McCartney co-wrote this song with Elvis Costello, who recalled to Mojo magazine August 2011: "I had a fair opening statement and all these images. It was from a real thing, my grandmother's funeral. It was sort of serious. He (McCartney) said, 'Yes, that's all good, all those images.' But quite often when you're writing a song about something personal, what it means to you can sometimes get in the way of what it can mean to somebody else. It needed a release. He said, 'It needs something like this…' and he just sat down and played the chorus. It was sort of like 'Let It Be,' the creation of a semi-secular gospel song. It was quite shocking when he did that bit. Then when you realise that's what he does. Then he sung the hell out of it. That's him, really."
Nicky Hopkins played the piano. Hopkins, a prolific session performer on cuts from The Who and the Rolling Stones, was one of the Beatles' go-to keyboardists.
This was used in McCartney's 1984 movie, Give My Regards to Broad Street.
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