Working Class Hero - Ultimate Mix

This song caused a fair amount of controversy for John Lennon, as his detractors pointed out that he was raised in an upper-middle-class home by his aunt and had no right to call himself a working-class hero. In an interview with Rolling Stone just three days before his death, Lennon explained: "The thing about the 'Working Class Hero' song that nobody ever got right was that it was supposed to be sardonic - it had nothing to do with socialism, it had to do with 'If you want to go through that trip, you'll get up to where I am, and this is what you'll be.' Because I've been successful as an artist, and have been happy and unhappy, and I've been unknown in Liverpool or Hamburg and been happy and unhappy."

The final take as it appears on the album is actually a composite of two different performances done at two different studios. If you listen carefully (it might require headphones) you can clearly hear the sound of the guitar and vocals change where the edit was made about halfway through the song.

The word f--king appears twice in the lyrics. On the printed lyrics that came with the album, the word was obscured. Why did Lennon curse in the song? Yoko Ono explained in a 1998 interview with Uncut: "He told me, 'That's part of being working class. It won't be working class if what you say is all very clean and very proper."