float in the 80th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Since it was public and mainly intended for children, they censored the line "''I get high with a little help from my friends''" by repeating the preceding line "''I get by with a little help from my friends''."
The title of the song gave inspiration for the title of a British reality television show 'With a little help from my friends'. In the show, numerous British celebrities would undertake a charitable task while enlisting help from their friends.
In the "English, Fitz, or Percy" episode of Prison Break, Micheal Scofield refers to this song when he says "with a little help from my friends"
The song also plays an integral part in the plot of the 1971 novel "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Notes

1. The Beatles, ''Anthology'', p. 242

External links

★ How B.J. Wilson Rescued a Classic Joe Cocker Track (page about B.J. Wilson and Joe Cocker's recording of the song)

★ ''The Beatles'', (1978), McGraw-Hill.