3 Famous 1970s Bands With Very Unfortunate Names

I, for one, love a creative band name. What better way to attract attention than with a creative, confusing, vulgar, or strange band name? The following three bands from the 1970s had some pretty unfortunate names, but their music remains some of the most important work of their respective heydays. Let’s take a look!

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Mott The Hoople

This one’s hilarious, and you can thank literature for it. Mott The Hoople formed back in 1969, and this glam rock outfit’s name came from a book of the same name by novelist Willard Manus. Island Records’ Guy Stevens read the book while in prison for a drug charge, and he was inspired by the story of an eccentric individual who worked at a circus. He pitched the name to the band Silence, and their name was subsequently changed to Mott The Hoople.

Bread

This one just makes me laugh. Bread? Really? Innocuously weird at best and downright silly at worst, Bread was definitely a strange band name to pick for an American soft rock band. And yet, despite that name, this group ended up selling millions of records and hitting the mainstream charts in the US multiple times throughout the 1970s. 

“A bread truck came along right at the time we were trying to think of a name,” David Gates said of the band name’s origin. “We had been saying, ‘How about bush, telephone pole? Ah, bread truck, bread.’ It began with a B, like The Beatles and The Bee Gees. Bread also had a kind of universal appeal. It could be taken a number of ways. Of course, for the entire first year people called us The Breads.”

Throbbing Gristle

Sometimes, even if you speak the same language, words from another culture might just make no sense to you. That was the case for me, at least, when I first started listening to the 1970s English industrial post-punk band Throbbing Gristle. As a born and bred American, I thought this band name just referred to hot cooking grease. That’s not the case. The true name is a little too explicit to explain here, so I’ll let you Google this one yourself. 

This group is definitely worthy of a mention on our list of 1970s bands with unfortunate names, but their music is far from unfortunate. The Second Annual Report from 1977 is essential listening.

Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage