Alice Cooper
I figgered it's a pretty safe bet that Alice Cooper was not his given name. So, how did he come up with the name? There are a number of stories. Take your pick. One story has it that the name was from a Ouija board session when Vincent Furnier (Alice Cooper's real name) found out that he was the reincarnation of a witch by that name. That certainly fits his persona, but it was likely just made up to culture that persona.
Cooper revealed once that he just made up a name that would go with "a cute and sweet little girl with a hatchet behind her back."
Two other stories about the source of the name have to do with fictitious characters. There was a character in Mayberry RFD by the name of Alice Cooper, and the mother of Betty Cooper (from the Archie comic books) was named Alice. Betty was my favorite. Veronica was too high maintenance.
Buffalo Springfield
You would think this might be someone's name. Or maybe that is has something to do with the singer Dusty Springfield? Wrong on both counts. Buffalo Springfield was a group that included Neil Young and Stephen Stills, later to be half of the group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
There was a steamroller parked outside of the place where three of the band members lived. The nameplate on this steamroller said that it was manufactured by the Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company of Springfield, OH. This is interesting, since a steamroller played an important part in the career of yet another famous rockstar, John the Revelator.
Deep Purple
The band Deep Purple was once listed in the Guinness Book of Worlds Records as the loudest band. When you hear the name, you can't help but think about hard rock. But connoisseurs of the old standards might remember another "Deep Purple". This was a gorgeous song written for piano in 1933, with the lyrics beginning "When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls..." The kind of song that your grandmother probably loved. Surely there can't be a connection between the two? Well, there is a connection. Founding member Ritchie Blackmore had a grandmother. This grandmother wanted to hear the band play her favorite song. And her favorite song was Deep Purple.
Doobie Brothers
When we were in high school in the mid 70's, we would snigger whenever someone mentioned "The Doobie Brothers". We all knew what it meant. But our parents and teachers just thought that "Doobie" was their last name. And we sniggered.
But while I sniggered, I also wondered. Which came first, the doobie or the brothers? I could see two possible scenarios: 1) They could have started out with the name "a bunch of guys who like to get together to play music and smoke some weed". This name would necessarily need to be shortened, so they would incorporate the slang for "joint" into their name. or 2) They started with the name just cuz it was cool or something, and then somebody said "hey, what should we call this thing we smoke to get high? Let's call it a doobie, since the guys in the Doobie Brothers get high too".
For those wondering, the doobie came first, then the Doobie. They actually never had the official name "a bunch of guys who like to get together to play music and smoke some weed". The first name was Pud, which is British for dessert.
So, where did the word doobie come from? Good question. It could have been from the "Mr. Do Bee" character in the TV show for preschoolers Romper Room.
Or it might have been from the scatting that Frank Sinatra did at the end of his rendition of "Strangers in the Night". Or - my favorite urban legend, cuz I made it up myself - it may come as a result of a quote by the pop icon and author Kurt Vonnegut:
To be is to do - Socrates
To do is to be - Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra
The Doors
Everyone knows this, right? The Doors took their name from the book "Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley. The book recounted an experience that Huxley had with mescaline, a psychedelic drug from the peyote cactus. Mescaline, as Huxley told, helped clean his doors of perception so that he could be enlightened.
Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors had his owns doors of perception permanently closed at the age of 27, from a probable drug overdose.
Did Huxley die of an overdose? Huxley was on his deathbed from cancer of the larynx. He asked his wife to administer LSD and he died several hours later. Was this an overdose? You decide.
Jethro Tull
One would think that Jethro Tull was the name of the flute player who brought classical music into the band. Not so. The flautist with Jethro Tull was Ian Anderson. The original Jethro Tull was a British inventor around the year 1700 who developed a device for planting seed and a horse-drawn hoe.
Was this a play on the idea of heavy metal? Probably not. The name was suggestion by an employee of their booking agent, who happened to be a history buff. They had been changing the name of the band repeatedly. This name stuck because they actually got a second gig with this name!
John the Revelator
John the Revelator is one of the most innovative and influential karaoke hosts of our time, having pioneered the use of an inflatable guitar to augment the cheesy riffs in karaoke backup tracks. In addition to his phenomenal skill with karaoke equipment, with karaoke software, and his uncanny ability to know just where on the floor a mic cable should go, the Revelator is a tireless advocate of karaoke in the greater Milwaukee area. His website with a listing of every single karaoke venue in Milwaukee is pure poetry to the karaokephile.
In the early 90's, John the Revelator applied his prodigious mathematical genius to the production of the single most flawless karaoke song ever sung, "Steamroller Blues". Those who have heard this live will surely count this as a life-changing experience. He has followed this up with an equally life-changing version of "Minnie the Moocher". Today, people can be seen swooning when he performs "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" in a manner that would make Frankie Valli cry.
Anthony "Sven" Chojnacki had this to say about the Revelator: "John the Revelator? Yeah. He's ok I guess." High praise indeed.
Where did such a luminary acquire his nom de plume? Was it a misspelling of "John the Realtor"? Does it have to do with the revelry that the Revelator inspires? Does it harken back to the Book of Revelation? An ancient blog, recently unearthed, may provide some clues as to the source of this enigmatic but strangely haunting name.
Johnny Paycheck
Donald Lytle is a country singer best known for the song "Take This Job and Shove It". It may seem obvious that he changed his name to try to grab a bit of Johnny Cash's fame. Lytle has a different story. He says that he took the name of a boxer from the 40's.
Led Zeppelin
Keith Moon and John Entwistle (from the Who) were potentially going to join with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck (from the Yardbirds) to form a supergroup. Moon commented that this would go over like a lead balloon. Or maybe like a lead zeppelin. Or maybe it was Entwistle that said it. Read the account in Wiki. Another account said that Moon said "lead balloon", and Entwistle said "lead zeppelin". Either way, the name resurfaced, with the "a" in "lead" dropped so that the Americans would not pronounce it "leed". Jimmy Page was the only one of this group of four musicians who became part of Led Zeppelin.
Leonard Skinner was a gym teacher in Jacksonville, FL. He believed in discipline, and he believed in sending young would-be rockers to the principal's office if their hair touched their collars. When looking for a name for their group, these would-be rockers decided to immortalize their gym teacher with a little different spelling: Lynryd Skynyrd.
That was in 1970. It wasn't until the mid-70's that Skinner heard about Skynryd. At the time, he couldn't even recall the long-haired trouble maker students.
Marilyn Manson
Brian Warner took his first name from the starlet Marilyn Monroe, and his last name from the murderer Charles Manson. Ok, that's a little creepy.
Charles Manson actually wrote some music, and The Beach Boys recorded one of the songs without giving tribute to Manson.
Pink Floyd
"and by the way, which one's Pink?" This is a line from the Pink Floyd song "Have a Cigar". David Gilmour of the band explains that this was a common question that fans would ask, assuming that there must be someone in the band named Pink. The name Pink Floyd came from two blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. The group was forced to change their name from Tea Set when they heard of another band by that name.
The other group didn't make it big, by the way. A punk group with a raucous name like that does not instantly start cranking out platinum albums? Go figger. The link to the last.fm page on Tea Set says that a group named "Scrotum Pole" has a similar sound. I really can't see why a punk group with a name like that did not hit the big time. There is so much injustice in the music industry.
Steely Dan
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen got their name from the book Naked Lunch by William Burroughs. One website on band name origins goes so far as to state that "Steely Dan is the nickname given to a giant steam-powered dildo." To paraphrase Mark Twain, "the rumors of my dildo have been greatly exaggerated."
The book contains the phrase "Steely Dan" twice. The first reference says that it is a strap-on rubber penis. The other reference is rather vague. Sorry to let the steam out of you guys!
Although I myself did not finish the book when I tried to read it a few years back, the book has had some influence on culture. The alternative country group Clem Snide takes it's name from Naked Lunch.
Strawberry Alarm Clock
You would think that there has to be a good story behind the name Strawberry Alarm Clock. Evidently not, cuz I haven't found any explanation. On second thought, maybe it's just some silly name somebody came up with.
Three Dog Night
This is an easy one. In the Australian aboriginal culture, one would curl up with the dogs at night to keep warm. The colder the night, the more dogs you needed. A three dog night is pretty darn cold.
Uriah Heep
No doubt all rock music fans will immediately recognize that Uriah Heep was the unctuous character in the Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield. Today the reference seems very obscure, but this British band was christened by this name in 1969, and February of 1970 was the 100th anniversary of this extremely prolific British author. England was abuzz with Dickensia at the time.
Wet Willie
For the benefit of anyone who did not go to Junior High school, a wet willie is when you wet your finger an stick it in someone's ear. Just to be gross. The Wiki article on the band does not mention how the band got its name. Nor does their official website. Now, wouldn't you think a band whose name is associated with sticking your saliva into someone else's ear would work hard to either bolster or refute that association.
Other resources
In my prolific research for this post, I came across two websites similar to this one. While both sites list more bands than I do, but, needless to say, neither is as entertaining as my own. Indeed, I find it hard to believe that there could be another webpage as entertaining as this one. When I finish reading every page on the web, I will submit another post.
http://library.thinkquest.org/4626/rock.htm
http://digitaldreamdoor.nutsie.com/pages/music0_name.html
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