Mother

The lyrics address both of Lennon's parents. The track opens with a funeral bell tolling four times and ends with Lennon repeating "Mama don't go, daddy come home", louder each time, until he screams the line as the song fades out. He wrote it after primal therapy with Arthur Janov. Lennon referred to the whole album by this opening song.

A single edit was issued in the United States on 28 December 1970, backed with Yoko Ono's "Why". It runs 1:41 shorter than the album track, with a quicker fade-out and no opening bells. It peaked at number 43 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 12 in Canada. Andy Gray of the NME wrote of the album track that he had rarely heard so much anguish and suffering put into a track. A live version from the 30 August 1972 Madison Square Garden concert is on Live in New York City, and an unused take 91 plays over the final scene of the 2009 film Nowhere Boy.