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With a Little Help from My Friends
Composer(s) : Lennon and McCartney
Year : 1967
Chords/Tabs: With a Little Help from My Friends
Notes on "With A Little Help From Friends" (WALHFMF)
KEY E Major
METER 4/4
FORM Intro -> Verse -> Refrain -> Verse -> Refrain ->
Bridge -> Verse -> Refrain ->
Bridge -> Refrain -> Outro (w/complete ending)
GENERAL POINTS OF INTEREST
Style and Form
- The somewhat campy SPLHCB overture wisely procedes directly away to
an even more frankly campy, feel-good tune for the second track. People
take some time to warm up to room temperature and there is no sense putting
the make on them before they have done so. In other words, the likes
of
"Mr. Kite"
et al would be lost on your partner at this point, so
bide your time, eh?
- I think of WALHFMF as similar to
"Yellow Submarine" with its rather
purposefully over-simplified musical vocabulary, minus the special effects
but with a more advanced antiphonal vocal arrangement, and a MUCH more
serious lyrical subtext added. More on that later.
- The form is, yet again, "creatively derived" from standard pop song
formats, but is still unusual if you look at it closely. I was almost
going to combine what I've called here the Verse and the Refrain into
one 16-measure section; after all, we've seen other Beatles songs in
which the ending of the Verse has strong Refrain-like elements -- take
a look at "Please Please Me,"
"I Want to Hold Your Hand," and
"Ticket to Ride."
I decided against this parsing of the form because of the
way the final Refrain follows the second bridge all by its lonesome.
Melody and Harmony
- The harmony of the verse and bridge is from relatively straightforward
E Major chords, though the intro, outro, and refrain provide modal
contrast.
- The verse and refrain melody stays within a very small range of
five notes. The bridge opens up the top half of the octave range,
though the antiphonal "answering" part keeps reminding you of the
melodic floor of the other two sections.
Arrangement
- This is one of the more simply fabricated tracks on _Sgt. Pepper_ in
terms of a relative absence of new-fangled techniques, though Lewisohn
points out some details that you'd otherwise probably never notice:
- the backing track started with Paul on piano and John on
cowbell, (yes, Ringo on drums and George on lead guitar)
- George Martin supplies a Hammond organ behind the intro
- the bass and tambourine were added later along with the vocals
- the crowd noise (taken from Beatles-at-Hollywood-Bowl) is cranked
up at the start in order to "mask" the edit between the two tracks
- and the song was tentatively titled "Bad Finder Boogie" at some point.
But all that color announcer/side-bar minutiae notwithstanding, STILL,
the instrumental arrangement is rather simple.
- The vocal arrangement, though, shows a marked step forward in terms of
antiphonal sophistication, not just in terms of variety, but also in terms
of the subtle mix of declarative and interogative, both rhetorical and
otherwise. At the very least, when you hum this song to yourself, you
sing it as a single melody, not quite noticing how the single thread in
the actual song is divided between Solo and Chorus:
- Intro: Chorus
- Verse: Solo
- Refrain: Solo, but with Chorus joining on the 3rd repeat
- Verse: Solo alternates with Chorus (both ask quetion)
- Refrain: All (though Solo starts each line by himself) (6 measures!)
- Bridge: Chorus (questions) alternates with Solo (answering)
- Verse: Chorus (question) alternates with Solo (answering)
- Refrain: All (though Solo starts each line by himself)
- Bridge: Chorus (questions) alternates with Solo (answering)
- Refrain: All (though Solo starts each line by himself)
- Outro: Solo with Chorus adding counterpoint
SECTION-BY-SECTION WALKTHROUGH
Intro
- In context of the album, you experience this intro as though it is
literally *on* the boundary between the title track and our current
song. It's only in consideration of the way this phrase recurs for
the outro that makes you realize how it really *is* part of the
current song; oh, you never noticed this outro repeats at the end? :-)
|C |D |E |- |
E: flat-VI flat-VII I
Verse
- The verse is eight measures long and consists of a single phrase
repeated twice:
------------------------------ 2X -------------------------------
|E B |f# |- B |E |
I V ii V I
- The prominent bassline prances around all over the place, but never
so much that you lose your clear sense of the simple harmony outlined
above.
Refrain
- The first refrain is eight measures long and consists of a short,
2-measure phrase repeated VERBATIM three times in a row, followed by
a final two measures without voices; the latter, well needed in order to
balance out the effect of the three-time literal repeat:
--------------- 3X --------------
|D A |E |B |- |
flat-VII IV I V
- The subsequent refrains omit the final two measures, at which point,
it is more important to keep the pace going than to provide an oasis
from possible over-repetition.
Bridge
- The bridge finally opens up the melodic range dramatically ("could it
BE anybody) and provides something akin to a hinted-at modulation in
order to relieve the tedium of being tightly tethered to the key of E:
------------------------------- 2X ------------------------------
|c# |F# |E D |A |
ii V-of-V I flat-VII IV
- The hint of a modulation is toward the key of V (B Major), though if
you've been following our studies, it should come as no surprise to find
the Beatles leaving a V-of-V chord begging (on my bended knees) for
some kind of fulfillment, only to be deferred.
Outro
- The outro splices one last iteration of the reprise to a disguised
repeat of the intro:
|D |A |C |D |E |
flat-VII IV flat-VI flat-VII I
- The move from A to C provides a nice cross-relation, and overall, the
modal shift at the very end here is welcome in light of the way in
which most of the body of the song is so tightly bound to E Major.
- The presentation of the final three chords in 6/4 ("second inversion")
is a novel touch.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
- IMHO, the subtext of this song is at least as precociously prescient
with respect to themes of what are called nowadays "mid life crisis"
as is that of "And Your Bird Can Sing."
- Note the opening sensitity to, and fear of, rejection; the willingness to
allow friends to at least partially fill the place of lover. Deepest and
most enigmatic of all is the fine distinction drawn in the bridge between
"need" and "want" of a lover, especially with respect to the relative
interchangibility or not of one's ultimate.
- With respect to *needing* anybody, the answer is "I need somebody
to love." But with respect to can it *be* anybody, the answer is
"I *want* somebody to love." This won't be the first time I've
quoted Zimmy, but you've gotta dig the parallelism:
"Ruthie said come see here in her Honky Tonk Lagoon
Where I can watch her waltz for free beneath the Panamanian moon.
But I said, oh come on now, you know you know about my debutante.
And she said, your debutante knows what you need, but I know what
you want."
And, if you want a Zimmy quote that comes even closer to our Boys
take,
"Like it was written on my soul,
From Me To You."
Regards,
Alan (awp@world.std.com)
---
"Ginger, Eddy Fallon, and Ding Dong." ... "Yeah? And they're your mates,
are they? 121095#107
---
Copyright (c) 1995 by Alan W. Pollack
All Rights Reserved
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Ook op Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band:
Ook op Yellow Submarine Soundtrack:
Ook op 1967-1970:
(c) 2024 Serge Girard
(c) Alan Aldrigde, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics