With a Little Help From My Friends
by Joe Cocker
- 72
- BPM
- A major
- Key
- 11B
- Camelot
- 32
- Danceability
- 28
- Acousticness
The Beatles began recording "With a Little Help from My Friends" on March 29, 1967, the day before they posed for the Sgt. Pepper cover. They did 10 takes and finished at 5:45 in the morning. Ringo Starr played drums, Paul McCartney piano, George Harrison lead guitar and John Lennon a cowbell. At dawn Starr trudged up the stairs to go home, but the others talked him into singing his lead vocal on the spot, and they stood around the microphone for moral support. The next day they added tambourine, backing vocals, bass and more electric guitar.
Lennon and McCartney finished writing it in mid-March 1967 as Starr's track. It was briefly called "Bad Finger Boogie", which later inspired the name of Badfinger. Starr insisted on changing the first line, which had asked if fans would throw ripe tomatoes. It now ends with "walk out on me". He did not want tomatoes thrown at him live. After the song came out in the United States, Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew pushed to have it banned, believing it was about drug use.
Joe Cocker recorded it in 1968 and took it to number one on the UK Singles Chart. It became an anthem of the Woodstock era.
With a Little Help From My Friends runs at 72 BPM, the tempo of soul, trip-hop and half-time hip-hop. In classical terms it sits in largo territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 3.33 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 833 ms. It is in A major, Camelot 11B, which shares its notes with F# minor and mixes cleanly with D major and E major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.