← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
They're Called What? The Origins Of 13 Classic Rock Band Names
00:09:40
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- [00:02]
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Welcome to the behind the Song Podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda.
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I'm Janda, and in this bonus episode of the behind the Song Podcast, let's get to the bottom of how some of the bands that we know and love landed on their names. Let's start with Led Zeppelin, a name that came about because of the who, or more specifically, Keith Moon and John Entwistle. They were in the recording studio with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, all hired as performers by Jeff beck to record Beck's Bolero in 1966, and during that session, Paige and Jones talked about how they were cooking up the idea of forming a new band. That's when Keith Moon and John Entwistle started joking with them that it would go over like a lead balloon. But Jimmy Page didn't forget that, and when he and Jones teamed up with John Bonham and Robert Plant two years later, the band was named after that joke. A Zeppelin. The biggest balloon of them all. If you think the wizard of Oz has anything to do with how Toto got their name, think again. It was actually something that drummer Jeff Porcaro wrote on their very earliest demos as an identifier, a place holder in lieu of a band name that at the time didn't mean anything, the story goes. The bass player David Hungate mentioned that the Latin phrase in toto means all encompassing, and the rest of the band thought that was cool enough to call themselves Toto for eternity. When Blue Oyster Cult formed in their days students at Stony Brook University in New Jersey, they called themselves the Soft White Underbelly, a name that doesn't really tip the imagination toward thinking of a rock band. Luckily, their Svengali, Sandy Perlman, their music producer and early manager, came to the rescue with the name Blue Oyster Cult, which he had originally come up with in a series of poems that he'd written. It was a reference to a group of space aliens that influenced the fate of humankind, and it definitely sounded more rock and roll than Soft White Underbelly. Add an umlaut over the o and they were off to the races. Sometimes a single letter makes all the difference. When Golden Earring got their start playing around the Hague while still in high school in the Netherlands, they were known as the Tornadoes, but they quickly found out that the name had already been taken. They switched to the name the Golden Ear Rings, with an S after the title of an instrumental song by a British group called the Hunters, who they shared stages with in Those days they were signed to Polydor and released two albums. And then they dropped the the and the S and became simply Golden Earring, singular. To simplify things, When you think of Judas Priest, you might not automatically conjure up Bob Dylan, but the bard is responsible for their name. Early on, around 1968, bass player Bruno Stevenhill suggested it to original frontman Al Atkins after he heard Dylan's the Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest from his album John Wesley Harding, which had come out the year before. While Atkins mentioned that he wasn't really a Dylan fan, he had to admit that Judas Priest was a killer name for the band, and it stuck even after he left and Rob Halford took over as lead vocalist in 1973. And here's another band named after someone else's song. The story goes that before joining up with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Joey Kramer was playing in a band looking for a name, and he happened to be listening to Ariel Ballet by Harry Nilsson. He then started dreaming up ideas with his girlfriend about cool band names with arrow in them. They landed on Aerosmith, but the band Kramer was in then didn't like it, and it took some convincing for Perry and Tyler to embrace that name, too, because it sounds like the Sinclair Lewis novel Aerosmith. But everybody finally wrapped their heads around it. They became Aerosmith in 1970, and they haven't looked back since. Like so much of the lore around the Grateful Dead, the name came about by a happenstance. Originally called the Warlocks, but then realizing there were plenty of other bands who went by that name, Jerry Garcia was said to have been thumbing through the pages of a dictionary, and he read the term Grateful Dead, which had to do with karmic gratitude from beyond the grave to the person who arranged for a funeral. Garcia famously stuck his finger on the pages and said, that's the one. They played their first gig as the grateful dead in 1965. It was keyboardist Neil Doughty who claimed the name REO Speedwagon when he was a student at the University of Illinois in Champaign in the late 60s. He was taking a class on the history of transportation, and he walked in to see the words REO Speedwagon written on the blackboard. The REO Speedwagon was sort of the predecessor to the pickup truck manufactured by Ransom Eli Olds way back in 1915. Yes, the ransom Eli Olds of Oldsmobile. Dottie thought the name was cool and has since joked that coming up with the band name was the only thing he learned in college. Bog Hat's name has interesting origins they've been called that since 1971, when they were on the verge of finishing their first album, but still hadn't landed on a name. They went through several choices. They were thinking about calling themselves Brandywine at the time, among other names, but nothing really seemed to fit. Finally, guitarist Dave Peveret suggested the name Foghat after a made up word that he and his brother played together as kids. Kind of their take on the game Scrabble. It stuck, and the back cover of the Fog Hat album features Peveret's drawing of a cartoon man with fog coming out of his hat, an imaginary childhood playmate, and the beginning of his Lonesome Dave Persona. It's hard to think of the Fabs being influenced by anyone, but they got their name because they were big fans of Buddy Hollywood. Originally called the Quarryman, they changed it to the Silver Beatles and then finally to the beatles after Buddy Holly's backing band the Crickets. Later on, Paul McCartney even bought the publishing rights to Buddy Holly's songs. Deep Purple would have gone on as Roundabout, which is what they were named before yes released a song of the same name. So Richie Blackmore suggested they change it to Deep Purple after the title of a song that his grandmother loved by an artist named Peter derose. Way back in the Big Band era. Other names were considered like Concrete God, which doesn't have quite the same ring to it. So big ups to Richie Blackmore's grandma. While we're on the subject of bands with colors in their name, Pink Floyd came about because Syd Barrett put two names together from his well curated record collection after finding out that another band was using what they were going by at the time, which was the T set. He had the idea to combine the names of Pink Anderson and Floyd Council to create Pink Floyd. The band was literally named after two old American blues players. And finally, speaking of the blues, it's no secret the Rolling Stones have always had a love affair with the music created by American blues players. Their name, a most rock n roll name for a most rock and roll band is a tribute to Muddy Waters from his song Rolling Stone. The story goes that the late Brian Jones came up with calling the band the Rolling Stones on the fly. He was doing a phone interview with a music journalist and was pressed for what they called themselves and he just sort of said, we're called the Rolling Stones. Surely a case of divine improvisation. Thanks so much for listening to this bonus episode of the behind the Song podcast, tracing back the names of the bands who've been such a big part of our lives is truly a real kick. If you like it, give it a like and hit. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And even better, tell a friend. That's always the best recommendation. Person to person, fan to fan. And on the way, much more classic rock and roll.
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