Early Queen
It’s one of the biggest decisions any band will face: what to call themselves. And yet, so many get it so wrong. Fortunately, for every group that comes up with a terrible name and sticks with it, there’s a band that comes up with a terrible name, plays a few shows under it, maybe releases a demo or even an album or two but then finally comes to its senses. Many well-known and successful groups – from Creedence Clearwater Revival to Green Day – have been through the latter growing pains, starting out life cursed with a misguided moniker before landing on a name destined to adorn the T-shirts of millions of devoted fans. The name makes the band, as they say; here are 25 bands that almost didn’t get made.
Sample:
20. Smile
Final name: Queen
More benignly forgettable than truly offensive, the name Smile simply cannot approximate the power of the music that the group’s guitarist, Brian May, and drummer, Roger Taylor, would record with their next band: Queen. In his book Queen: The Early Years, author Mark Hodkinson wrote that the group’s bassist and vocalist, Tim Staffell, “adopted the concept of a group called ‘Smile’ as part of a college project and built a graphics campaign around it.” When Staffell quit the group, May and Taylor formed a new group with singer Freddie Mercury who gave them the name Queen. “The concept of Queen is to be regal and majestic,” he once told Circus. “Glamour is a part of us and we want to be dandy. We want to shock and be outrageous.”
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