Choosing a moniker for your band is a hard thing to do, there are already so many out there that it is unavoidable some good ones are going be reused or even stolen? Is it ever acceptable to steal a name? If the band was an obscure music act that everybody has forgotten, why not? Although it is ethically questionable, hey they got the idea first, right? If it was successful band, forget about it, there’s no way you re gonna do better.
But you have to find a name somewhere, so a lot of bands find their inspiration among famous writers’ work: Titus Andronicus was named after a play by Shakespeare, Modest Mouse after a passage in ‘The Mark on the Wall” by Virginia Woolf, The Fall after Albert Camus’ book, Savage Garden after Anne Rice’s novel, Steely Dan after William Burrough’s book Naked Lunch, Coldplay after a poem book called Child’s Reflections: Cold Play, The Doors after Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception, Belle and Sebastien after a children book and the Velvet Underground after a S&M book. The inspiration can also come other bands’ songs: The Mountain Goats found their name in a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song, Phoenix is named after the song ‘Phoenix’ from Daft Punk’s debut album, Radiohead after the Talking Heads song, and The Rolling Stones found their name in the Muddy Waters song, ‘Mannish Boy’. There are also random examples such as Depeche Mode named after a French fashion magazine, Duran Duran is named after a character in the movie Barbarella, Iron Maiden after after the iron maiden torture device shown in the film The Man in the Iron Mask…., and some recent bands have simply opted for celebrity names: Truman Peyote, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Com Truise, Nicole Kidman, Kevin Costner Saves the World, Nathalie Portman’s shaved head, Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin, Gay for Johnny Depp, Bono Must Die… The list is long and I could go on forever. But is it stealing? Not really, rather borrowing or even paying homage to some favorite writer, actor, singer…
But I am not talking about this kind of stealing, I am talking about bands which steal a band name that already exists, and it happens a lot. There was a time when there were Nirvana UK and Nirvana US, Nirvana UK took Kurt Cobain to court for stealing the name, and reached a settlement… it was claimed that Cobain’s record label paid $100,000 to the original Nirvana in order to continue using the name. There are two One Direction(s) and One Direction US were planning to sue One Direction UK in 2012, I bet they had no chance, and there were originally two bands named Charlatans and two named Suede!
Last year, indie artist Luke Stidson, performing under the moniker Twin Falls (itself named after the Built to Spill song) claimed that Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba had stolen his moniker for his new project. However he was told by a lawyer that the name couldn’t be trademarked under US law because it was a place name… ha! Isn’t Nirvana a place too? If it wasn’t such a big problem at the time of Nirvana, it has become increasingly confusing with iTunes and all the download/streaming business, the risk of confusion has increased considerably. It is a real problem for bands and that’s why any double use of a name will end up in court with a winner. ‘Regardless of how long we have been using the name’, writes Stidson, ‘any attempt to stop the other party using it will have to involve a lengthy journey through the courts. In other words, at the end of the day, the person who has the most money and therefore the resource to fight their case to the bitter end, will win’.
But there are exceptions, The Raconteurs were forced to change their name in Australia because the name was already taken by a jazz band. As a result, Jack White’s band is known as The Saboteurs by the Aussies! The Queensland band refused to give up their name for the amount offered,… I bet White got really pissed off by that.
There is a similar case right now in Los Angeles, involving Gateway Drugs, a band that have existed for 3 years. They read an interesting piece of info in an interview of Courtney Love (I know!) in the Quietus: ‘Isaiah has a band called Gateway Drugs, they’re great, impeccable. And he’s a saint. I’m really shocked that I love him so much, but he’s who you want your daughter to date. He’s Jared Leto cute. He’s so cute. And he’s really really really good, too. He’s so sweet, and [chuckles] she’s got a lot of my temperament. She’s feisty. Temperament and a trust fund, so.’ … Whom is she talking about? Isaiah, Frances Bean Cobain’s fiancé and he is stealing the band name! Couldn’t they have checked if the name were already taken? They are on Facebook, they have songs and have played lots of shows. Actually it’s worst than a pure coincidence because they had met and the band had even released a song entitled ‘Los Angeles Will Have its Revenge on Frances Bean’
The band claims that ‘It was never our intention to hurt Frances. We were focusing on societies gross pop culture obsessions, and complete lack of human empathy’, but may be she didn’t like it, and that’s why he and her Jared Leto cute boyfriend are stealing the band name? Her father did it, so why not? Buddyhead, which is releasing Gateway Drugs’ upcoming album, has started a war on Facebook here: ‘Gateway Drugs VS Frances Bean Cobain + her Kurt Cobain look a like poser boyfriend….There will be blood soon! Actually, you know what, I have found another Drug Gateway band from Cape Town Africa and active on Facebook since 2012, so it can become very complicated.
