With a Little Help from My Friends

"With a Little Help from My Friends" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, from their 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and sung by drummer Ringo Starr (as Sgt. Pepper singer Billy Shears), his lead vocal for the album. As the second track on the album, it segues from the applause of the title track. A subsequent recording of the track by Joe Cocker became a success in 1968—topping the UK Singles Chart—and an anthem for the Woodstock era. In 1978, the Beatles' recording, paired with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", was reissued as a single, and peaked at number 63 in Britain and number 71 in the United States. Starr has regularly performed the song in concert as a solo artist. The song was ranked number 311 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Background and composition Lennon and McCartney finished writing the song in mid-March 1967, written specifically as Starr's track for the album. McCartney said: "It was pretty much co-written, John and I doing a work song for Ringo, a little craft job." In 1970 Lennon stated: "Paul had the line about 'a little help from my friends.' He had some kind of structure for it, and we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty from his original idea.", but in 1980 Lennon said: "This is Paul, with a little help from me. 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you, but I know it's mine...' is mine." It was briefly called "Bad Finger Boogie" (later the inspiration for the band name Badfinger), supposedly because Lennon composed the melody on a piano using his middle finger after having hurt his forefinger. Lennon and McCartney deliberately wrote a tune with a limited rangeexcept for the last note, which McCartney worked closely with Starr to achieve. In The Beatles Anthology, Starr explained that he insisted on changing the first linewhich originally was "What would you think if I sang out of tune? Would you throw ripe tomatoes at me?"so that fans would not throw tomatoes at him should he perform it live (in the early days, after George Harrison made a passing comment that he liked Jelly Babies, the group was showered with them at all of their live performances).