Bono hates U2 but what's the worst Scottish band name? – Aidan Smith

So farewell, then Meat Loaf, the acme of excessive but exciting, histrionic but heartfelt, everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink rock ’n’ roll. But, oh, that terrible name!

Terrible name, terrific performer ... Meat Loaf at the Brit Awards in 2010

I met him once in Glasgow – generous fellow, more than happy to share the mad stories of his father trying to kill him, his hitchhiker turning out to be Charles Manson, being walloped on the head with a shot put, tumbling three storeys, his car being commandeered by the FBI the day JFK was shot whereupon he was sped to the hospital to await the arrival of the presidential limousine – and when we got round to that dreadful moniker I told him it was just as well he didn’t emerge like a bat out of hell from Scotland otherwise he might have been called Potted Hough.

Potted what? Marvin Lee Addy, his real name, tried to pronounce my alternative but it defeated him. He’d do anything for love – and he told me how much he adored Scotland, his West Highland terriers Angus and McKenna and, for my benefit, ordered one of his minions to internet search the second Mrs Meat Loaf’s Caledonian ancestry while we nattered – but he wouldn’t, couldn’t, do that.

It was his dad who christened him “Meat”, with the “Loaf” bit being added by a school football coach after Addy trod on his foot. Perhaps as a teenager he reckoned the appellation, coming from two people of authority, couldn’t be challenged. But how did it sound at 62, his age when we met?

Not a problem – “Call me, Meat,” he said, while I was wondering how to address him. Of course the name had served him well – 100 million albums sold. But, an unpretentious sort, he wasn’t complaining about it suddenly compromising his art, which seems to be Bono’s beef right now.

Forty-six years on, he doesn’t like that his band are called U2. He doesn’t like his voice either, or a lot of his songs, which suggests he’s had too much time recently to do little else but ruminate.

That could be described as endearing – hey, Bono in lockdown has been just like us! – but only up to a point. On the name, he says the hope back in 1976 was that it would conjure up imagery of a “futuristic” nature but now it just annoys him.

Meat Loaf’s passing and Bono’s nomenclatural angst got me thinking about band names – the good, the bad and the bloody awful – and whether they actually matter at all.

For instance, were the greatest band ever held back by having the worst name ever – a corny, crummy, cringey pun? No, the Beatles were not. Of course, when they were skiffling schoolboys sniggering at the joke during bedroom rehearsals, they had no idea they were going to change the world, not even that they would go on to write Strawberry Fields Forever, A Day in the Life and Tomorrow Never Knows.

Regarding Scottish bands, I wonder what the most excitable, suspicious and easily-offended patriots might make of those who’ve looked beyond these shores for inspiration. Texas as a name could be considered brazen, even shameless, provoking anguished cries of “sell-outs!” and “major territory sluts!” Discovering that Travis called themselves after Harry Dean Stanton’s character in the movie Paris, Texas could prompt a few more, and the same with Glasvegas.

Then there’s Big Country. Is the inference here that Scotland is – hurray! – a big country or that the band when they formed were also contemplating, and courting, a bigger one? If only Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri had plumped for Skinflats instead. If only Boards of Canada had gone with Boards of Pumpherston. If only it had been Lloyd Cole and the Stooshies and, rather than Orange Juice and Hue and Cry, Irn-Bru and Stairheid Rammy. If only, if only…

While Franz Ferdinand and Josef K suggest some jock ’n’ rollers have stuck in at school and know their history and surrealist literature, the proud Scot and certainly the professional one might also be disappointed by how many of our bands seem to undersell themselves with names signifying a general gloom peppered with modest aspiration and Trip Advisor self-sabotage.

Apart from Wet Wet Wet and Shitdisco, there’s Garbage, the Trashcan Sinatras, Middle of the Road, the Average White Band, We Were Promised Jetpacks, the Twilight Sad, the Exploited, the Scars and Simple Minds, with the latter at least being an improvement on the first choice – for just imagine if, for his 70th birthday celebrations, Nelson Mandela had been serenaded by Jim Kerr as the lead singer of Johnny & the Self-Abusers.

There aren’t many Scottish bands who shout their names from the rooftops, but maybe the Proclaimers, the Incredible String Band and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band are just enough for a nation conditioned not to get ahead of itself. The worst name? That may have to be Chvrches, which is unfortunate, because they’re pretty good.

The best? In an all-tartan playoff, the contenders could be AC/DC, the Poets, Marmalade, Teenage Fanclub and the Bay City Rollers. Meanwhile, as Meat Loaf tunes up for his inaugural performance in rock ’n’ roll heaven, Bono wonders what the alternatives might have been.

The U2 the band had in their minds was the CIA spyplane, not especially futuristic since it first flew 21 years before they formed, and not especially successful either, since it was shot down by the Russians. And the nickname for it would have elevated Bono to new levels of naffness – Dragon Lady.

U2, then, isn’t the worst name out there. Arctic Monkeys is worse, but when a band are that successful, no one questions what they’re called. Just imagine if the Approachable Pigeons and Come See the Narwhal had achieved similar fame, and that Steely Dan had stuck with Leather Canary.

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