Think back to the first time you ever heard the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

Maybe you filed it under the long list of cheerful Fab Four pop hits with nonsensical lyrics — or maybe (depending on your age) you snickered or gasped at its sly drug references. If you’re a musician, maybe you thought it would be a fun song to cover someday.

If you’re in that latter group, we’re willing to bet, though, that your first thought wasn’t that the Beatles’ safe, family friendly bubblegum/skiffle/rockabilly classic would be far better if it was a throat-tearing, vulnerable call-and-response gospel catharsis, complete with organs and a backup choir.

This March 27 marks the 47th anniversary of Cocker’s celebrated performances at New York’s Fillmore East.

But that’s precisely what British singer Joe Cocker thought. And he parlayed his cover into the legendary Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, with a live album and concert movie to boot. This March 27 and 28 mark the 47th anniversary of Cocker’s celebrated performances at New York’s Fillmore East, from which the album and documentary film were produced.

Born John Robert Cocker in 1944 in Crookes, Sheffield, Cocker debuted under the name Vance Arnold in 1961. Despite heavy promotion of a debut single, his career faltered — but after a year’s hiatus, he returned to the stage in 1966 with his real name and a backup combo called the Grease Band.

Cocker’s seminal hit, his cover of “With a Little Help From My Friends,” debuted in 1968 and hit No. 1 on the British charts that November. He toured the U.S. the following year, slowly climbing the charts, until producer Denny Cordell convinced organizer Artie Kornfeld to book Cocker for the Woodstock festival in August 1969. And the rest, as they say, was history.

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The infamous festival had already far surpassed its intended attendance of 50,000 and boasted an audience of nearly 400,000 by the time Cocker and the Grease Band dropped in via helicopter, culminating their set with “A Little Help From My Friends.” Despite his guitarists’ ghastly, off-key falsetto rendition of the choir parts from the studio version, the crowd was electrified.

Cocker’s spastic, herky-jerky stage presence — he staggered and flailed around as if he was being tasered — just made him more endearing. It was Cocker’s voice that captured everyone, veering from a primal scream to a breathless, intimate croon in an instant and then accelerating back into a full-throated bellow, making the titanic venue feel as personal as a small club. “With a Little Help From My Friends” was chosen to appear in the live album and documentary film of the historic festival.

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Cocker wasn’t one to rest on his laurels. By the end of 1969, he parted ways with the Grease Band and hastily assembled a new band for Mad Dogs & Englishmen, a tour his management had scheduled to start in March, 1970. Tapping studio legend Leon Russell as music director, Cocker’s new ensemble was nothing if not ambitious, including multiple drummers, a horn section and a backup choir. Like Leon Russell, who helped launch Elton John’s career, Cocker welcomed the chance to share the spotlight and featured guest vocals from Russell in addition to Rita Coolidge, Don Preston, and Claudia Lennear.

Related: Remembering Rocker Leon Russell

Mad Dogs & Englishmen was a gamble; besides forming a new band and veering off in a new direction musically, Cocker radically edited his repertoire, including only four songs from his first two albums in most performances.

Thanks to Russell’s experience and Cocker’s peculiar genius at reimagining other artists’ music, the gamble paid off: Much of the tour’s material was straightforward cover material, but Cocker and Russell also transformed The Rolling Stones’ “Honky-Tonk Woman” from its low-down-and-dirty garage band roots into a rollicking jump blues crowd-pleaser. The Box Tops’ chart-topping, mellow cruising song, “The Letter,” became an almost unrecognizable razor-sharp jazz piece.

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By the time the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour, album, and movie were finished, “With a Little Help From My Friends” was, arguably, no longer a Beatles hit — it belonged to Cocker. Cocker’s version was the theme music for the TV series “The Wonder Years,” Cocker’s version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Beatles-based rock musical “Across the Universe” begins with the Beatles’ version — but ends with Cocker’s.

Even today, if you Google “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the first item you’ll see is a video of Cocker performing the tune.

It’s not uncommon for a song’s cover version to eclipse the original so thoroughly that only “Jeopardy!” contestants can remember who wrote it: Manfred Mann’s Earth Band transformed Bruce Springsteen’s “Blinded By the Light” from an incoherent word salad into the avant-garde art rock smash still in heavy rotation on classic rock stations today. Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” was a relatively obscure ballad until Jimi Hendrix came along. His soaring psychedelic interpretation nabbed No. 47 on Rolling Stone’s list of the top 500 rock songs of all time.

But Joe Cocker – who passed away in December 2014– remains the only artist who has ever managed to perform one of the Beatles’ songs better than the Beatles themselves. That uniqueness and artistic brilliance would seem unmatched in his career were it not for moves like the Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour — a rock tour that forged its own special path to success.