With a Little Help from My Friends

With a Little Help from My Friends
The Beatles
publication	June 1, 1967
length	2 min 44 s
Genre (s)	Pop rock
Author (s)	Lennon / McCartney
album	Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

With a Little Help from My Friends ( German  "With a little help from my friends" ) is a song by the British rock band The Beatles . The second track on the LP Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was recorded on March 29-30, 1967 at Abbey Road Studios . The Lennon / McCartney composition was sung by Ringo Starr .

The song was mainly written in Lennon's mansion when Paul McCartney visited him there. They played the song on the piano and just sang phrases. The song initially had the working title Bad Finger Boogie . In search of a text, they also picked up suggestions from their friends who were present or leafed through magazines. The text and melody were created in a four-hour process. Some lines of text were later changed because Ringo Starr did not want to sing them like that.

Ringo Starr's relatively small vocal range was taken into account in this piece in a special way, as the song consists of only five adjacent notes. The only exception is the sixth note at the end of the song.

Cover versions

While the Beatles did not release the title as a single, three cover versions made it to first place on the British charts:

• Joe Cocker had a number one hit with it in 1968 , and his live version of the Woodstock Festival in 1969 is also famous . Cocker's version also served as the title track for the successful television series The Wonder Years .
• for the Scottish band Wet Wet Wet it was the first of three chart toppers in 1988
• the finalists of the casting show "Pop Idol" Sam and Mark had a mutual success in 2004

Other hit parade versions come from Joe Brown (UK # 32) and Young Idea (UK # 10), both in 1967, as well as a classic version by Steve Lee , Bo Katzman and John Brack (Switzerland # 18, 1999). There are other interpretations e.g. B. by the Bee Gees , Ike & Tina Turner , Puddle of Mudd , the New Seekers , Jeff Lynne and Santana . Barbra Streisand recorded a version for her album What About Today? on. This album was released in 1969. Toto played the song in the Cocker version in 1993 in honor of her late drummer Jeff Porcaro ; a recording of this can be found on their live album Absolutely Live . The German fun metal band Knorkator covered the title in 1999 on their album Hasenchartbreaker . A version in the arrangement for solo guitar by David Qualey can be found on his album unBEATabLE from 2004. In 2017 Tom Keifer released his version of the song as part of the deluxe version of his album The Way Life Goes .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ian MacDonald: Revolution in the Head . Chicago 2007, p. 246.