Band Name Origins

The Ramones named themselves after Paul Ramon, Paul McCartney's Nom de Plume when he wanted to travel incognito.

 

I'd been under the impression (from reading it somewhere online) that they took the name from Slim Harpo's instrumental "Moody Blues" from his highly influential (on UK bands) 1961 LP Rainin' In My Heart -- the album that contained " I Got Love If You Want It" covered by all kinds of UK bands, "I'm A King Bee" that the 'Stones covered on their first LP, and Don't Start Cryin' Now, which was one of Them's first releases.

But since what you recount is what Mike Pinder said about the subject, that must be it:

Gary James' Interview With Mike Pinder Of The Moody Blues

 

Could be?

 

I thought so too, but I just posted a link to a Mike Pinder interview where he says otherwise.

 

Thin Lizzy

'Tin Lizzie', a character in the Dandy comic books. Name tweaked to Thin Lizzy, which would be pronounced 'Tin' in the Dublin vernacular anyway.

 

The Guess Who? was a ruse by the record label. The band were called Chad Allen and the Reflections. It was thought that Canadian radio stations were refusing to play Canadian artists, preferring British Invasion imports. The label thought that if they put a single to radio with the 'mystery name' The Guess Who, that radio would be intrigued and play the song, thinking it was some famous British band. It worked. The song was a hit. The name stuck.

 

I Never heard the Flaming Pie Tall Tale.

I thought they were BIG fans of Buddy Holly and the Crickets and so the went with The Silver Beatles as a bug Buddy homage, and later dropped the Silver...?

 

Stiff Little Fingers

Named themselves after a song of that title released in '77 by fellow punk band The Vibrators. Previously named 'Highway Star' after the Deep Purple track, which doesn't quite fit the aesthetic!

 

The latter is the true origin. The flaming pie story was just one of John's jokes.
Reportedly it was Stuart Sutcliffe and John suggesting 'Beatals' before it became '(Silver) Beetles' and then 'Beatles'.

 

I do not recall seeing this one yet:

The Doors


from Aldous Huxley seminal 1955 book, The Doors of Perception.

 

Buffalo Springfield, inspired by the name of a steam roller or big CAT-type tractor the band saw.

 

I´m assuming this is a ¨Steely Dan?¨ But I don´t get the steam-powered bit, so I might be off...


In the same veins, The Soft Machine, also taken from a risque book, this time by William Burroughs.

 

The Grateful Dead, from The Tibetan Book of The Dead.


Off to the Races...Tata London Bye Bye

 

Wherever the truth is you have to admit it's a great and very weird name.

 

Both are from William Burroughs books, then. Steely Dan is from Naked Lunch.

 

According to Wikipedia, they got it from a dictionary (possibly a folklore dictionary). But maybe that’s a secondary source and what you indicated is the original source?

 

My favorite is Hawkwind, from saxophonist Nik Turner’s regular habits of clearing plegm from his throat (‘hawking’) and breaking wind.

 

The Hoboken based indie band Yo La Tengo (which means "I got it" in Spanish) took the name from a baseball anecdote that occurred during the 1962 season, when New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, "I got it! I got it!" only to run into Chacón, a Venezuelan who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, "¡Yo la tengo! ¡Yo la tengo!" instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish and had missed a team meeting that proposed using the words "¡Yo la tengo!" as a way to avoid outfield collisions. After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, "What the hell is a Yellow Tango?".

 

The Montreal based post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor took its name from God Speed You! Black Emperor, a 1976 Japanese black-and-white documentary by director Mitsuo Yanagimachi, which follows the exploits of a Japanese biker gang, the Black Emperors.

 

And Uriah Heep is of course a fictional character created by Charles Dickens in his 1850 novel David Copperfield.

 

Alice Cooper was originally called The Nazz, but Todd Rundgren was already using the name. So Vincent Furnier and the boys chose a name that recalled Lizzie Borden. The name Alice Cooper "conjured up an image of a little girl with a lollipop in one hand, and a butcher knife in another," the Coop recalled.

 

Marc Bolan, or Marc Feld, assembled his stage name from the first and last letters of Bob Dylan: BOb dyLAN.

 

The Melvins were named after a running gag of sorts using the name Melvin in early Mad comics/magazines.

54-40 (or 54.40) were named after the old U.S. expansionist slogan '54.40 Or Bust' that wanted the border between the U.S. and British North America as being at the latitude of 54.40 degrees north rather than the lower located 49th where it ended up being.

Capping Day were named after the procedure aliens inflicted on humans in the Tripods trilogy of books by John Christopher.

 

I thought they got the name from the tv show The Invaders - where all the aliens had stiff little fingers.

SLF are a tremendous band, even when they went rock. Their St Paddy's day shows were crazy.

 

Duran Duran, named after a character from the Barbarella movie.

Iggy Pop got his nickname from his first band, The Iguanas (he was the drummer).

Primal Scream is of course named after Athur Janov's primal scream therapy. Tears For Fears also got their name from Janov's primal scream.