Songfacts®:

• "Whatever gets you through the night" is the same opening line as the opening line of John Lennon's "Whatever Gets You Thru The Night," which had been released as a single a year earlier. The song's second line is also very similar to Lennon's, with Young singing "That's all right with me" versus Lennon's "It's all right."
• "Drive Back" is a breakup song with the requisite sorrow, but also with a distinct angry streak. In the chorus Young sings balefully to an unnamed woman:
  
  Drive back to your old town
  I wanna wake up with no one around
  Drive back to your old town
  
  Perhaps the most poetically interesting line of the song is:
  
  If somebody
  Is haunting your mind
  Look in my eyes
  Let me hide you
• The song has piano, but it's easy to miss it beneath the overpowering guitar.