"Mother's Little Helper" is a song by the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 rock and roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 band The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...

. It first appeared as the opening track to the United Kingdom version of their 1966 album Aftermath.

It was released as a single in the United States and peaked at # 8 on the Billboard Singles Charts in 1966. The B-side "Lady Jane

Lady Jane

"Lady Jane" is a Rolling Stones' song written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards featured on their 1966 album Aftermath.In America Lady Jane was the B-side to "Mother's Little Helper", but "Lady Jane" reached #24 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart...

" peaked at # 24.

Written by Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger

Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....

 and Keith Richards

Keith Richards

Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...

, "Mother's Little Helper" was recorded in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 from 3–8 December 1965. The song deals with the darker perspective of the use of barbiturates, specifically Nembutal (pentobarbitone), among housewives.
Toward the end of the song, the mothers are warned:
The song is based around folksy chords and an eastern-flavoured guitar riff

RIFF

The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....

 sounding like a sitar

Sitar

The 'Tablaman' is a plucked stringed instrument predominantly used in Hindustani classical music, where it has been ubiquitous since the Middle Ages...

. Keith Richards has been quoted that he remembers the signature riff as being slide

Slide (guitar technique)

A slide is a legato guitar technique where the player sounds one note, and then moves their finger up or down the fretboard to another fret. If done properly, the other note should also sound....

 played on an an electric 12-string. It has also been documented that it was played by Brian Jones on his Vox 12-string Mando-Guitar . Richards also remembers the ending of the song being the idea of Bill Wyman

Bill Wyman

Bill Wyman is an English musician best known as the bass guitarist for the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1992. Since 1997, he has recorded and toured with his own band, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings...

, whose driving bass is a distinctive feature of the studio track.

Cover versions

Over the years the song has been recorded by many notable artists, including Gene Latter, Tesla

Tesla (band)

Tesla is an American hard rock band formed in Sacramento, California in 1984. They have sold 14 million albums in the United States.-Formation and Mechanical Resonance :...

 on their 1990 live acoustic album Five Man Acoustical Jam

Five Man Acoustical Jam

-Charts:AlbumSingles and Album Tracks...

, Liz Phair

Liz Phair

Phair's entry into the music industry began when she met guitarist Chris Brokaw, a member of the band Come. Brokaw and Phair moved to San Francisco together, and Phair tried to become an artist there...

 for the 2005 soundtrack

Music from and Inspired by Desperate Housewives

Music from and Inspired by Desperate Housewives is the soundtrack to the ABC television series, Desperate Housewives. It was released alongside the series in 2005 by Hollywood Records and distributed by Universal Music. As the album title implies, much of the music on the album was inspired by the...

 to the television series Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...

, and Sum 41

Sum 41

Sum 41 is a Canadian rock band from Ajax, Ontario. The band was formed in 1996 and currently consists of members Deryck Whibley , Tom Thacker , Jason McCaslin and Steve Jocz .In 1999, the band signed an international record deal with Island Records...

 for their acoustic performance on the Sessions@AOL

Sessions@AOL

Sessions@AOL is a special avenue of programming conducted by AOL Music. Originally an AOL exclusive, Sessions@AOL can now also be seen as an avenue for non-AOL users as well. Sessions@AOL consists of exclusive and intimate performances of songs by popular musicians, with likes of bands such as...

 "Sessions Under Cover" series in 2007.

The Go-Go's covered the song on their "Ladies Gone Wild" tour in 2011.

In other media

• The Simpsons
  The Simpsons
  The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
  
  episode "Brother's Little Helper
  Brother's Little Helper
  "Brother's Little Helper" is the second episode of The Simpsons 11th season. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 3, 1999. In the episode, Bart floods the school gymnasium, which prompts the school's principal Seymour Skinner to diagnose Bart with ADD...
  
  " is a pun on the song title. In the episode, Bart Simpson
  Bart Simpson
  Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
  
   is given Focusyn, which also references the "drugs content" of "Mother's Little Helper".
• The song is referenced by a pilsner brewed by Oskar Blues Brewery's under the name Mama's Little Yella Pils.