Nope. “The Grateful Dead” is a common folklore element or story (the modern “Vanishing Hitch-hiker” is similar), and the band members have specifically stated that is the source of the name.
Try Googling for “grateful dead” folklore and you’ll get a million hits.
Well, someone’s got to come in here and mention the love-'em or hate-'em band Rush.
The band members were sitting around trying to think up a name before their first gig, and John Rustey’s***** older brother yelled, “Why don’t you call your band RUSH?”
*****John Rutsey was the band’s original drummer before Neil Peart.
Many bands have been falsely accused of having Satanic names- but one of the few bands that really DID was King Crimson. When Pete Sinfield wrote the poem “In the Court of the Crimson King,” the Crimson King was supposed to be Satan, and his “court” was Hell.
The band (originally a trio called Giles, Giles and Fripp) eventually set that poem to music, and adopted its title character as their own name.
One more:
Alice Cooper was originally the name of a BAND, not a person. Vince Furnier, the guy everyone now calls “Alice Cooper,” was originally just the lead singer of a BAND called “Alice Cooper.” Now, he and the members of the band have told numerous conflicting stories, over the years, about what the name meant. At one time, they claimed that Alice Cooper was a witch who’d been burned at the stake centuries ago, and that Vince was her reincarnation!
But more recently, I’ve heard Vince say that the explanation is simpler. Right from the start, they were a loud, aggressive, obnoxious band that was willing to do ANYTHING (however sick) on stage. As a joke, they decided to give themselves a nice, cute, wholesome-sounding name, one that was completely at odds with reality. “Alice Cooper” sounded like the name of a sweet little old lady, or an innocent little schoolgirl… so it was a perversely perfect name for a band that was anything but sweet and innocent.
“Jefferson Airplane” referred to a primitive type of roach-clip used in the early to mid sixties; split a match down the center, stick a doobie in the center of it, and it vaguely resembles a jet airplane (I guess you had to be on LSD to get it.)
“The Doobie Brothers”…that doesn’t take a lot of explaining.
“Cowboy Junkies” is a slang term for heroine addicts.
“Velvet Underground” was the name of a gay porno-paperback novel.
“Crazy Horse” was a Native-American warrior who fought against U.S. expansionism in the 1800s.
“REM” stands for Rapid Eye Movement; it’s the fluttering movement your eyelids make when you are dreaming.
“10,000 Maniacs” got their name from the cult horror movie “2000 Maniacs” (whoever suggested it misremembered the name of the flick).
“The Mamas & The Papas” got their name from, of all things, the Hells Angels; Mama Cass had watched a t.v. news special on the Angels wherein one of them said they called their women “Mamas” (as in “one red-hot Mama!”) She started calling her boyfriends “Papas” in return.
I forgot one:
“Devo” comes from the classic horror movie “Island of Lost Souls” (otherwise known as the “Island of Dr. Moreau”). The “De-evolved” animal-men are forced by their overlord to chant repeatedly “Are we not men; we are Devo!”
The name Pearl Jam had before going with “Pearl Jam” was Mookie Blaylock, named after the professional basketball player.
They were also briefly “Reenk Roink”, for no apparent reason, and I believe there was at least one other short-lived name for the band before they settled on “Pearl Jam”.
True, but Michael Stipe used to toy with members of the press by telling them R.E.M. stood for Rapid Ear Movement.
And here I am, with a fourth version of how R.E.M. got their name. After trying out other names (most famously “Cans of Piss”), they wanted something that wouldn’t peg the band as a certain sound. “R.E.M.”, if you haven’t heard the band before, doesn’t put any preconceived notions of the band as “Cans of Piss” would have done. Peter Buck came upon the name while riffling through the dictionary. Band members have specifically said they did not name themselves after “rapid eye movement”; they just liked the way “R.E.M.” sounded and looked.
Pixies also came upon their name by flipping through a dictionary. Someone (I think it was Joey Santiago) opened to a random page, closed his eyes, and pointed to a random word until the band found one they liked. “Pixies” was chosen because of it is so contrary to the band’s music.
Husker Du got their name when the band did a version of Talking Head’s “Psycho Killer”. In a parody of the song’s French verse, they shouted out all the foreign phrases they knew. “Husker Du”, the name of a board game (Swedish for “Do you remember?”) stuck.
Mission of Burma got their name from a plaque on a building in New York’s diplomatic district.
Steve Albini named his band “Big Black” because he said that scary things are always described as “big and black”.
Sonic Youth got their name from the convention of reggae bands having “Youth” in their name. The “Sonic” part came from Fred “Sonic” Smith of the MC5.
Brit band Sham 69 got their name from a partly obliterated bit of graffiti that had originally read Hersham 69 (the band members were all from Hersham).
Another Beatles story: John used to joke that he had a dream once where a man on a “flaming pie” told him "You are ‘beatles’ with an A’. Paul later used this joke as a title of a solo album.
Ben Folds Five–says Ben, “It sounded better than Ben Folds Three”. BF5 was actually only 3–Ben, Robert Sledge, and Darren Jessee.
Guster–IIRC, the guys were in an airport and heard someone named Gus being referred to by his friends as “Guster”.
Smash Mouth–named after the term used to describe a particular style of football, characterized by a strong, powerful running game.
Hootie and The Blowfish–Darius Rucker is not Hootie and the rest of the band are not The Blowfish. Rather, they were the nicknames of two of their friends at USC (damn, why do I still know that?).
Bloodhound Gang–named after the kid detectives from the old PBS show “3-2-1 Contact”.
Well, I’m very disappointed. I always thought the Grateful Dead took there name from this:
"We now return our souls to the creator,
as we stand on the edge of eternal darkness.
Let our chant fill the void
in order that others may know.
In the land of the night
the ship of the sun
is drawn by the grateful dead."
-- Egyptian Book of the Dead
Though, now that I think about it, I don’t know why I ever thought that. I just found that quote and thought: “Oh, that’s where they got that.”
Also from way up there, “They might be Giants” may have been named after the Movie with George C Scott, but the Movie I believe was named from Cervantes “Don Quixote”, where the knight attacks the windmills, even though Sancho Panza assures him they are windmills, he attacks anyway, because TMBG!
In (IIRC) 1973, when the band was “on top of the world,” Vince did legally change his name to Alice Cooper.
Nowadays he’s the guy everyone calls either Vince, or Coop.
As far as the definitive origin of the name of the band, it depends on which day of the week it is, and which of the surviving band members you ask. The big publicity story way back when was the resurrected dead witch contacted by ouija board thing.
Personally, I’m more willing to believe your second take on it.
[sub]Alice Cooper? Who’s she, some up and coming folk singer?[/sub]
When they formed New Order they had three ideas for a name so they decided to vote:
Khmer Rouge- 0 votes
New Order - 2 votes
Witch doctors from Zimbabwe- 3 votes
The to members that voted for New order told the others that they wouldn’t be in a band called Witch doctors from Zimbabwe so they became New Order.
And it means “Do you remember” in Norwegian.
The Beatles actually have 3 possible answers, they are as follows;
(i) As mentioned the Buddy Holly and the Crickets story, Crickets/Beatles etc
(ii) The Beatles played a new style of music known at the time as ‘beat music’, hence the BEATles (Tenuous i know)
(iii) John Lennon had a dream in which an old man appeared to him and pointed at him, proclaiming ‘you are the beatles’ (my fav answer)
Of course II and III may be rubbish as they can’t really be backed up unlike I as we know that the Beatles aspired to Buddy Holly.
Young, unknown bands always have trouble attracting anyone (other than girlfriends and family members) to their live gigs. Some jokers try to attract fans by adopting names that will look good on a sign or marquee. Here in Austin, for example, there was a band that called themselves “Free Beer,” so that they could put up signs or pass out flyers saying “Free Beer, tonight at Suc-and-such Night Club.” The idea being that gullible people would flock to the club for free beer, but stick around to hear a few songs.
It’s my understanding (second and third hand, I can’t vouch for this) that Barenaked Ladies adopted their name for the same reason. That is, one of them jokingly suggested that a marquee reading “BARENAKED LADIES LIVE ON STAGE TONIGHT” was sure to attract big crowds… and the other guys thought that was hilariously appropriate.
Doesn’t New Order only have 4 members?
Metallica:
A friend of Lars Ulrich’s was starting a metal fanzine. He was debating between two names for the 'zine-“Metallica” and “Metal Mania”. He asked Lars for his oppinion, and Lars told him that he should definately go with “Metal Mania”, because he thought Metallica was the perfect name, and wanted it for his band (who at the time went by such lame names as Red Vette and Blitzer). And thus explains the story behind the name of my all-time favorite band…METALLICA!
The Rolling Stones: Original guitarist Brian Jones got it from a Muddy Waters song call “rollin’stone”