In "Watching the Wheels" Lennon addresses those who were confounded by his "househusband" years, 1975–1980, during which he retired from the music industry to concentrate on raising his son Sean with Ono.

[2] Though most of the musicians on the album were well-known and oft-recorded session players, the dulcimer was played by Matthew Cunningham.

Douglas invited Cunningham to the session after hearing him busking on the streets of New York with a hammer dulcimer.

Patrick Wolf re-arranged the song for a performance at Yoko Ono's Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre.

In 2020, a cover of the song by Chris Cornell, a huge fan of John Lennon, was included on his posthumous album No One Sings Like You Anymore, Vol.