According to my ****ty day calendar, where did the following bands come up with the idea for their names? The Beatles The Doors The Grateful Dead Dave Matthews Band (Just kidding)
The Beatles wanted to be like The Cricketts (insects), Buddy Holly's band. So John Lennon came up with Beetles but changed the spelling to Beatles.
The story I've heard re: the Grateful Dead is that they opened a dictionary twice and picked the first word that they saw each time. The words were "Grateful" and "Dead."
Here is a funny story of how The Beatles got their name from John Lennon: (This was written (1961) before the Beatles were famous) Being A Short Diversion On The Dubious Origins Of Beatles Once upon a time there were three little boys called John, George and Paul, by name christened. They decided to get together because they were the getting together type. When they were together they wondered what for after all, what for? So all of a sudden they all grew guitars and fashioned a noise. Funnily enough, no-one was interested, least of all the three little men. So-o-o on discovering a fourth little even littler man called Stuart Sutcliffe running about them they said, quote 'Sonny get a bass guitar and you will be alright' and he did.... ... many people ask what are the Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision - a man appeared on a Flaming Pie and said unto them 'From this day on you are Beatles with an A'. 'Thankyou, Mister Man,' they said, thanking him...
According to this site they used the a as a play on words, as Bob said above, describing their music. But they used "Beat" in several variations of names they tried before finally settling on The Beatles. edit: Forgot to post the web address. http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/named.htm Also the site gives a conflicting report that the name was generated by Stuart Sutcliffe because of the Gang name from "the Wild One" CK
On the contrary. This is John Lennon before pot, LSD...etc. The only thing the Beatles were taking at this time period were "prellys" (similar to speed pills) which they were introduced to while doing 8 hour shows in Germany. One of John Lennon's biggest influences was Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland, The Walrus and the Carpenter...etc). He also loved "The Goons", a radio comedy act that featured Peter Sellers among others. If you put those two influences together you can see where his story (and many of his songs) came from.
Isn't there a quote that goes with the Doors name? Something like "there are things known and things unknown, and in between are the Doors". Don't know where it came from though. I heard that the "grateful dead" were from a myth about ghosts who went around doing favors for everyone that they were grateful to for some reason or another. Maybe those who had been kind to them during their lives?
someone from The Who, was it Keith Moon, described a riff that Jimmy Page played on his guitar and declared:" THat would drop like a lead Zeppelin." again, the spelling change , they dropped the 'A' so people wouldnt say leed zeppelin. end of story
I thought that the original lead zeppelin comment was referring tot he whole band. It was something like "That group will go over like a lead zeppelin."
across110thstreet, I thought the story was different than that. Page & the Yardbirds weren't a bad band....so it is hard to imagine Moon dogging a guitar riff. The version I heard, was that Moon had said that as a comment in general about doomed ventures, rather than a specific shot at Page and the future success of Zep.
who will ever really know? heres an interesting take. entwistle claims it was him! from Ians' Led Zeppelin page In 1967, Robert Plant and John Bonham come together in The Band Of Joy. In March of the same year, Jeff Beck releases a solo single entitled "Hi Ho Silver Lining," which is backed with a Page composition entitled "Beck's Bolero". This song is recorded by Page, Beck, Nicky Hopkins, John Paul Jones, and Keith Moon. At this session Moon and John Entwistle, who are tired of The Who's infighting, discuss forming a band with Page and Beck. It is here that Moon announces that they should call the group Lead Zeppelin, because, "...it'll go over like a ***in' lead balloon!" (The "a" was later removed from "Lead" so that Americans would pronounce it correctly.) (John Entwistle claims that it was _he_, not Moon, who invented the name. Entwistle: "Led Zeppelin is a good name, isn't it? I made it up. Everybody says Keith Moon made it up, but he didn't. About four years ago I was really getting fed up with the Who.... And I was talking with a fellow who is the production manager for the Led Zeppelin now. I was talking to him down in a club in New York. And I said, 'Yeah, I'm thinking of leaving the group and forming my own group. I'm going to call the group Led Zeppelin. And I'm going to have an LP cover with like the Hindenburg going down in flames, and, you know, this whole business.' And like two months later he was working for Jimmy Page and, like, they were looking for a name, and so he suggested Led Zeppelin, and Page liked it, and they came out with the same LP cover that I'd planned." -hmmm. Would you believe this? ***hooray for edit!*** heres where i heard it was based on a riff. "So the players of Led Zeppelin are joined. After a few weeks of rehearsing, the band was still known as The New Yardbirds.Jimmy then put all of his remaining money into their first British tour. But they still needed a name. Keith Moon, the drummer for The Who, heard some of the stuff the band had done. Afterwards, Keith said that the mix of hard rock and heavy blues would go down like a Lead Zeppelin. Jimmy loved the name. But just to make sure people didn't read it as lead (like guitar lead), Jimmy changed Lead to Led. And so all the components of Led Zeppelin were in place." http://ledzepp.servehttp.com/history_of_led_zeppelin.htm
