 Among Beatles biographers, Bruce Spizer attributes the commercial failure of Lomax's "great rock single" to the simultaneous release of "Hey Jude" and "Those Were the Days", while John Winn describes it as an "excellent debut" and "an inexplicable flop".Simon Leng opines that the song "just wasn't catchy enough" in Lomax's reading and views the Beatles' "garage rendition" as superior.Although he finds the musical arrangement and Lomax's singing slightly incongruous beside Harrison's philosophical lyrics, Ian Inglis recognises the track as "an early prototype of heavy metal, particularly in the interplay between drums and lead guitar and its relentless sequence of musical climaxes".