And they put out two very interesting singles - the first, two terrific surf instrumentals, the second, two vocals pointing the way to The Turtles' sound. It's well worth listening to the Out of Control compilation of all their stuff - on vinyl (Rhino) in the 80s, on CD (Sundazed) in the 90s, with two bonus tracks.
The Earwigs > The Spiders > The Nazz > Alice Cooper The Tradewinds > TW4 > Styx The High Numbers > The Who Ted
I don’t think they were ever seriously called that; IIRC they were called STP after the fuel additive and had various explanations as to what the initialism meant.
The Hype became U2 when The Edge’s brother Dik left. In another case where a membership change triggered a name change: after two of their members got drafted, Houston psych quartet The Moving Sidewalks became a trio and changed their name to ZZ Top.
The Warlocks became The Grateful Dead and The Velvet Underground. Dinosaur became Dinosaur Jr. Captain Trundlow’s Sky Company became the Squeeze.
Great thread! Thank you all Some posts (just a few) are about different groups, i.e. the bands where some members were before making the "final" band, not a band changing the name with the same musicians. My examples (Spooky Tooth and Black Oak Arkansas) were bands that even released a record with the "first name" and then changed the name of the band Some bands changed the name by producer's request before the first album
Would the Artist have to have actually recorded and released a record under the earlier Name...? Or can they be early Names but with no actual record releases under that early Name(s)?
Atlantic Records made The Pigeons change their name when they signed them,so they became Vanilla Fudge.
Going from an absolutely awesome name in Public Affection, to an absolutely terrible name in Live. If Ed Kowalczyk and co. knew just a few years later that Google and social media would become juggernauts in all our lives they would've stuck to the better name.
Little Boy Blue & the Blue Boys (Mick Jagger, Keith Richards) and Blues, Inc. (Brian Jones, Ian Stewart and Charlie Watts) became The Rolling Stones Daddy became Supertramp The Anon and The Garden Wall became Genesis Mammoth became Van Halen - after initially changing from their first name Trojan Rubber Company, they were briefly known as Genesis until they knew about the British group under that name (evident when Eddie Van Halen picked up a copy of that band's 1971 album, Nursery Cryme) The New Yardbirds became Led Zeppelin ~Ben
