The Beatles didn’t always get it right first time. When writing or recording songs, they quite often used working titles instead of the ones now familiar to millions of listeners.
These titles were often closely related to the final version. Several times, however – particularly with George Harrison’s songs – a simple ‘Untitled’ was used, and occasionally the working titles were far removed from the final version.
Here is a list, in the order in which they were used between 1963 and 1969, of the working titles used by The Beatles in the studio. The first titles listed were those noted on the studio notes and tape boxes at the time, followed by the titles as eventually used on the single and album releases.
Some of the entries – notably ‘Scrambled Eggs’, ‘That’s A Nice Hat’ and ‘Miss Daisy Hawkins’ – were never used in the studio, but were the names by which the songs were known during the songwriting process.
Songs
- ‘Seventeen’: ‘I Saw Her Standing There’
- ‘Thank You Little Girl’: ‘Thank You Girl’
- ‘Get You In The End’: ‘I’ll Get You’
- ‘Auntie Jin’s Theme’: ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’
- ‘Scrambled Eggs’: ‘Yesterday’
- ‘That’s A Nice Hat’: ‘It’s Only Love’
- ‘This Bird Has Flown’: ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’
- ‘Won’t Be There With You’: ‘Think For Yourself’
- ‘Mark I’: ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’
- ‘Granny Smith’: ‘Love You To’
- ‘You Don’t Get Me’: ‘And Your Bird Can Sing’
- ‘Miss Daisy Hawkins’: ‘Eleanor Rigby’
- ‘Why Did It Die?’: ‘For No One’
- ‘Laxton’s Superb’: ‘I Want To Tell You’
- ‘I Don’t Know’: I Want To Tell You
- ‘A Good Day’s Sunshine’: ‘Good Day Sunshine’
- ‘He Said He Said’: ‘She Said She Said’
- ‘Untitled’: She Said She Said
- ‘It’s Not Too Bad’: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’
- ‘Untitled’: ‘Penny Lane’
- ‘In The Life Of…’: ‘A Day In The Life’
- ‘Not Known’: ‘Only A Northern Song’
- ‘Untitled’: ‘Within You Without You’
- ‘Bad Finger Boogie’: ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’
- ‘Too Much’: ‘It’s All Too Much’
- ‘Aerial Tour Instrumental’: ‘Flying’
- ‘Hello Hello’: ‘Hello, Goodbye’
- ‘Untitled’: ‘The Inner Light’
- ‘Revolution’: ‘Revolution 1’
- ‘Ringo’s Tune (Untitled)’: ‘Don’t Pass Me By’
- ‘This Is Some Friendly’: Don’t Pass Me By
- ‘Untitled’: ‘Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey’
- ‘Untitled’: ‘Good Night’
- ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun In Your Hand’: ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’
- ‘It’s Been A Long Long Long Time’: ‘Long, Long, Long’
- ‘Everyone Had A Hard Year’: ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’
- ‘All I Want Is You’: ‘Dig A Pony’
- ‘I Want You’: ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’
- ‘Bathroom Window’: ‘She Came In Through The Bathroom Window’
- ‘On Our Way Home’: ‘Two Of Us’
- ‘George’s Blues (Because You’re Sweet And Lovely)’: ‘For You Blue’
- ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko (They’re Gonna Crucify Me)’: ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’
- ‘Oh Darling (I’ll Never Do You No Harm)’: ‘Oh! Darling’
- ‘Golden Slumbers’: ‘Golden Slumbers’/‘Carry That Weight’
- ‘Ending’: ‘The End’
- ‘Here Comes The Sun-King’: ‘Sun King’
- ‘The Long One/Huge Melody’: the Abbey Road medley
Albums
George Martin originally wanted to use Off The Beatle Track as the title for the group’s first album Please Please Me. It was eventually used in 1964 for an instrumental album of Beatles songs by George Martin & His Orchestra.
Abracadabra was an early title for Revolver, as were Pendulums, Fat Man And Bobby, After Geography (Ringo Starr’s pun on The Rolling Stones’ Aftermath), Beatles On Safari, Magic Circle, Four Sides Of The Circle, and Four Sides Of The Eternal Triangle.
One Down, Six To Go was a name used during the early stages of the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This was a reference to The Beatles’ recently-signed contract with EMI, but was dropped once Paul McCartney came up with the Sgt Pepper concept.
The Beatles (White Album) was to have been called A Doll’s House, after Henrik Ibsen’s play of the same name. It was abandoned after British prog group Family released their debut album Music In A Doll’s House in July 1968.
The project which eventually resulted in the Let It Be album and film was originally known as Get Back, and two albums of that name were compiled by studio engineer Glyn Johns, but were both rejected by The Beatles.
Some months later, Everest was considered as a title for Abbey Road, and The Beatles considered flying to the foothills of the Himalayas for a photo shoot, before it was noted that the zebra crossing outside the studio was nearer.
Mal Evans also noted in his diary that four other titles were considered: Four In The Bar; All Good Children Go To Heaven; Turn Ups; and Inclinations.
Films
A Hard Day’s Night was initially known as Beatlemania, then Let’s Go!, before Ringo Starr came up with a better phrase at the end of a long day.
Similarly, the group was stuck for a title for their second feature film. It was firstly known as Beatles Production 2, followed by Eight Arms To Hold You, before The Beatles and director Richard Lester settled on Help!.
Another is Why Did it Die?, a working title of For No One. And Everest was the planned name of Abbey Road.
Thanks. I’ll add these to the list.
“In the Life Of…” was used as the working title of A Day In the Life during the Jan. 19 session.
Thanks – I had that in the original article but I mangled the html and it wasn’t showing. I’ve amended it now.
Also, Door was considered as a possible title for what became The White Album.
Do you have a source for that? I’m not sure I’ve heard it before.
I can’t remember exactly, but it might have been a TV Guide article from the mid-90s.
If “Revolution 1” was known as “Revolution”, what about “Revolution 9”?
Revolution 9 was part of Revolution 1 until the last few minutes were taken off and used as the basis for the sound collage. While Lennon was compiling the effects tapes it didn’t have a working title in the studio until the “number nine” sample was found and added.
As for Revolution 1, it was only to be called Revolution until the other Beatles decided it wasn’t commercial enough to be a single. When they recorded the faster version that became Revolution, and the original recording was renamed Revolution 1 – probably because it complemented the Revolution 9 title.
From the English Wikipedia:
The title (Tomorrow Never Knows”. pw) never actually appears in the song’s lyrics. In an interview McCartney revealed that, like “A Hard Day’s Night”, it was taken from one of Ringo Starr’s malapropisms.[9] The piece was originally titled “Mark I”.[4] “The Void” is cited as another working title but according to Mark Lewisohn (and Bob Spitz) this is untrue, although the books, The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of The Beatles and The Beatles A to Z both cite “The Void” as the original title.[2]
Have a nice day!
Peter from Munich/Germany
How is “it’s been a hard day, and it’s going to be a hard day’s night” a malapropism? That’s something completely different.
Was not ‘The Beatles’ going to be called ‘A Doll’s House’? And ‘Revolver’ was going to be called ‘Abracadabra’.
Joe, the working title for Strawberry Fields Forever was “It’s Not Too Bad”
Nice list Joe
Fun list. Here are a few more possibilities:
-Paul used “Auntie Gin’s Theme” as a working title for “I’ve Just Seen a Face”
-Another working title for “A Hard Day’s Night” (the film) was “Let’s Go!”
-“Abracadabra” was the “Revolver” working title that came closest to sticking, but there were a handful of others: Beatles on Safari, Magic Circle, Four Sides of the Circle.
-George Martin originally wanted the Beatles’ first album to be called “Off the Beatle Track” and to be recorded at the Cavern. I guess the title was dropped along with the Cavern location, leading to the album “Please Please Me.” But Martin ended up using “Off the Beatle Track” as the title of an orchestral album himself.
Thanks Andy. I’d heard all of those apart from Let’s Go!. I’ll add them to the article.
Years later when Paul was solo with Wings he wrote “Let ’em in” and one of the characters knocking on the door was “Auntie Gin”.
LOL at “The Long One!” I love these working titles!
My biggest laugh was for “Get You In The End” – wouldn’t that have been cheeky?!?
Also would have loved a “That’s A Nice Hat” song from one of them.
One Of The Beautiful People: Baby You’re A Rich Man
I have the 45 of “Ticket to Ride”, with the label reading “From the movie “Eight Arms to Hold You””.
scrambled eggs would of been a hillarious name for yesterday :’D
Just the title is hilarious enough, but it came from the working line “Scrambled eggs… Oh my baby how I love your legs…” or something like that. Which is even more hilarious!
Tkanks Joe. This is a very interesting page, however, what’s the point of those in the list called “Untitled” when ALL of the songs the Beatles recorded would have been originally untitled while they were being written?
If you read the intro, you’ll see this: “The first titles listed were those noted on the studio notes and tape boxes at the time, followed by the titles as eventually used on the single and album releases.”
Many times songs start with the title before being written . For instance, John Fogerty has said he keeps a notebook full of song titles that he refers to when he needs to write a song. I’m sure John and Paul at times had a title idea first (“A Hard Day’s Night”, for example)
I wish Revolver was called Abracadabra, because this album is truly magic!
Wasn’t the original first lyrics to Yesterday: “Scrambled eggs, oh baby how I love your legs” when he was first writing it in the Asher household?
Yep. 🙂
The Beatles (White Album) was not called ‘A Doll’s House’ because the Leicester band Family released their debut album ‘Music In a Doll’s House’ in July 1968, while the White Album was still being recorded.
Imagine all those Beatle fans crossing Mt. Everest…
Or trying to CLIMB it!
Does anyone know what song might have been called “Welsh Rarebit”? Tony Visconti referred to that in his tale of meeting Martin and a further reply. Possibly Revolotion 9?
Wasn’t “Hey, Jude” originally called “Hey, Jules”?
‘A Doll’s House’ had to be rejected for the White Album’s title when the British band Family released ‘Music In a Doll’s House’ (a great LP, by the way) in July 1968.
“Something In The Way She Moves” for “Something”.
One of the proposed (and rejected) titles for the film A HARD DAY’S NIGHT was UP AGAINST IT.
“Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey” had a working title of, “Come On, Come On”.
“After Geography (Ringo Starr’s pun on The Rolling Stones’ Aftermath)”
???
No, it was “After Geometry”
All accounts I’ve ever seen state “Geography”.
Geometry would have kept it “in the family” though….
I’ve heard John, at one point, wanted to call Revolver “Four Sides Of The Eternal Triangle.”
An instrumental version of “Yesterday” was actually released by the George Martin Orchestra under the title of “Scrambled Eggs” on a United Artists LP in the US.
I don’t believe that the song “Penny Lane” was at any point ever known as “Untitled” because in an interview that Paul McCartney gave in May of 1966 in it he said, ” I still want to write a song about the places in Liverpool where I was brought up. Places like The Docker’s Umbrella which is a long tunnel through which the dockers go to work on Merseyside, and Penny Lane near my old home.” The first location evidently never got written but the second most certainly did.
When Paul had the music but not the lyrics for “Eleanor Rigby,” he called it “Ola Na Tungee.” In an interview, Donovan remembers Paul playing him the opening lines: “Ola Na Tungee/ Blowing his mind in the dark with a pipe made of clay/No one can say.”