Track 8, Side 1: With a Little Help From My Friends by Joe Cocker

Cover songs, The Wonder Years, and seeking help when you need it...

My dad taught me every epic journey deserves a great soundtrack. My PalliMed Mixtape is the story of my Palliative Medicine Fellowship year, told in 15 songs.

(Joe Cocker at Woodstock)

With A Little Help From My Friends on Apple Music

I have mixed feelings about cover songs.

I do not, with regularity, celebrate the cover versions of a song more than the original. To birth a song, to bring it into the world—surely this is a greater accomplishment, generally speaking, than re-recording a song that already exists. Still, some great songs beg to be re-recorded.

Did the world need Alison Krauss’ version of When You Say Nothing At All just six years after Keith Whitley had given us his? Maybe not, but I do think we are better off for it. What about Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower? Even Bob Dylan had to stand back in amazement at that one. How about what Tina Turner did with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary. Are you going to argue with Tina?

(Photo: biography.com)

While my biases skew anti-cover, I have to admit that some cover songs do outshine their original counterparts.

Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U easily eclipses Prince’s. Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s Pancho and Lefty manages to elevate and transcend the late, great Townes Van Zandt’s. And, in my humble opinion, Joe Cocker’s cover of With a Little Help From My Friends absolutely blows the Beatles’ recording out of the water. 

My kids disagree with me on this. They prefer the Beatles’ original. I’m convinced the only possible explanation for their wrong opinion on this is that they haven’t grown up watching The Wonder Years.

For those who weren’t there or don’t remember, The Wonder Years was a thirty-minute prime-time coming-of-age TV family drama that aired on ABC from 1988 to 1993. It followed the trials and triumphs of an average 1960s suburban kid, Kevin Arnold, played by Fred Savage, a child-acting savant.

My family (and the rest of America) watched this show religiously, and we all saw ourselves in the adolescent Kevin as he navigated the dangers of school, acne, first kisses, and fierce friendships. Amazingly, the show featured poignant and reflective narration provided by actor Daniel Stern, aka this guy from the movie Home Alone:

The show was dynamite. It had humor and heart. It had nostalgia and yearning. It had profundity and pathos. It also had the greatest opening credits to ever grace a color TV.

The credits featured grainy old 8mm home video footage of happy scenes of the Arnold family from yesteryear—Kevin playing street football and with his friends and brother, the neighborhood crew celebrating at a backyard birthday barbecue, lastly the whole family gathering and smiling for the camera in front of their mid-century single-story home and boxy family sedan. Over all of this played Joe Cocker’s gritty cover of With A Little Help From My Friends. To this day, I cannot separate the song from the show. Both struck a powerful chord in my adolescent heart that still resonates.

Still not convinced of Joe Cocker’s cover? Listen to the two versions back to back if you must, and then tell me which song moves you more. The Beatles’ song plays very steady and straightforward, very balanced and neat. We hear Ringo’s droll delivery of the verses and chorus and the perfectly constructed harmonies that support him. It’s a pleasant, nice tune delivered by the Fab Four in an orderly manner consistent with their full Sgt. Peppers’ regalia.

Now listen to Joe Cocker’s recording. There is nothing steady or straightforward about it. A quiet buildup of drums and organ to open the song leads to an unexpected outburst of cascading notes screaming out of the electric guitar. You can feel the emotion each time these notes fall down. Stripped-down verses with gentle singing from Joe steadily give way to Joe’s wailing and growling that grows wilder with each subsequent chorus. By the end of the song he sounds half-crazed! It’s not a “nice tune” at all—it’s a cry for help!

Joe Cocker’s is the version I want on this mixtape. I think it’s the version Kevin Arnold would want, too. The yearning, the desperation, the loss, the longing, the pleas for help—these are the waters I swim in. In Joe Cocker we find a man desperate for the help of his friends, and who may need more than just a little of it. When I say I need a little help from my friends, I mean it, like Joe seemed to mean it.

I have learned in the past couple of years just how important it is to ask for that help, to admit that I don’t have all the answers, and to lean on those around me. I am not an island. My friends and I in healthcare have hit lows in recent years we never expected—workplace violence, career burnout, isolation and disillusionment run rampant. Physician suicide rates are routinely rated higher than those of any other profession.

But the lows can happen to any of us, healthcare worker or not. Life is hard. Bad things happen. We have all been through the great collective trauma of the pandemic, and the mental health impacts of this event should not be understated. How great that seeking help for mental health is at last being normalized and de-stigmatized! We’ve all got to ask for the help we need so we can hold each other up.

I’ve been held up by a great team this year. In palliative medicine, just as in emergency medicine (and in so many other fields of work), our team is everything.  We’ve got to check in on each other, vent to each other, laugh with each other, and sometimes cry with each other.  The work this year would not be possible without my co-fellow, my amazing attendings, our team of incredible nurses and nurse practitioners, our chaplains, our social workers.  On days when I feel like I don’t want to keep going, I look around and can say to myself:

I get by with a little help from my friends / Gonna try with a little help from my friends.

So ends Side 1 of My PalliMed Mixtape. We’ll be back before too long to flip it over to Side 2.

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Tell me Crash Cart Campfire friends:

• What cover songs, in your humble opinion, are better than the originals?

• Do you have a hard time asking for help like I do? We all need help. If you need help now, please reach out to someone! 988 is a national crisis hotline available to all, like 911 but for mental health.

• What’s on your mixtape?