The band name Bono wouldn’t be caught dead using: “Who the fuck are these?”
When you look through the pages of musical history, you are met with a shocking amount of excellent band names. Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, what’s not to love?
The truth is, band names used to be incredibly important when we relied a lot more heavily on genre. These days, who cares what genre an artist dabbles in? Music has never been more accessible, as you can quite literally just type an artist’s name into Spotify and then have a listen to what they’ve made. It’s not a huge commitment, as if you like it, keep listening; if you don’t, turn it off.
This wasn’t the case when music wasn’t quite as accessible as it is now, though. When we used to have to buy vinyls in order to listen to our favourite songs, people wanted to have an idea about what they were listening to. Genre was important because fans of rock music wanted to be absolutely goddamn sure they were buying rock, disco fans wanted disco, pop wanted pop, and so on.
The same thing applies to band names. Choosing a band name used to be an incredibly important part of the creative process, as people wanted something which was a reflection of the genre that they were representing. To quote some of the bands listed above, The Rolling Stones could only ever play rock music, while Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath evidently make something heavier. People needed their name to align with their band’s identity and also appeal to potential listeners.
Some names come easier than others. You’d be surprised by just how many bands have stumbled upon their names, which are now universally recognised. During an interview with Far Out, lead singer of Madness, Suggs, spoke about how he and his band came up with their name, which for many is now considered iconic.
“We were called The North London Invaders. Sort of ’77, ’78, then we found out there was another band called The Invaders. Whatever happened to them, who knows? But they had a record deal, and we didn’t, and they licensed the name,” he explained. “So, we turned up the Music Machine [now KOKO], and Mike, our keyboard player, had taken it upon himself to rename us ‘Morris and The Minors’. There was posters outside, and we was like, ‘Who the fuck are these?’”
Suggs continued, “I wasn’t mad on being Morris, and the rest weren’t too keen on being the Minors either […] So, we was just thinking, what we gunna call ourselves? We had a setlist of the songs we were doing at the time. It was like ‘One Step Beyond’, dunno, not bad, ‘My Girl’. Nah, that don’t work. Anyway, we were doing a cover of a Prince Buster song, ‘Madness’, and somebody just suggested Madness, and everyone agreed.”
It was good that Madness came to such an amicable decision, but things aren’t always as smooth as that. U2 had an incredibly hard time choosing their band name as members were going back and forth with suggestions. In the end, Bono was happy with what they landed on, but before they got there, he had to bat away some horrid ideas. There was one name in particular that he knew was an absolute non-starter; he just had to convince the band of as much.
“There it is, a letter and a number, perfect to print large on a poster or a T-shirt,” he concluded. “If I think about it as a spy plane, as in the U-2, I like it. But if I think about it as a bad pun, as in ‘you too’, I don’t. I don’t think I voted for it, but I certainly didn’t stop it. I’m one in four, and a real rock’n’roll band is not run by the singer. Led maybe, but not run. I definitely stopped the Flying Tigers, which was Steve’s second suggestion.”
