Song titles come to songwriters in mysterious and unanticipated ways. Sometimes composers spot a road sign, a marquee, or a license plate, and—kapow!—a song title. And from titles come verses, choruses, and songs. 

Likewise, band names have been inspired from unusual places. 

Read on for some examples. 
​
​

A cinema across the street from Black Sabbath’s rehearsal room was showing the 1963 horror film Black Sabbath starring Boris Karloff. While watching people line up to see the film, bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler noted that it was strange that people spend so much money to see scary movies.

​Hence, the band’s name, the first recorded song’s name, and the first album’s name.[1]

One afternoon in 1974, Bill Danoff and his friend Margot Chapman visited restaurant bar Clyde’s in Georgetown, DC, where he sometimes sang as a folk duo with his wife, Taffy Nivert. It was after lunch, and from three o'clock to six, each table had a small menu that read, “Afternoon Delights.” 

What a neat title for a song, he thought. After a year or so of rewrites, it became the song “Afternoon Delight” and a record by the pop-folk Starland Vocal Band, Bill, his wife Taffy, friend Margot, and husband Jon Carroll.

​And a hit record at that, reaching the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the summer of 1977, helped along by its suggestive tent sign title and lyrics “skyrockets in flight.”[2]

Tom Johnston of the Doobie Brothers came up with “China Grove” after seeing a sign for the city outside San Antonio. Indeed, the lyrics referenced a sleepy little town near “San Antone” where the people living there were a little strange.

No harm, it was all made up. The song ran to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was included on The Captain and Me album released in 1973.[3]

The last track on the Hall & Oates 1974 album War Babies was called “Johnny Gore and the C. Eaters” because on a midnight drive through Georgia, Oates noticed a small town marquee that read what became the song’s name.

A few days later, on the way back through that town, Oates saw the other side of the marquee: “Johnny Gore and the Cheaters.”

​Duh! The “H” was missing on the other side.

Fortunately, the faux pas didn’t mess up the lyrics, which revolved around the tough time the band was having constantly touring from one small town to another.[4]

In 1972 Bob Seger took notice of a Leonard Cohen book of poetry called Beautiful Losers and thought that would make a good title for a song.

It took a while and a series of rewrites before Seger released “Beautiful Loser” in 1975 on you guessed it, an album named Beautiful Loser.[5]

“Kitty’s Back” was inspired by a sign Bruce Springsteen saw while driving—the new marquee of a strip club trumpeting the return of one of their dancers.

The song was released in 1973 on The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, the album prior to the boss’s breakout Born to Run album.[6]

Guitarist Stephen Stills and Richard Furay miraculously and successfully reconnoitered with singer-songwriter Neil Young and bass guitarist Bruce Palmer, both Canadians, on traffic-jammed Sunset Boulevard in LA.

In no time, they decided to form a band, picking up experienced drummer Dewey Martin, and became Buffalo Springfield, courtesy of a nameplate sign on a steamroller resurfacing Hollywood streets.

It was a good sign. The new band promptly booked top music venues and signed with Atlantic Records, which released their first mega-hit single “For What It’s Worth.” 

​Moreover, and to their credit, the Buffalo Springfield Roller Company, a New York–based maker of heavy machinery, actually supported the Springfield’s use of their mark.[7]

Guitarists Sylvan Sylvain and Billy Marcia worked at a New York hippie boutique where friend Johnny Thunders would occasionally visit. Across the street was a toy repair shop called New York Dolls Hospital.

Sylvan used to kid Billy and Johnny, “Man, wouldn’t that be a great name for a band someday?”

They’d reply, “What, New York Dolls Hospital?”

Sylvan “No, just the New York Dolls!”

The trio became—wait for it—the proto-punk band the New York Dolls.[8]

Dewey Bunnell, singer and guitarist for America, recalled: “I just remember seeing the sign Ventura as we were driving down the coast [of California], and we got a flat tire . . . I always liked the word ’Ventura’ for some reason. A lot of times, a word or phrase can be enough to inspire a song—or at least the title of a song.”

​You bet, “Ventura Highway” was a hit song from America’s second album, Homecoming.[9]

One night, a newly formed Memphis rock group fronted by singer Alex Chilton, while taking a break from working on songs, decided they needed a name. There were two buildings across the road from the studio, one an ice-cream joint called Sweden Kream, the other a branch of the local grocery Big Star.

They liked “Big Star.” It was a joke nobody outside the South would get and was an ironic commentary on their ambitions, as was the title of the album that came out of their sessions: #1 Record.[10]

Walter Egan recalled: “I was driving home [from the studio after recording my first album] around four in the morning from Van Nuys in Pomona, I get on the 101 Freeway in LA, and the car in front of me was this lowered—what they call ‘pimped-out’—Continental, with a diamond window and lights underneath it, and all these accoutrements on it. And the license plate said, ‘Not Shy.’ To me, it was somebody hitting me in the head, going, ‘There it is. Go for it.’ ”

He did. Want to guess the name of his first album?[11]

Tommy James and his songwriting partner Ritchie Cordell had laid down everything for a new song, but they needed a two-syllable girl’s name to finish it off.

​Around midnight, the pair sauntered out onto their high-rise terrace, leaned on the railing, and looked out at the Manhattan skyline. All of a sudden, Tommy’s eyes fell on a building across the street. It was the Mutual New York Insurance Company building. A large sign kept flashing “MONY.”

​“Is that God winking at us, or what?” It was, and he blessed the two with “MONY, MONY,” another hit record for Tommy James.[12]

1. “Ozzy Osbourne: The Godfather of Metal,” NYRock.com, June 2002. Archived from the original on October 31, 2013. 
2. J. Freedom du Lac, “Starland Vocal Band’s ‘Afternoon Delight’ Still Being Served after 35 Years,” The Washington Post, July 8, 2011.
3. Andrew Grant Jackson, 1973: Rock at the Crossroads (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2019), 105.
4. Paul Meyers, A Wizard a True Star: Todd Rundgren In the Studio (London, Jawbone Press, 2010), 119.
5. Andrew Grant Jackson, 1973, 232–33.
6. Ibid., 256–58. 
7. Rik Forgo, Eagles Before the Band (Time Passages, 2019), 84.
8. Paul Meyers, A Wizard a True Star: Todd Rundgren in the Studio, 83. 
9. Greg Prato, The Yacht Rock Book: The Oral History of the Soft, Smooth Sounds of the 70s and 80s (London: Jawbone Press, 2018), 111–12.
10. Ed Ward, The History of Rock and Roll Volume II 1964–1967: The Beatles, the Stones, and the Rise of Classic Rock (New York: Flatirons Books, 2019), 259.
11. Greg Prato, The Yacht Rock Book, 133.
12. Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah, Book Two: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2020), 66.

​

At various times people, have declared both “God Bless America” and “This Land Is Your Land” as alternatives to the “Star Spangled Banner.” Whether one would be a better choice over the other is not the focus here, but rather, what the songs have in common:

1. Once written, both songs were shelved—20 years in the case of “America” and four years for “This Land.”
2. After they were resurrected, their original lyrics were tweaked for the better.

“God Bless America” (Irving Berlin)
​

The US Army drafted Broadway composer Irving Berlin in 1918 and assigned him to Camp Upton (then known as Yaphank) on Long Island.

Aware that he would never be able to adapt to army life, the resourceful songwriter convinced the base commander to let him organize a show (produce, write the songs, everything) that would include talented draftees (many from the Big Apple entertainment industry) to entertain the troops, raise morale, and maybe do a little off-base recruiting. ​

Berlin “drafted” Harry Ruby from his Manhattan office to be his musical assistant, take down his songs, harmonize them, and pass them on to the arranger to do orchestrations for his big production Yip, Yip, Yaphank. 

WWI was raging furiously and literally dozens of patriotic songs were coming out. Irving had even written several such numbers himself for Yip, Yip, Yaphank. When the composer brought “America” to his assistant for scoring, Ruby said, “Geez, another one?” Irving took him seriously and filed it away. 

Twenty years later, when many Americans were fearing another war in Europe, Berlin thought the time might be right for a patriotic song, maybe the one he had stashed away two decades prior. But times had changed, and some lyrics needed to be modified.

First, in the original lines “Stand beside her and guide her / To the right, with a light from above,” he replaced “To the right” with “Through the night.”

The second change was more dramatic. “Make victorious on land and foam” became “From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam,” requiring a change to the melody, but all would agree, much more poetic, and oh so right. Over the years since, the lyrics have held up rather well with very little controversy.

Irving Berlin, parent of both the melody and the lyrics, and as copyright holder, willed all royalties from “God Bless America” to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America in perpetuity, specifically to programs in impoverished and disadvantaged areas, the allocation determined by the trustees of the establishing fund. As of the end of 2011, more than $10 million had been distributed to scouting organizations.[1]

​
​“This Land Is Your Land” (Woody Guthrie)

While Irving Berlin was a composer of Broadway musicals that spawned numerous hit songs (“Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Always,” “How Deep Is the Ocean,” “Blue Skies, “Easter Parade”), Woody Guthrie was a storytelling commoner, a cornpone philosopher who rode the rails, and walked the hot roads from coast to coast singing a grab bag of folk ballads, country songs, and hymns.

​The self-described one-cylinder guitar picker sang at campfire gatherings and worker meetings, as well as over the radio. A few of his compositions took hold with a narrow slice of the public (”So Long, It’s Good to Know You,” “Do Re Mi,” “Ain’t Got No Home”).[2]

Riding the freights up to New York during the winter of 1940, Guthrie had been plagued by Irving Berlin’s ubiquitous “God Bless America,” which seemed to be everywhere during the winter of 1940. No piece of music had bothered him so much. It was just another of those songs that told people not to worry, that God was in the driver’s seat.

A string of words began to take shape.[3]

Once in New York, he checked into a ratty hotel near Times Square and dashed off six verses set to a tune loosely modeled on the Carter’s Family “Little Darling, Pal of Mine,” which had been based on the Southern gospel hymn “Oh, My Loving Brother.”

For the first line of the first verse, now known to millions, Woody wrote “This land is your land, this land is my land,” and at the end of each verse, “God blessed America for me,” and titled the piece “God Blessed America.” He thought no more about it for four years. 

Guthrie continued his traveling ways, crisscrossing America several times, before reconnecting with protégé Pete Seeger and the Almanac folk singers in New York. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Almanac singers switched from performing union/peace songs to pro-war songs. Seeger entered the army, and Woody joined the merchant marines.

When the merchantman returned to New York on shore leave in March 1944, he hooked up with folk-loving entrepreneur Moe Asch, who arranged recording sessions for Woody accompanied by a coterie of folk talent, including Lead Belly and Sonny Terry. Guthrie laid down hundreds of songs, some traditional, some his.[4]

One of the last songs recorded by Asch in late April was Woody’s Irving Berlin parody, or as the irascible folksinger initially intended, a Marxist response to “God Bless America” he had called “God Blessed America.” But now, he had changes, a new tag line at the end of each verse “This land was made for you and me,” and a new title “This Land Is Your Land.”[5]

All would agree, much better.

But not everyone agreed with two of the six verses, the so-called private property and welfare line verses considered an anathema to conservative folks. In the former, Woody wrote of a “No Trespassing” sign with nothing on the other side, the side for you and me. In the latter, he told of hungry people at the relief office and wondered if this land is for everyone.

With the passage of time, the “offensive” verses got left behind (except at gatherings of liberal-leaning folks), and the remaining four verses became the sheet music and schoolbook standard for a grateful nation to sing.[6]

It is this version that was often touted as a replacement for the “Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem. “This Land” was used as an advertising jingle by United Airlines and the Ford Motor Company, and as the theme song for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign.[7]

Woody is the copyright holder for the lyrics, the royalties designated to the Guthrie family. The copyright and royalties for the melody part is less clear.

Despite what the Berlin/Guthrie songs do—and do not—have in common, and the fact that one was borne in protest of the other, both songs are worthy anthemic tributes to the country they share.

1. Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah, Book One: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2017), 30–31.
2. Dorian Lynskey, 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day (New York: Ecco, 2011), 14–25.
3. Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Delta, 1999), 140–41.
4. Dorian Lynsky, 33 Revolutions, 27–28.
5. Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie, 287.
6. Dorian Lynsky, 33 Revolutions, 30.
7. Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie, 454.

As long as there are kitchen utensils and leftover glassware in the recording studio, who would ever need to hire a band?

​

​THE DIXIE CUPS

The Brill Building songwriting team of Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich brought the singing Dixie Cups, a New Orleans girl group, into the studio to touch up a song they were working on with songwriting producer Mike Stoller.

The principals gathered in the booth when by chance the engineer opened the mics to the studio. Just for fun, the Dixie Cups were singing an old Mardi Gras song called “Iko Iko.” It knocked everybody out.

​The decision was made to record it, but there was no band on hand. No problem.Jeff and Ellie picked up a Coke bottle, a plastic bowl, and a few can openers.
​
​That became the percussion.

Mike commandeered a West Indies kalimba—similar to an African thumb piano—someone had left behind, and backed by the Brill Building makeshift band, the Dixie Cups sang as if down in old New Orleans.

Stoller and partner Jerry Lieber released “Iko Iko” on their Red Bird label in March of 1965, peaking at number 20 on both the R&B and Billboard Hot 100 charts.

And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Here are a few more.

NEVILLE BROTHERS

At the Neville Brothers session for Yellow Moon (1989), producer Noah Howard used whatever was available in the studio for percussion.

For the “Yellow Moon” and “Voodoo” songs, they used little green glass Perrier bottles, found the best eight bars on the tape, and then looped it. The band played on top of the loop while the brothers sang live.

During a visit to Aaron Neville’s house, producer Howard noticed aluminum wind chimes hanging on his porch and got his permission to bring them back to the studio.

He used them on “With God on Our Side,” recording them at double speed. When they were played back at normal speed, they sounded like low-chiming church bells.[1]

TOM WAITS ​

Some 15 years later, Mark Howard hooked up with singer-songwriter Tom Waits to record his new album Real Gone at an old, unused schoolhouse. Mark arranged Waits, a guitarist, and a bass player in a classroom and set a SONY Blaster recorder along with drummer Bryan Mantia (aka “Brain”) in the boy’s bathroom—the liveliest-sounding room.

​On the day they recorded “Shake It,” Brain was in the bathroom taping up his snare drum with gaffer tape—like duct tape but with fabric instead of plastic—while Mark, Tom, and the other musicians were in the classroom. Tom wanted the sound of the ripping tape on the record.

As Mark wrote:

A tape-ripping, door-slamming rhythm section! As far as anyone knows, Real Gone did not set a new percussive trend, but the album rated four out of five stars by Rolling Stone magazine and topped the Billboard Independent Album chart.

And there’s more than one way to use musical tape, as producer/musician Jim Dickinson did on the 1986 Paris Texas film soundtrack recording:

MICHAEL JACKSON

​While we’re on the subject, best to mention our most obsessive pursuer of ear pleasure, the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, who constantly urged his aides to record different sounds that could be used as percussion: sweeping floors, breaking glass, and hitting trash cans.

​​On “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” (1979), his first single as a solo artist, he featured glass soda bottles (presumably struck by spoons), along with shakers in the rhythm mix.
​
On “Smooth” from his BAD album (1982), he recorded firework poppers—the ones you throw on the ground—inserting the poppety-pop-pop at the end of each hook in the song.

“She Dives Me Wild” from Dangerous (1991) featured a foundation of everyday sounds: honking horns, screeching brakes, and slamming doors.

On “Jam” from the same album, more subtle sounds—scanners and sleigh bells—persist throughout the number.

And on the “Will You Be There” track from Dangerous, the King of Pop wanted the rhythm to be dry and “in your face”—meaning, no reverb, just raw. They achieved the desired effect by banging a piece of wood against a piano bench. It created an organic wood-to-wood texture.[4]

THE SUPREMES

Not be topped by King Pop, Lamont Dozier of the Motown songwriting-producing team Holland Dozier Holland (HDH) used car chains from somebody’s trunk as a percussive instrument on Martha and the Vandellas “Nowhere to Run.”  In his memoir, Dozier added:

“Those distinctive sounds you hear on some of those [Motown] hit records were made by slamming a tire iron on a concrete floor or stomping on a piece of wood.”

He also revealed that what everyone thought were handclaps on the Supremes first number one hit “Where Did Our Love Go” was actually a teenager stomping on a piece of plywood.[5]

1. Mark Howard with Chris Howard, Listen UP!: Recording Music With Bob Dylan, Neil Young, U2, R.E.M, The Tragically Hip, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Waits . . . (Toronto, Canada: ECW Press, 2019), 9–10.
2. Ibid., 159–60.
3. Robert Gordon, Memphis Rent Party: The Blues, Rock & Soul in Music’s Hometown (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), 23.
4.  Joseph Vogel, Man in The Music: The Creative Life and Work of Michael Jackson (New York: Vintage, 2019), 60–61; 155; 197; 223–34; 240; 246; 260.
5. Lamont Dozier with Scott B. Bomar, How Sweet It Is: A Songwriter’s Reflections on Music, Motown, and the Mystery of the Muse (BMG, 2019), 103; 125.

​In Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents, Book Two, we learned of songwriters who, in the dead heat of a California summer, wrote about the opposite: winter in the distant north.

These were no fly-by-night tunesmiths either: Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne (“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”), Bob Wells and Mel Tormé (“Christmas Song”), Irving Berlin (“White Christmas”), and Jay Livingston and Ray Evans (“Silver Bells”).

Ted Gioia referred to this songwriter peculiarity as “geographical incongruity.”[1]

​Well, here’s another.

​In 1970, Joni Mitchell wrote “River” with its memorable first line, “It’s comin’ on Christmas.” Ensconced in her Laurel Canyon home in the Los Angeles hills, this girl from the Canadian prairies found herself in a place without snow or ice, wishing for a river to skate away on.

Like many of Joni’s songs, it’s a heartbreaker, a sad song of mourning—not decking the halls and making merry.

Because of this, its popularity suffered for a long time, but no more. It has since been covered by more than 500 musicians and taken its place on numerous holiday playlists.[2]
​
​Most importantly, it is now included on the prestigious Geographical Incongruity Song List.

1. Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah, Book Two: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2018), 17–18;  Ted Gioia, The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 138–39.
2.  Davis Yaffe, Reckless Daughter (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2017), 136–37.

​

​​In May 1988, President Ronald Reagan traveled to Moscow to meet with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to begin the fourth nuclear disarmament summit held in the previous three years.

​Accompanying him, at the request of First Lady Nancy Reagan, was the Dave Brubeck Quartet (Bill Smith, clarinet; Randy Jones, drums; Chris Brubeck, electric bass; and guest bassist Eugene Wright from the 1960s classic quartet). The group was brought along to entertain the Soviets at Spasso House (the American Embassy) according to diplomatic protocol.

The big day came. The quartet gathered in the Spasso Ballroom along with Soviets and Americans all mixed together at the tables.

As Brubeck’s manager, Russell Gloyd, later recounted:

For the time, there could not have been a better American song than “‘A’ Train” to open a jazz set in what Reagan called the “evil empire.” Duke Ellington and his signature tune were a known quantity in the Soviet Republic.

​The maestro and his orchestra had toured the Soviet Union in November 1970. Even more significant, countless Soviets surreptitiously listened to Willis Conover’s daily jazz show on the Voice of America with its “‘A’ Train” opening theme.

As for Brubeck’s well-known tune, his manager later detailed, “When Dave started playing ‘Take Five’ . . . Gorbachev’s translator . . . was poking Gorbachev and saying, ‘See, I told you they’d play it!’ And Gorbachev was mimicking the drum solo with both hands.”[2]

Wrongly or rightly, Ronald Reagan has since been credited with ending the Cold War—with the assist credited to Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington.

1. Fred M. Hall, It’s About Time: The Dave Brubeck Story (Fayetteville, AR: The University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 52–53.
2. Ibid., 53.

​

​NPR All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen once asked modern classical composer Philip Glass to name the song that dramatically changed his life. 

Glass said the William Tell Overture (1829) by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini. [1]
​

​No surprise there, most would think. After all, Glass had written 10 symphonies, hundreds of sonatas, and 12 operas.

But—and here’s the rub—he wasn’t referring to the version rendered by the New York Philharmonic or the Italian La Scala Orchestra, but rather the Spike Jones comedy version.

For those who don’t know Jones, he led a 1930s-era ’50s band called Spike Jones and the City Slickers specializing in satirical arrangements of popular songs and classical selections.

​Ballads receiving the City Slickers treatment were punctuated with gunshots, whistles, cowbells, and outlandish vocals.

Jones’s played the zany version of the William Tell Overture on pots and pans over chirping birds, galloping trumpets, crowd noises, gargling, and featured announcer Doodles Weaver narrating a silly horse race, with puns at every turn: “it’s cabbage by a head, banana coming up in the bunch, girdle in the stretch, and the winner is . . . Feetlebaum.”
           
Perhaps the distance between classical Glass and comical Jones is closer than you might think. Boilen and I, at least, are in agreement. Both musicians were mavericks, eccentric free spirits testing the boundaries of possibility.[2]
​
​Wheeee! Clank, sput, bang, chink tunk, buzz, hup hup, rattle, popzing, tick wheeee!

1. Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents, Book One (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2017), 120–22.​
2. Bob Boilen, Your Song Changed My Life: From Timmy Pace to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It (New York: William Morrow, 2017), 125–32.