Before They Were Legends: Their Embarrassing First Band Names
via The Beatles / Youtube
Every Legend Has a Terrible First Draft
Before the sold-out stadiums, the gold records, and the decades of radio airplay, every legendary rock band was just a group of young men in somebody’s garage or rehearsal room, arguing about what to call themselves. Some stumbled onto their name by accident. Some borrowed it from a film or a random dictionary entry. And some, bless them, came up with something so spectacularly bad that it is a minor miracle they ever got a second gig.
The names that follow are real. They are documented. And every time you look at the band they eventually became, the gap between where they started and where they ended up gets funnier and more astonishing in equal measure.
The Lineup of Shame
What a Bad Name Taught Them
There is a pattern running through every one of these stories that is worth noticing. In almost every case, the embarrassing name came first, the real identity came after, and the pivot between the two was a moment of clarity, usually forced by someone telling the truth. Tony Iommi told Ozzy the name was crap. Keith Moon made a joke. Freddie Mercury walked into a band that did not know it needed him yet. The names were placeholders for bands that had not yet figured out who they were.
“Every time I hear it, all I can picture is you, with your trousers around your ankles, taking a dump. It’s crap.”
Tony Iommi, to Ozzy Osbourne, on the name “Polka Tulk Blues Band,” 1968
That is the thing about a great band name. It does not describe the music, it announces the mythology. Black Sabbath tells you everything you need to know before a single note plays. Led Zeppelin sounds like something that should not exist but does anyway. Queen sounds like exactly what Freddie Mercury always believed his band was. Getting there took some embarrassing detours. But then, so did almost everything worth doing.
