"With a Little Help from My Friends" (originally titled A Little Help from My Friends) is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, released on The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The song was written for and sung by Beatles drummer Ringo Starr.
The song was written specifically as Starr's track for the album. It was briefly called Bad Finger Boogie, later the inspiration for the band Badfinger. Lennon and McCartney deliberately wrote a tune with a limited range - except for the last note, which McCartney worked closely with Starr to achieve. Speaking in the Anthology, Starr insisted on changing the first line which originally was "What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you throw ripe tomatoes at me?" He changed the lyric 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 pelted with them at all of their live performances.)
The song's composition is unusually well documented as Hunter Davies was present and described the writing process in the Beatles' official biography.
The song reads like a conversation between the singer and a group of people. For example, "Would you believe in a love at first sight/Yes I'm certain that it happens all the time". In the preceding quotation from the lyrics, the other three Beatles sing the first line, with Starr answering in the following one.
The band started recording the song the same day that they posed for the Sgt. Pepper album cover (30 March 1967). The session finished at 7:30 the following morning.
[stolen from http://en.wikipedia.org/w iki/With_A_Little_Help_Fr om_My_Friends]
