A band name is usually the first thing a stranger learns about you. It shows up on posters, demo tapes and club listings long before anyone hears a note. Plenty of famous groups started out under names that never made it past the rehearsal room.
Some of these changes were casual, and others were pushed along by practical problems like legal worries or a clash with another act. Here are seven bands that settled on the name we know before their record deals arrived.
The Beatles
The group that became the Beatles began as the Quarrymen in Liverpool in the late 1950s. By 1960 they had tried Johnny and the Moondogs and the Silver Beetles. They shortened it to the Beatles that same year, in time for their long stints in Hamburg.
That version of the name carried them into the studio. They signed with EMI’s Parlophone label in 1962, and their first single, Love Me Do, came out that October. The name stuck for the rest of their career, and the wordplay on beat and beetle gave it a bit of character.
Nirvana
Before Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic settled on Nirvana in 1988, they cycled through a string of names. Fecal Matter, Skid Row, Pen Cap Chew, Bliss and Ted Ed Fred have all been linked to the early lineup. The changing roster and shifting names made the group hard to track in the Washington State scene.
Once they became Nirvana, things moved quickly. Their first single, Love Buzz, was released through Sub Pop in 1988, and the debut album Bleach followed in 1989. The big label deal with DGC came later, but the name was already in place well before it.
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam was first called Mookie Blaylock, after the NBA point guard. The Seattle group used that name while they were putting songs together and drawing label interest in the early 1990s. A professional athlete’s name was never going to work on a major release.
The band chose Pearl Jam before their debut album came out on Epic Records. Their first record, Ten, appeared in 1991, and the title is a nod to the player’s jersey number. The original name survives only as a piece of trivia.
Radiohead
Radiohead formed at a school in Abingdon, England, and started out as On a Friday. The name came from the weekday they rehearsed. The members went off to university and kept the project going on the side.
In 1991 the band was courting record labels, and the name was changed to Radiohead. It was borrowed from a song by Talking Heads. They signed with EMI that year, and Pablo Honey arrived in 1993.
Green Day
Green Day began in the East Bay of California as Sweet Children. Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt were teenagers, and the name belonged to their earliest shows around Berkeley. A local scene was growing around the all ages club 924 Gilman Street.
They switched to Green Day in 1989. The new name referred to a day spent smoking marijuana, which fit the group’s slacker image. Their early records came out on the independent label Lookout Records, and the major label step came with Reprise in the early 1990s.
Joy Division
The Manchester band that became Joy Division started as Warsaw. The name came from a David Bowie track title. In 1978 another group was performing under a similar name, so they looked for a replacement.
The new name came from a book about Nazi concentration camps, a choice that drew criticism for its darkness. By then the band had worked out the stark sound that defined them. They signed with Factory Records in 1978, and their debut album Unknown Pleasures appeared in 1979.
Coldplay
Coldplay’s early story began at University College London in the late 1990s. Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland first performed under the name Pectoralz and later as Starfish. Around 1997 they adopted Coldplay, a name that a fellow student had passed on after dropping it for his own group.
Under the new name they released a small run of the Safety EP in 1998. Parlophone signed them in 1999, and their debut album Parachutes came out in 2000. The name has stayed the same through every album since.
