The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset” Was Supposed To Have a Different Name, but the Beatles Foiled Their Plan

On May 5, 1967, the Kinks released “Waterloo Sunset,” which would become one of the most enduring, classic tracks of their entire catalogue. However, the band released the track under a different title from the original, thanks to the Beatles beating them to the punch. The track was the Kinks’ first stereo single and one of their top-performing songs, landing a top ten placement in charts across Europe. It was less successful in North America upon its release. But the song is undoubtedly cemented in the band’s legacy now.

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And if the Beatles hadn’t released an iconic track of their own two months prior, we would be remembering the Kinks singing about a different sunset altogether.

The Original Title Of The Kinks’ “Waterloo Sunset”

The Kinks’ 1967 track “Waterloo Sunset” offers no suggestions of longing for someplace else. The song’s refrain outlines the singer’s regional allegiance in no uncertain terms. As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset, I am in paradise. However, as Kinks vocalist and songwriter Ray Davies explained in a New Musical Express interview weeks after the band released their single, “Waterloo Sunset” wasn’t supposed to be about Waterloo, the central London district that houses the London Eye and other popular attractions.

Prior to February 1967, Davies was writing what would later become “Waterloo Sunset” as an ode to Liverpool and the Merseybeat scene. “Originally, I was going to call it “Liverpool Sunset,”” he explained to NME. “But the Beatles came up with “Penny Lane,” and so that was the end of that. It happens quite a lot with my numbers. I work on a theme only to find, as it nears completion, someone else has come up with exactly the same melodic or lyrical idea.”

“Penny Lane,” of course, is one of the Beatles’ most geographically specific tracks in their catalogue. The Fab Four released the song as a double A-side with another hometown ode, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” in February 1967. Like “Waterloo Sunset,” the two Beatles tracks were nostalgic tributes to the stomping grounds of their youth. Unfortunately for the Kinks, they just happened to get to it first.

Settling On A New Location Wasn’t All For Naught

The Kinks songwriter Ray Davies might not have been able to follow through with his Liverpudlian idea. But he had just as much sentiment for Waterloo that he could draw upon for the song. So, it wasn’t a total creative loss. After hearing the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” and knowing he would have to rewrite his song, he began contemplating other parts of London that were important to him. “I realized [Waterloo] was so very significant in my life,” Davies told The Independent decades later in 2010.

“I was in St. Thomas’ Hospital when I was really ill,” he explained. “And the nurses would wheel me out on the balcony to look at the [Thames] River. It was also about being taken down to the Festival of Britain with my mum and dad. It’s about two characters in the song. The aspirations of my sisters’ generation before me, who grew up during the Second World War. It’s about the world I wanted them to have. That, and then walking by the Thames with my first wife, and all the dreams that we had. Her in her brown suede coat that she wore that was stolen.”

“Sometimes, when you’re writing and you’re really on good form, you think, I can relate to any of these things. That’s when you know it’s good,” he added. And indeed, the classic Kinks track might have undergone a location change. But it became a hit nonetheless, so it would appear that all’s well that ends well.

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