Deftones frontman Chino Moreno recently appeared on the Broken Record Podcast to talk about a variety of subjects including getting sober, the story behind the “Around The Fur” album cover, his post-show rituals and much more.
Moreno also revealed how the Deftones got their moniker, sharing that the name originated from their guitarist Stephen Carpenter.
“We were going to play one of our first shows, and we had to buy tickets to it,” Moreno explained. “It was one of those ‘pay to play’ kind of things where we buy all the tickets and then we can- we bought the tickets for a dollar a piece from the promoter, and then we can sell them for $3 so we can make a couple bucks off each ticket. But we didn’t end up doing that. We ended up just giving them away to our friends at school and whatever, so we can have a packed show.”
He continued: “And we were like, ‘Well, we need a band name if we’re gonna play a show.’ So Stephen said, ‘Oh, we’re gonna be called Deftones.’ And I was like, ‘Okay.’ So then Abe wrote it on the ticket, but he didn’t even know how to spell it, so we spelled it like ‘D-A-F-tone,’ whatever. So we gave all the tickets away, and he’s like, ‘No, that’s not how you spell it! It’s ‘Def,’ like in rap!’ So I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’ It wasn’t anything that was well thought out, other than just, you know, Stephen said that’s the name of our band. We said, ‘Okay.'”
Has the name grown on Moreno over the years? “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I mean, it’s worked, I guess. I mean, most band names are silly. There’s a lot of silly band names, but the name takes on its own thing after a while, right? The music is kind of whatever. And then you don’t really think so much about the name itself.”
Check out Moreno’s full interview below.
