Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Band Name Origins: G





Genesis
The first book in the Bible - their first album's title was "From Genesis to Revelation"
Gerry and the Pacemakers
Formed in 1959 by Gerry Marsden, the group was originally called Gerry Marsden and the Mars Bars.  They were forced to change this when the Mars Company, producers of the chocolate Mars Bar, complained.
Good Charlotte
They took their name from a children's book, which the identical twin brothers Joel (lead vocals and guitar) and Benji Madden (lead guitar and backing vocals) used to read when little, called "Good Charlotte: The Girls of Good Day Orphanage" by Carol Beach York.


Grateful Dead
Originally called The Warlocks, Jerry Garcia found out that another band had the same name. Supposedly, he looked in a reference book at random and found a folk tale about a troubled soul who is put to rest by a traveller. The spirit then helps the traveller with his own quest.
Green Day
1)  It may have come from the sci-fi movie Soylent Green when they said "Tuesday is soylent green day."  Soylent green was a food produced by a corporation to feed the way overpopulated masses; in fact they were also making it from the masses!
2)  Another story is that when they dropped out of school to be musicians, their principal said "It'll be a green day in hell before you make anything of yourselves".   
3)  Some say that in drug slang if you smoked pot and goofed off all day, it was a "Green Day."
Guns ‘n’ Roses
·       Guns ‘n’ Roses was originally two bands, L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose. Hollywood Rose was headed by Axl Rose. Izzy Stradlin headed the other band which also featured Tracci Guns and Ole Reich. The two frequented clubs and played there and were friends.  The name was coined when the two groups merged.  Not long after forming, Guns' lack of attendance at rehearsals led to his replacement by Slash.
·       Born William Bruce Rose Jnr, Axl Rose until age 17 believed that his last name was Bailey.  At age 17 he discovered that he was adopted and took on his own family name, Rose, but called himself only W Rose, not wanting to share a name with his birth father.  Subsequently he began using the name Axl, the name of a band in which he was engrossed, and later changed his name officially to W Axl Rose.  It may be coincidental that Axl Rose is an anagram of Oral Sex.
·       Slash, born Saul Hudson, has commented on his name:  "It was a nickname that Seymour Cassel used to call me. I used to be (and) I'm still good friends with his son, Matt, so I used to hang out over at their house and he always used to call me Slash. Basically, he says it was because I was always in a hurry and I was always scheming, I was always hustling, this and that. He always saw me on the go, on the fly. So he used to call me Slash and it just stuck. My friends started calling me that and it just became a permanent nickname."


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