That was my song. When there was no Beatles and no group, I just had it around. It was my effort as a kind of blues originally, and then I wrote the middle-eight just to stick it in the album when it came out years later. The first part had been written before Hamburg even. It was one of my ‘first’ attempts at a song.

— John Lennon, 1980

We worked on it together, but it was John’s idea. When I look back at some of these lyrics, I think, ‘Wait a minute. What did he mean? 'I call your name but you’re not there.’ Is it his mother? His father? I must admit I didn’t really see that as we wrote it because we were just a couple of young guys writing. You didn’t look behind it at the time, it was only later you started analyzing things.

— Paul McCartney, Many Years from Now