Topic: How musical acts got their names

[soxfan]

Read an interesting bio today and thought this would be a great topic for everyone to add to.

To start...Earth, Wind & Fire

The band was briefly called "The Salty Peppers". Leader Maurice White's astrological sign, Sagittarius, has a primary elemental quality of Fire and seasonal qualities of Earth and Air, according to classical triplicities. Sagittarius in the northern hemisphere occurs in the autumn, whose element is earth, and in the southern hemisphere, it is spring, whose element is air. Hence the omission of Water, the fourth classical element. Based on this, he changed the band's name, to "Earth, Wind & Fire".

[soxfan]

Stone Temple Pilots

Played the San Diego California bar scene originally as Mighty Joe Young. The group began to work on their debut album with Brendan O'Brien. During the recording, they received a call from their lawyer who informed them that there was a bluesman who had already claimed the name Mighty Joe Young. Inspired by the STP Motor Oil stickers that the band members were fans of in their youth, various ideas on the initials "STP" were shared by the band, including "Shirley Temple's Pussy" and "Stereo Temple Pirates". They eventually settled on the name "Stone Temple Pilots."

[soxfan]

The Who

Roger Daltrey started "The Detours" in 1959. Pete Townshend and John Entwistle later joined the band.  In February 1964, the Detours became aware of the group Johnny Devlin and the Detours and changed their name. Townshend and his room-mate Richard Barnes spent a night considering names, focusing on a theme of joke announcements, including "No One" and "the Group". Townshend preferred "the Hair", and Barnes liked "the Who" because it "had a pop punch". Daltrey chose "the Who" the next morning. Keith Moon joined later.

[soxfan]

Lynyrd Skynyrd

Known in Jacksonville Florida as "The One Percent" in 1969, singer Ronnie Van Zant sought a new band name after growing tired of taunts from audiences that the band had "1% talent". At drummer Bob Burns' suggestion, the group settled on Leonard Skinnerd, a mocking tribute to P.E. teacher Leonard Skinner at Robert E. Lee High School. Skinner was notorious for strictly enforcing the school's policy against boys having long hair. Guitarist Gary Rossington had dropped out of school, tired of being hassled about his hair. The more distinctive spelling "Lynyrd Skynyrd" was being used at least as early as 1970.

Despite their high school acrimony, the band developed a friendlier relationship with Skinner in later years, and invited him to introduce them at a concert in the Jacksonville Memorial Coliseum. Skinner also allowed the band to use a photo of his Leonard Skinner Realty sign for the inside of their third album.

[Sangria]

Dusty Springfield

Mary O'Brien was nicknamed Dusty as a kid after her habit of playing football with boys in the streets. She and her brother and Tim Feild formed a folk trio, naming themselves the Springfields, taking the names of Dusty, Tom and Tim Springfield.

[soxfan]

Mötley Crüe

Bassist Nikki Sixx has said that he told his bandmates that he was "thinking about calling the band "Christmas". The other members were not very receptive to that idea. Then, while trying to find a suitable name, guitarist Mick Mars remembered an incident that occurred when he was playing with a band called White Horse, when one of the other band members called the group "a motley looking crew". He had remembered the phrase and later copied it down as 'Mottley Cru'. After modifying the spelling slightly, "Mötley Crüe" was eventually selected as the band's name, with the stylistic decision suggested by singer Vince Neil to add the two sets of metal umlauts, supposedly inspired by the German beer Löwenbräu, which the members were drinking at the time.

[McrRed]

Slick anally retentive shy boys, Steely Dan, took their name from a giant mechanised dildo in a novel by I forget who.

[McrRed]

The Teardrop Explodes for his name from a panel in a superhero comic. I forget which one.

[BarryCrocker]

Simple Minds

“So simple minded he can’t drive his module/He bites on the neon and sleeps in the capsule” – that’s from David Bowie’s ‘The Jean Genie’, and that was enough to give Glasgow’s Simple Minds their name.

[liverbloke]

Led Zepplin

One account of how the new band's name was chosen held that Moon and Entwistle had suggested that a supergroup with Page and Beck would go down like a "lead balloon", an idiom for disastrous results. The group dropped the 'a' in lead at the suggestion of their manager, Peter Grant, so that those unfamiliar with the term would not pronounce it "leed". The word "balloon" was replaced by "zeppelin", a word which, according to music journalist Keith Shadwick, brought "the perfect combination of heavy and light, combustibility and grace" to Page's mind.

[Sheer Magnetism]

Slick anally retentive shy boys, Steely Dan, took their name from a giant mechanised dildo in a novel by I forget who.

William Burroughs. 10CC took their name from the amount of semen you can fit in a teaspoon, or something equally stupid.

[mikeb58]

Marc Bolan

Bo from Bob....lan from Dylan. Bolans hero and early biggest influence was Bob Dylan.

Marc during his folky Dylan period around 1966

(Great topic by the way, surprised it hasn't appeared already, love stuff like this!)
 

[cloggypop]

William Burroughs. 10CC took their name from the amount of semen you can fit in a teaspoon, or something equally stupid.

For the best band named after the average amount of male human ejaculate, the Lovin' Spoonful > 10cc.

[TepidT2O]

T’Pau got their name from a Vulcan in Star Trek, Duran Duran from a character in Barbarella

[Nitramdorf]

Black Sabbath, who were previously called Polka Tulk and then Earth, changed their name to Black Sabbath after seeing an old Boris Karloff film advertised, with people lining up to watch it, on a cinema opposite where they were rehearsing.



One of them thought it odd how people would pay to be scared, this in turn sent them down the road of writing the music that they are famous for.

[The Gulleysucker]

Moloko from Moloko plus, a barbiturate laced drink served at the Korova milkbar in A Clockwork Orange.

[joe buck]

A flock of seagulls

From the stranglers track toiler on the sea from the second album black and white.

[Son of Spion]

Gary Webb was looking through the Yellow Pages and came across a plumber whose surname was Neumann. He dropped the 'e' and one 'n' and became Gary Numan.

David Jones, looking to distance himself from the name due to Davy Jones of the Monkees fame already using it, delved into his liking for American culture to find a new name. After watching The Alamo film he went with Bowie, after Jim Bowie and his legendary Bowie knife. David Bowie was born.

Everything But The Girl.

Took their name from a secondhand furniture shop in Hull.

[rob1966]

Pearl Jam

Originally performed under the name Mookie Blaylock, an NBA player, but they weren't allowed to keep the name, so they became Pearl Jam. Despite what they have claimed for years, were not named after Vedders great grandmother Pearl and her psychedelic Jam. Nor are they named after jizz, even though some members of the band were in Mother Love Bone.

They couldn't come up with a name and Jeff Ament came up with Pearl, which the band were ok with and then after a Neil Young concert, where he did a lot of jamming on stage, they added Jam.

[soxfan]

The Kinks

Numerous explanations of the name's genesis have been offered. In Jon Savage's analysis, they "needed a gimmick, some edge to get them attention. Here it was: 'Kinkiness'—something newsy, naughty but just on the borderline of acceptability. In adopting the 'Kinks' as their name at that time, they were participating in a time-honoured pop ritual—fame through outrage." Manager Robert Wace related his side of the story: "I had a friend ... He thought the group was rather fun. If my memory is correct, he came up with the name just as an idea, as a good way of getting publicity ... When we went to [the band members] with the name, they were ... absolutely horrified. They said, 'We're not going to be called kinky!'" Ray Davies' account conflicts with Wace's—he recalled that the name was coined by Larry Page, and referenced their "kinky" fashion sense. Davies quoted him as saying, "The way you look, and the clothes you wear, you ought to be called the Kinks." "I've never really liked the name", Ray stated.

[soxfan]

Pink Floyd

The name is derived from the given names of two blues musicians whose Piedmont blues records guitarist Syd Barrett had in his collection, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

[rob1966]

Led Zeppelin

According to Jimmy Page, in 1966, Keith Moon came up with the name when he joked about calling a band Led Zeppelin and Page asked if he could use the name.

[soxfan]

Blue Öyster Cult

The name "Blue Öyster Cult" came from a 1960s poem written by manager Sandy Pearlman. It was part of his "Imaginos" poetry, later used more extensively on their album Imaginos (1988). Pearlman had also come up with the band's earlier name, "Soft White Underbelly", from a phrase used by Winston Churchill in describing Italy during World War II. In Pearlman's poetry, the "Blue Oyster Cult" was a group of aliens who had assembled secretly to guide Earth's history. "Initially, the band was not happy with the name, but settled for it, and went to work preparing to record their first release..."

In a 1976 interview published in the U.K. music magazine ZigZag, Pearlman told the story explaining the origin of the band's name was an anagram of "Cully Stout Beer".

The addition of an umlaut was suggested by Allen Lanier, but rock critic Richard Meltzer claims to have suggested it just after Pearlman came up with the name, reportedly "because of the Wagnerian aspect of Metal". Other bands later copied the practice of using umlauts or diacritic marks in their own band names, such as Motörhead, Mötley Crüe, and Queensrÿche.

[soxfan]

Fugees

Fugees was an American hip hop group who rose to fame in the mid-1990s. Their repertoire included elements of hip hop, soul and Caribbean music, particularly reggae. The members of the group were Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, and Pras Michel. Deriving their name from a shortening of the word "refugees", Jean and Michel are Haitian while Hill is American. Fugee was purposely taken from a word often used derogatorily to refer to Haitian-Americans (refugee).

[soxfan]

Creedence Clearwater Revival

In 1967, Saul Zaentz bought Fantasy Records and offered the band a chance to record a full-length album. He changed their name from the original "Blue Velvets" to the "the Golliwogs", which the band hated from day one. The band then decided on their own name, Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR), which they took in January 1968. According to interviews with band members twenty years later, the name's elements came from three sources:

1. Tom Fogerty's friend Credence Newball, whose name they changed to form the word Creedence (as in creed)
2. a television commercial for Olympia Brewing Company ("clear water")
3. the four members' renewed commitment to their band

Rejected contenders for the band's name included "Muddy Rabbit", "Gossamer Wump", and "Creedence Nuball and the Ruby", however, the last was the starting point from which the band took derived their final name.

[LanceLink!!!!!]

Duran Duran is from the film Barbarella.

The Lightening Seeds is from a line from Rasberry Beret.

[Shankly998]

The Beach Boys

Love gave the fledgling band its name: "The Pendletones", a pun on "Pendleton", a style of woolen shirt popular at the time.
Murry Wilson, who was a sometime songwriter, arranged for the Pendletones to meet his publisher Hite Morgan. He said: "Finally, [Hite] agreed to hear it, and Mrs. Morgan said 'Drop everything, we're going to record your song. I think it's good.' And she's the one responsible."On September 15, 1961, the band recorded a demo of "Surfin'" with the Morgans. A more professional recording was made on October 3, at World Pacific Studio in Hollywood. David Marks was not present at the session as he was in school that day. Murry brought the demos to Herb Newman, owner of Candix Records and Era Records, and he signed the group on December 8. When the single was released a few weeks later, the band found that they had been renamed "the Beach Boys".

[rob1966]

The Thompson Twins

Named after two characters in The Adventures of TinTin, the incompetent detectives Thompson and Thompson.

[AndyMuller]

Duran Duran is from the film Barbarella.

The Lightening Seeds is from a line from Rasberry Beret.

Funnily enough this is a misheard lyric from Prince, he actually sings "thunder drowns out what the lightning sees".

[Sheer Magnetism]

Moloko from Moloko plus, a barbiturate laced drink served at the Korova milkbar in A Clockwork Orange.

And (the) Heaven 17 was taken from one of the fictional pop bands in the book.

[liverbloke]

Altered Images's name referred to a sleeve design on the Buzzcocks' single "Promises", and was inspired by Buzzcocks vocalist Pete Shelley's constant interfering with the initial sleeve designs.

Both great bands in their own way, of course.

Clare Grogan - 

[soxfan]

Foo Fighters

Dave Grohl hoped to keep his anonymity after Nirvana disbanded following the suicide of Kurt Cobain. He planned to release his own recordings in a limited run under the title "Foo Fighters", taken from "foo fighter", a World War II term for unidentified flying objects. "Around the time that I recorded the first Foo Fighters tape, I was reading a lot of books on UFOs. Not only is it a fascinating subject, but there's a treasure trove of band names in those UFO books!" he said. "Since I had recorded the first record by myself, playing all the instruments, but I wanted people to think that it was a group, I figured that Foo Fighters might lead people to believe that it was more than just one guy ... Had I actually considered this to be a career, I probably would have called it something else, because it's the stupidest fucking band name in the world."

[Statto Red]

Manic Street Preachers

Manics got their name when James Dean Bradfield was busking in Cardiff one day, had an altercation with someone who asked him  "What are you, boyo, some kind of manic street preacher?".

[SP]

The Thompson Twins

Named after two characters in The Adventures of TinTin, the incompetent detectives Thompson and Thompson.

Thomson and Thompson.

That was the joke.

[soxfan]

ABBA

In the beginning, the act was briefly known as "Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid". ABBA is an acronym formed from the first initials of the members' first names:   
Agnetha Fältskog
Björn Ulvaeus
Benny Andersson
Anni-Frid Lyngstad

Abba is also the name of a well-known fish-canning company in Sweden, and itself an abbreviation. "[ABBA] had to ask permission and the factory said, 'O.K., as long as you don't make us feel ashamed for what you're doing'"

[RedSince86]

Didn't Led Zeppelin name come about because someone in the music industry said Jimmy Page's new band would go down like a Lead Baloon and Page heard about it so named the band Led Zeppelin.

Or is it a Rock N Roll urban myth.

[Jack the Red]

AC/DC got their name from a label on a sewing machine that belonged to the Young brothers' sister, Margaret.

[BarryCrocker]

Short cut for people in here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_band_name_etymologies

[Ray K]

Prefab Sprout

Paddy McAloon decided to stick two random words together.

[Alan_X]

Mott the Hoople was the title of a Willard Manus novel about an eccentric who worked for a circus freak show.