WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
"With a Little Help from My Friends" is a song by the Beatles, written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band issued worldwide in June 1967. English singer Joe Cocker's version of "With a Little Help from My Friends" was a radical re-arrangement of the original, in a slower, 6/8 meter, using different chords in the middle eight, and a lengthy instrumental introduction. Cocker performed the song at Woodstock in 1969, and that performance was included in the documentary film, Woodstock. This version gained even more fame when it was used as the opening theme song for the television series The Wonder Years. In 2001, Cocker's version of the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. (More from Wikipedia)
Barely one year later, in October 1968, Joe Cocker released a cover of "With a Little Help from My Friends" – a Number One single in the UK – which gets my vote as the most satisfying Beatles cover of all time. His version of the song is very different from how the Beatles performed it, and that is what covers should be as far as I am concerned. Joe Cocker is backed by a stellar band that includes Jimmy Page on guitar (the first Led Zeppelin album came out in the following year), B. J. Wilson of Procol Harum on drums, Chris Stainton on bass, and distinctive organ by Tommy Eyre. Cocker's frantic performance of the song was a highlight of the Woodstock film of the original Woodstock Music & Art Fair gathering in 1969.
(June 2015)
