Reason for musical artist/band names...

Soldato
Joined
14 Sep 2007
Posts
15,660
Location
Limbo
Following on from a chat I was having with a mate at work I think this has the potential to be a pretty informative and interesting thread.

Without googling or wiki'ing to try and look clever, let the rest of us know the reasoning behind musical artist and band names.

A couple I know about:

Bowling 4 Soup: They all wrote random words on bits of paper, threw them in a hat and pulled out 3, ergo, Bowling 4 Soup.

Eminem: This is a no brainer, it's the initials for his name, Marshal Mathers, M and M, Eminem.

Marilyn Manson: Apparently his two biggest role models are Charles Manson and Marilyn Monroe.
 
Last edited:
Caporegime
Joined
9 Mar 2006
Posts
56,126
Location
Surrey
Sum 41: They formed 41 days into summer or something like that.

Celldweller: He had a song called Helldweller when he was in Circle of Dust, someone jokingly gave him the nickname Celldweller because he tends to shut himself away.
 
Permabanned
Joined
4 Apr 2009
Posts
2,560
Pink Floyd:

Derived from the given names of two blues musicians that Barrett had in his record collection—Pink Anderson and Floyd Council,[11] Barrett created it on the spur of the moment, when he discovered that another band, also named the Tea Set, were to perform at one of their gigs.[12]

Imagine them being called the Tea Set. :D:D

Arcade Fire:

When asked about the rumour that the band's name refers to a fire, in an arcade, Win Butler replied: "It's not a rumour, it's based on a story that someone told me. It's not an actual event, but one that I took to be real. I would say that it's probably something that the kid made up, but at the time I believed him."[4]
 
Last edited:
Man of Honour
Joined
29 Mar 2003
Posts
56,791
Location
Stoke on Trent
Led Zeppelin - Apparently Keith Moon told them they would go down like a Lead Zeppelin.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - the name of their geography or English teacher at school

Black Sabbath - They were called Earth but looked across at the picture house from where they were practicing and Boris Karloffs Black Sabbath was on.

Keith Richards was actually called Keith Richard in the early days because their manager thought people would associate Keith with Cliff Richard and it could give a boost to the band.
How embarassing.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
14 Sep 2007
Posts
15,660
Location
Limbo
"The name of each band member was originally created by combining the first name of an iconic female sex symbol and the last name of an iconic mass murderer or serial killer, doing so to demonstrate the odd dichotomy of society (American society, in particular)."

Surely that fits in with what I know of the way the name was formed then :confused:
 
Back
Top Bottom