"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" was one of many songs written by John Lennon in or shortly after the Beatles' return from Rishikesh in India,[3][4] where they studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

[16] In author Ian MacDonald's view, the Beatles' recording of "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey" serves as a "further stage in the post-psychedelic re-emergence of Lennon the rock-and-roller, signalled in 'Hey Bulldog'".

[18] The dates were the Beatles' first full group sessions since early June, as Harrison had travelled to California to film his segments in the Ravi Shankar documentary Raga and Ringo Starr, eager to escape the acrimony within the band, chose to accompany him.

[26][27] "Everybody's Got Something to Hide" was sequenced as the fourth track on side three of the double LP, between "Mother Nature's Son" and Lennon's rebuke of the Maharishi, "Sexy Sadie".

[28][29] Among contemporary reviews, Record Mirror commented on the "strange vibrations" provided by Lennon on the album and described the song as worthy of "the oddest title of the year award".

The writer added: "Full of take-it-easies and woven with a strong vintage Beatles backing, it moves with lines like 'The higher you fly the deeper you go' and 'Your inside is out and your outside is in' ... but the end takes the cake.

Perhaps I should have said, "Your inside is like a whale juice dripping from the fermented foam of the teeny-boppers’ VD in Times Square as I injected my white clown face with heroin and performed in red-leather knickers."

[32] Reviewing for Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner lauded the album as a representation of "the history and synthesis of Western music",[33] and in "Everybody's Got Something to Hide" he welcomed how "all the old elements of the Beatles are brought back, right up to date, including use of all the old fashions and conventions in such a refreshingly new manner."

[34] Melody Maker's Alan Walsh similarly dismissed the idea that the Beatles were merely "going backwards" and credited Lennon with being the main impetus for the album's "staple diet of rock".

Calling it an "explosion of blistering guitars and barking vocals", Fricke concluded: "The song is a Lennon salute to the joys of 1950s rock & roll animalism.

But its locomotive heart is Harrison's whirl-around guitar figure, played with ferocious attitude against Lennon's crisp strum and the incessant clang of a hand bell.