Cultural References
The Joe Cocker version was used as the title music for the 1988–1993 television series The Wonder Years. "With a Little Help from My Friends" was played as wake-up music on Space Shuttle Mission STS-61.
To date, Starr has closed every concert with each version of his All-Starr Band with this song. After he is done singing, Starr tells the audience "Peace and Love...Peace and Love is the only way" and good night, then walks off the stage. Since 2008, the band segued right into "Give Peace a Chance", during which Starr comes back onstage, then walks off again. He closes with this because he has a lot of help from his friends in his shows.
At the 2006 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the characters from the Cartoon Network show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends sang the song on their parade float.
McCartney and Starr performed this song for the first time together at the David Lynch Foundation Benefit Concert in the Radio City Music Hall, New York on 4 April 2009. Though, the song had been performed once with George Harrison at the Prince's Trust Concert in 1987.
The cult PBS film The Lathe of Heaven (from 1980) uses the original recording of the song. The main character (George Orr), who can manipulate reality with his dreams, comes upon a 45 of the song at a novelty shop run by an alien. The alien hands George the 45 saying "Help is available." The song plays in the soundtrack and morphs into a synthesizer version. The film was out of circulation for over 20 years. When it was finally re-aired on PBS and released on DVD in 2001, many fans were upset that the original Beatles recording was replaced by a singer with an acoustic guitar. This was due to changes in publishing rights that have occurred since 1980 involving the dissolution of The Beatles' original Northern Songs and the acquisition by Sony/ATV (party owned by the Jackson family).
Read more about this topic: With A Little Help From My Friends
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“They’re semiotic phantoms, bits of deep cultural imagery that have split off and taken on a life of their own, like those Jules Verne airships that those old Kansas farmers were always seeing.... Semiotic ghosts. Fragments of the Mass Dream, whirling past in the wind of my passage.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)