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With a Little Help from My Friends
From Beatles Wiki - Interviews, Music, Beatles Quotes
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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. |
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—John Lennon, 1970
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The song ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ was written specifically for me, but they had one line that I wouldn’t sing. It was ‘What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and throw tomatoes at me?’ I said, ‘There’s not a chance in hell am I going to sing this line,’ because we still had lots of really deep memories of the kids throwing jelly beans and toys on stage; and I thought that that if we ever did get out there again, I was not going to be bombarded with tomatoes. |
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—Ringo Starr, The Beatles Anthology, p.242, 2000
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This was written out at John's house in Weybridge for Ringo... I think that was probably the best of our songs that we wrote for Ringo actually. I remember giggling with John as we wrote the lines, 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine.' It could have been him playing with his willie under the covers, or it could have been taken on a deeper level. This is what it meant but it was a nice way to say it — a very non-specific way to say it. I always liked that. |
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—Paul McCartney, 1994
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It was Paul's idea. I think I helped with some of the words. In fact, I did. Hunter Davies was there when we did it and mentioned it in the book. 'What do you see when you turn out the light, I can't tell you but I know it's mine,' That was mine. |
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—John Lennon, 1980
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Even now, I just saw Mel Torme on TV the other day saying that 'Lucy' was written to promote drugs and so was 'A Little Help from My Friends' and none of them were at all — 'A Litte Help from My Friends' only says get high in it, it's really about a little help from my friends, it's a sincere message. |
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—John Lennon
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They knew it would be for the kids, a sing-along type of song. They thought the album was missing this sort of thing and I sat with them as they tried to get all the rhymes right. |
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—Hunter Davies, the Beatles authorized biographer, 1968
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The original line was, 'What would you do if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and throw a tomato at me,' and I would not sing that line. I hated that line, so I refused to sing it. Besides changing that line, it took a lot of coaxing from Paul to get me to sing that last note. I just felt that it was very high.' |
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—Ringo Starr
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John and Paul always wrote a song for Ringo on every album. 'With a Little Help from My Friends' proved to be that song. Paul wrote that and wrote it beautifully simple with just five notes. Terribly simple and terribly effective. |
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—George Martin
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