Fans of The Beatles are only just realising what the title of Abbey Road would have been before Paul McCartney suggested a quick photo shoot.
The Fab Four were recording at Abbey Road Studios and decided their release would be named after the studio, though the name was not the first to come to mind. McCartney shared the previous vision for the album, though fatigue within the band prompted them to take their now iconic photograph walking across the street. The original name had been more ambitious than the four Beatles walking across the road to the studio, however, and was inspired by a packet of cigarettes. Speaking on The Howard Stern Show, McCartney confirmed the original title of Abbey Road, and why it was scrapped.
Howard Stern asked McCartney whether the name Everest had been considered for the album, which McCartney confirmed was the case. He explained: “That is true. You’re making an album and towards the end of the album you think ‘oh we need a title for this,’ so you’re looking around and fishing around.
“The engineer, Geoff Emerick, who was our Beatles engineer who did all the great sounds for us, was smoking cigarettes called Everest. They’re like a kind of menthol cigarette at the time and we kind of looked at that and thought ‘it’s big, it’s heroic. That could be good for the album.’
“Just one day we were in Abbey Road working, and I just sort of said, ‘Well look, why not Abbey Road? Because if we did that we could just run outside, there’s a level crossing as we call it out there, and we could just stand there. We could get photographed, come back to work, it’d take two seconds. It’s not a bad title.”
Abbey Road has since gone down in history as not only one of the most recognisable albums of all time, but one of The Beatles’ best releases. Alternative photographs pitched for the cover of the album were recently shared to Reddit, where users of the r/Beatles subreddit suggested the final photo the band went with was the right one.
One fan has since said: “The one they picked was definitely the best, but the outtakes are cool too.” Many agreed with this top comment and suggested any of the other photos, had they been chosen, would not be suitable.
Another user replied: “I was going to say the same thing. It’s clear why they chose the one they did. I wonder if they took more than these six. Also considering this is film I wonder who they knew they nailed it so perfectly.”
