Weird Origins of 8 Popular Band Names
There are some weird bands out there with some even weirder names. Here’s a collection of bands and the story of how they came up with their titles. If you have any bands you’re curious about, list them in the comments, I might do a part two of this article if you all like it.
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd was originally called “The Tea Set,” but changed their moniker after finding a group of the same name was booked at a show they were scheduled to play. The band decided to change their name to “The Pink Floyd Sound” –later shortened to “Pink Floyd” -after seeing the names “Pink Anderson” and “Floyd Council” on the notes of a Blind Boy Fuller album. It’s likely all for the best, would you go and see a movie called “The Tea Set’s The Wall?”
Source Image via Tea Set on Wikipedia
Black Sabbath
Ozzy’s band of mischief didn’t start off nearly as dark as it ended up. The group’s first name was “The Polka Tulk Blues Company,” which was soon shortened to just “Polka Tulk.” After a while, they renamed themselves “Earth,” but had to change their name again when they found out there was another British band with that name.
One day, bassist Geezer Butler saw a bunch of people lined up at the theater across the street from their rehearsal room. The movie showing was the Boris Karloff movie Black Sabbath. He noted how much money people spend to see scary films and used the film’s title for a song he wrote inspired by occult writer Dennis Wheatley. This song changed the entire music direction of the band and they started playing much darker songs than other musicians of the time. In 1969, the group decided to change their name to “Black Sabbath” to reflect their new decision to make the musical version of horror movies.
Source | Image Via IMDB
Lynyrd Skynyrd
The original band was called “The Noble Five” and the year after it was changed to “My Backyard.” By 1970, it was obvious the group needed a new moniker. They decided on “Leonard Skinnerd,” to make fun of their high school gym teacher Leonard Skinner, who frequently harassed boys to maintain the school dress code that banned long hair. They changed the spelling before they released their first album and the rest was history.
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Motörhead
Before founding Motörhead, Lemmy Killmister was in a psychedelic rock group called Hawkwind. He was a heavy user of amphetamines and the last song he wrote for the band was called “Motorhead” –a British expression for a speed freak. Lemmy also held onto that song and it became a standard of the Motörhead lineup. The umlauts in the band name mean nothing -he just thought they sounded cool.
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Joy Division
History buffs may know the term “joy division” to mean a prostitution division of a concentration camp, it was used to reward prisoners and guards alike. It’s interesting that a term this vile has lost most of its meaning, as most people merely associate it with the band, who adopted the name after reading the term in the 1955 novel The House of Dolls.
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Duran Duran
Here’s a group that got the right name, right away. But where did “Duran Duran” come from? The villain in Barbarella, a really bad B-movie, was called “Dr. Durand Durand.”
Source Image Via Barbarella on Wikipedia
Porno For Pyros
After leaving Jayne’s Addiction, band members Perry Farrell and Stephen Perkins wanted to start up a new project. Farrell was looking in a porno magazine where he saw an ad for fireworks. The name fits even better when you consider that right around the time of their inception, the LA Riots had just happened.
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Gogol Bordello
The band was originally called “Hütz and the Béla Bartóks,” but they decided to change it because, according to singer Eugene Hütz, no one in America knows about Béla Bartók (in case you don’t know, he is a Hungarian composer considered by many to be the best composer of the twentieth century). As a result, the group changed their name to Gogol Bordello. “Gogol” referencing writer Nikolai Gogol because the band considered him to have “smuggled” Ukranian culture into Russian society, which is similar to what the group wishes to do with their Eastern-styled music in America. Of course, I think you know what “bordello” means.
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