Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/7-bands-named-after-books-films-or-places/
A band name has to do a lot of work. It sits on posters, album sleeves and streaming pages, and it usually gets chosen long before anyone knows whether the group will matter.
Plenty of musicians have borrowed theirs from somewhere else, whether a novel on the shelf, a cult movie or a spot on the map. Some of the stories behind those choices are neat. Others are stranger than you’d expect.
Steppenwolf
The Canadian American rock group took its name from Hermann Hesse’s 1927 novel Steppenwolf. The book follows a man torn between his civilized side and a wilder, more solitary one. The band formed in Los Angeles in the late 1960s around singer John Kay, who was born in Germany.
The name reportedly came from their producer, Gabriel Mekler, who had been reading Hesse. It stuck, and it suited a group with a heavy, restless sound. “Born to Be Wild” became their best known song, and its appearance in the 1969 film Easy Rider cemented its reputation.
Joy Division
This Manchester group got its name from a novel, though a grim one. House of Dolls, published under the pen name Ka-Tzetnik 135633, describes a Nazi concentration camp, where “Joy Division” was the name for groups of women forced into sexual slavery. The band had started out as Warsaw before switching names in 1978 to avoid confusion with another group.
The choice drew criticism then and has done so since. Even so,…
—-
Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-11-02 12:48:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
—-
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8