Today I learned that The Marshall Tucker Band had no member named Marshall Tucker. What other bands were named for a non-member? It has to be first and last names so someone like Jane’s Addiction wouldn’t count. Off the top of my head:
Jethro Tull
Lynard Skynyrd (more or less)
Greta Van Fleet (again a misspelling)
I’m sure that there are a ton of others but it’s very early in the morning and I’m sleepy.
Uriah Heep.
Molly Hatchet?
I wondered about them. According to wiki, the name doesn’t appear to be an actual person’s name. Also, all of the original members are now dead, not that that matters for purposes of this thread. I just thought it was interesting.
Franz Ferdinand
Babe Ruth.
Does The Elvis Presley Tribute Band and similar tribute/memorial acts count?
If a misspelling of the name counts, like Lynryrd Skynyrd, how about Gnarls Barkley?
Would Hootie and the Blowfish count? (“(The unlikely moniker was borrowed from the nicknames of two college friends.”)
Pink Floyd?
“Which one is Pink?”
Bob Moses is named after Robert Moses, designer of NY Central Park.
Gnarls Barkley is named after Charles Barkley, retired NBA basketball player. The band denies this, though.
Luscious Jackson is named after Lucious Jackson, retired NBA basketball player.
“Alice Cooper” has some kind of convoluted backstory
Pretty Boy Floyd, the LA glam band whose name inspired rival band Overdrive to call themselves Ugly Kid Joe
Catherine Wheel, indirectly named for St. Catherine of Alexandria
Pablo Cruise; according to Casey Kasem, they were named after a drifter
The Dandy Warhols
The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black
The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza. If they were larger, it would have become confusing because Tony Danza is a dancer amongst other things. But they flew under the radar enough that they weren’t worth it to sue or give free publicity to. But apparently not under the radar enough that Tony didn’t mention them on his short lived talk show.
I don’t think Uriah Heep is a real person, unless Dickens wanted to get sued real badly.
There was a band called Iron Eyes Cody that broke up after discovering that he had lied about his Native American heritage (later reforming under a new name)
Paul Revere and the Raiders
Not so fast. According to the German wiki (for some reason, this info isn’t on their English wiki page):
So the band named themselves after a real person who had named himself after the Dickens character.
Shakespears (sic) Sister. William Shakespeare did in fact have a sister, Joan Shakespeare Hart.
Robert Moses built a lot of stuff in and around New York City but he didn’t design Central Park. (Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed it.)
And of course first and foremost, they named themselves after the Smiths song “Shakespeare’s Sister”.