Electric Light Orchestra: in England, a small orchestra (not sure how many pieces) was called a “light orchestra”. When Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne came up with the idea of the group that The Move would become, they wanted to let people know what kind of music they were to play - a mix of rock and classical - hence The “Electric” Light Orchestra.
10cc = the average amount of human male ejaculate
R.E.M. = wanted a short name with periods in it.
David Bowie (okay not a band, but deal with it) - real name = David Jones, but Davy Jones of the Monkees locked that up, so he went with the last name of the famous American hero of the Alamo…)
Echo and the Bunnymen - Apparently, they were originally named “Bunny and Echomen” where Bunny was a cool name at the time (e.g., Bunny Wailer, of reggae fame) and the Echomen, based on the name of a guitar stompbox (a pedal you step on to create an echo effect). Then somebody printed up flyers with the names reversed, and they stuck with it.
The Doors - based on something - what? The Doors of Perception, maybe by Huxley or somebody…
The Cult - originally the Southern Death Cult, got shortened…
I know I have more stored in here somewhere…
Ian Anderson told the quaint story of how when they were just starting out, they would be forced to change the name of the band to get booked under just about every show, because they were so bad that they would never get hired a second time. When they did a show that someone said, “They don’t suck too bad, lets give them a shot” they happened to be billed as “Jethro Tull”. It stuck ever since.
Also, “Pearl’s Jam” was rumored to be hulicingenic. (I also thought it was Stone’s grandma, or maybe Jeff’s, but I don’t know.)
Fagjunk Theology: Not just for sodomite propagandists anymore.
re: “Pearl Jam”, I’d heard that its more likely a euphemism for semen. I’d guess that the explanation of it being his grandmother’s jam is a cover story, much like John Lennon’s explanation for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.
The 10cc origin was debunked by Snopes.
As for Echo and pals, I thought Echo was the nickname of the synthesizer they used. That one I have to look up, though.
According to They, the Johns wanted a name that was optomistic and paranoid.
Of course, Lennon was telling the truth about “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” It really is just about a painting his kid made:
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You can see the painting itself here:
http://www.snopes.com/music/hidden/lucysky.htm -
At least one other witness saw the painting
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It fits Lennon’s pattern of lyric writing to name a song after his child’s painting
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Lennon denied the LSD connection his whole life, and it would have been extremely out of character for him to lie about that sort of thing - he was by nature egotistical, honest, and forthright, and would have happily said so if the song was about LSD.
And like I said, that’s what Vedder CLAIMED. Of course, it may be true, and he may have found it hilarious when he found out the other meaning.
Just to add to the confusion, I heard that Echo was actually a drum machine, because when they started out they didn’t have a drummer. Later, of course, they got a proper drummer, but by then the name was set in stone. Any other theories for who Echo was?
And speaking of bands named after drum machines, you can add 808 State, which was named after the Roland(?) TR-808, which was a popular piece of equipment for 1980s techno kiddies.
And Heaven 17 was named after a band mentioned in A Clockwork Orange (definitely in the film, I’m not sure about the book).
Oh, yeah, and REO Speedwagon was named after a truck.
Eddie Vedder has explicitly denied this, and I don’t think he’d have any reason to lie about it.
He’s admitted that the jam story was just a joke, although his great-grandmother was named Pearl. The official story is that the name “Pearl Jam” is essentially meaningless – it’s just two evocative words Vedder thought sounded nice together. The band had been through a couple of other names that had to be rejected for various reasons, and at the point they adopted the name “Pearl Jam” they didn’t much care anymore. They weren’t sure they’d keep it for long, but they got a recording contract and it stuck.
Most sources seem to say it was the Bowie knife rather than the man himself.
It was taken from this quotation from A Memorable Fancy by the poet William Blake: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything/ would appear as it is, infinite.” Aldous Huxley’s book title came from the same source though.
Rammstein can be literally translated from German as “Ramming Stone”, but the idea for the name came from an American airshow tragedy in Ramstein, Germany, where over 80 people were killed or injured. They made a song about it, and the name stuck, with the addition of an extra “m”.
I had heard the “Beatles” double meaning was an homage (or copy) from Buddy Holly and the Crickets, then changed from beetles (bugs) to beatles (for the music).
Husker Du, the name of a popular board game for children, still widely available.
One group turned the Sex Pistols inside out and came up with The Celibate Rifles.
There was a joke that I always associated with Def Leppard.
A derelict finds a beat up violin in the trash and amazingly enough, he can play beautiful music with it. Everywhere he plays, people stop fighting, wars end, enemies becomes friends. He travels the world, reconciling people and leaving happiness everywhere. Finally, he end up walking through the African jungle, playing the violin as the lions sit up and listen and the pythons let their prey go, with a smile. Then an old leopard pounces from a tree and rips the man`s throat out, smashing the violin.
"Why did you kill him?" a gorilla asks tearfully. "That wonderful music he made! Why did you do that?
And the leopard goes, “Eh?”
I can`t prove that the band heard this story…
Re: Echo and the Bunnymen
Yup, Echo was the name of the drum machine the group originally used.
I have heard this too and I believe recreational drugs were involved.
These aren’t as famous but…
Knife in the Water is named for a Roman Polanski film
The New Pornographers is named for a book (I forget the author) titled Music: The New Pornography
OK Go - 2 of the members met at summer camp as pre-teens. Their art teacher was a burnout who would pretty much say nothing but “OK, go” in different intonations while teaching. Tim and Damian adopted “OK Go” speech for a while, trying to communicate by saying “OK, Go” in various inflections and intonations.
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention:
Originally, it was just ‘The Mothers’ which was a pretentious way of saying that they were ‘really good musicians’ (aka ‘bad motherfuckers’). Unfortunately, someone at the record label thought this would be insulting/offensive to some people, so they tacked ‘of Invention’ on the end. Still referred to as ‘The Mothers’ by most people, though.