#91: Joseph Grillo of Her Head's on Fire, I Hate Our Freedom, & Gay for Johnny Depp

"It's like we're a fucking endless Taco Bell commercial."

Her Head’s on Fire is the latest band from Joseph Grillo, second from left. (Nathaniel Shannon)

Back in May, BNB #88 marked a momentous occasion with the inclusion of Her Head’s on Fire, the third band featuring Joseph Grillo to be featured here or in the Year in Band Names. As far as I know, no other musician has appeared that many times in the nearly 20 years I’ve been doing this. Along the way, I’ve also written about his groups I Hate Our Freedom and Gay for Johnny Depp (the latter most recently in our 2004 retrospective).

The Three-Timers Club is truly august, so it only made sense to speak to Grillo, whose discography includes bands like Stricken for Catherine, God Fires Man, Judas Knife, and Garrison. And the timing was right, as Her Head’s on Fire recently released an excellent new album called Strange Desires.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity, blah blah blah.

Band Name Bureau: You're a student of the form when it comes to band names, so what do you think makes a name effective?

Joseph Grillo: There’s a lot of things that make a name effective. It depends on the genre, I think, that someone's doing. I'm a big fan of juxtaposition of the band name and the sound. I'm also a big fan of five syllables, probably because of all my Shakespeare studying in college, iambic pentameter. Stricken for Catherine. I Hate Our Freedom. Gay for Johnny Depp. There's something about the flow of it.

But I guess the idea is to stand out without being so goofy that you get written off. I think that's the challenge: You want to have something that people go, “Oh?” and it's hard because there's so many band names, and so many names that are taken.

BNB: What's your process like? Is it just something that you stumble upon, or do you keep a list of potentials?

JG: I keep an ongoing list, but there's a lot of things I'm never going to use. Psychedelicatessen, the Jimmy Henson Experience, things that I just think are funny, but I'm never going to use them.

I think when you come up with a band, it's something you want to say, like, “Oh, my new band is (whatever).” I think saying it feels good. You don't want to say it and be like, “Ughhh.” You don't want to trip over the tongue and be like, “Oh, what did you say again?” Something unpronounceable.

I don't have an in-depth process. I sort of shoot around ideas until I go, “Oh, that's cool. I like that.” Because it sets parameters for your music too; now you have an umbrella, and it's like, “Okay, well things are going to go under that umbrella. Does the sound that I want to do with this band fit underneath the umbrella of that band name properly in my head?”

BNB: Have there been names that you've liked but wouldn’t fit musically?

JG: Yeah, I always wanted to call a band Art Fag. I thought that was really good, probably because I was called that so much in high school. [Laughs.] I wanted to reclaim it, but I don't think that fits a lot of the music that I write—until I come out with my trip-hop record, which will happen one day.

Then there's also a lot of jokes and silly stuff people say when they're hanging out and having too many beers. You're like, “Ah, that's so great!” Then you think about it and you're like, “Nah, that's just kind of dumb.” So yeah, there's a lot of names that have been jettisoned.

I keep a working thing of song titles too, because I always thought of funny song titles, especially in Gay for Johnny Depp. I started going down that rabbit hole, which I think was spearheaded by Drowningman. If you remember that band, they were so good at having song titles, like "My First Restraining Order." I thought, “God, that's good.” I started keeping a list of silly song titles, and then occasionally a song title would be good enough and I'm like, “Oh, maybe that's a band name.”

BNB: That’s where I Hate Our Freedom came from, right?

JG: Yeah, I Hate Our Freedom was the name of a Gay for Johnny Depp song, and I thought, “Maybe I'll make a band out of that.”

I also wanted to string together the two, because once I started doing Gay for Johnny Depp, I started doing it under a pseudonym. Rather than Joseph Grillo, I was Sid Jagger, and that was mainly so no one could internet search me. I didn't want coworkers and future jobs to be like, “You were in a band called what?” I was like, “Just don't.” It was just a way of separating my life, but I did want Sid Jagger's career to be somewhat connected.

BNB: I cited an old interview where you mentioned the name Gay for Johnny Depp was good, because you were an aggressive band, and it kept away meatheads. Did it work as intended?

JG: Absolutely. Yeah, because it starts with myself: What would I feel okay wearing it on a shirt? I don't wear Deicide shirts, not that that's a bad band name, but that's just not my style. So I started there and I was like, if I'm the person that's setting the parameters of the visual of the band name and how this is being presented, then I want it to be inviting. I wanted everybody at a Gay for Johnny Depp show to see the band named Gay for Johnny Depp and go, “Oh my God, that's great. I'm totally going there.” I wanted them to immediately feel welcome, that it was tongue-in-cheek and also gay-positive. I like aggressive music, but I didn't want it to sound aggressive. I didn't want it to sound like Railroad Spike or whatever the hell. I didn't want it to sound tough, 'cause I'm not tough!

BNB: Do you think celebrity-inspired names are harder to do now? I feel like everybody's just one exposé away from being revealed as a monster.

JG: Oh yeah. So Gay John Depp started in '04, and I was always a fan—probably since the first Nightmare on Elm Street and 21 Jump Street. I've always been a fan of that man's cheekbones—just fucking gorgeous, right?

BNB: He was the coolest dude in the world in 21 Jump Street.

JG: The coolest. And that James Dean thing where you see it, and you're just like, “I want to be that cool. Could I ever be that cool one day?” It was just appreciation of the way he carried himself, the swagger and everything to it.

But we also had a working understanding that the moment we would receive a cease-and-desist order, we'd have an announcement, like, “Ladies and gentlemen, we received the cease-and-desist order. We have now officially changed our name to Gay for Patrick Swayze,” until we get a cease-and-desist order from Patrick Swayze. That was the whole idea, but apparently he was flattered. I guess somebody in his press team got it to him and he was just like, “That's cool.”

I didn't feel like I was necessarily tying my boat to his persona or career. I just thought it was funny because he was such a good-looking person. So then when things come out later, you're just like, “Oh, well, that's weird,” but it doesn't change my thoughts on the band name at all. I had my one foray into celebrity names and that's it. I'm not going to do it again.

BNB: I Hate Our Freedom came from a Gay for Johnny Depp song. Is there any more to that aside from post-9/11 George W. Bush platitudes about terrorists hating our freedom?

JG: Oh no, it's a David Cross reference. He's specifically talking about Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie and that show The Simple Life.

BNB: Oh right!

JG: He's like, “You know what? I hate our freedom too. Little ol’ me.” I was like, “That's great, and I feel the same way.” I feel the same with most of what David Cross says, but I thought “I hate our freedom” is such a great phrase to turn the idea on its head. The whole idea of, “Yeah, this is gross. If this is what we're going to do with our freedom, it's so embarrassing.”

I feel that way a lot about America. We're just so gaudy and embarrassing. Can you imagine being the architect rebuilding the World Trade Center and having some fucking idiot be like, “It has to be 1,776 feet tall. It's the Liberty Tower!” We're so cheesy. It's like we're a fucking endless Taco Bell commercial. There's something inside of me that dies every time I hear something like that. [Laughs.]

BNB: What about Stricken for Catherine?

JG: I just liked the words together. I think originally, we were talking about Catherine the Great. I was waiting for the bus and that came to me. I just liked the internal rhyme of it, “stricken for Catherine.” I always liked feminine monikers in band names too—Jane's Addiction or Sisters of Mercy, Shakespeare's Sister. As a young fan of postmodern alternative music, I liked that kind of stuff. I just remember the words coming to me and it looked like a phrase, like iambic pentameter. I was like, “Oh, I like that,” And that was it. It just sounded good. I wish I had a better story for you about it.

BNB: No, that's how so many of these are. There isn’t much of a story, or it’s what you referenced earlier, where they came up with it while high or whatever, and now they’re stuck with it.

JG: One of my old bands, God Fires Man, made a record with a gentleman named Alex Newport, and I said to him at one point, “Alex, what was the name of your old band?” And he just looked at me, and in his beautiful British accent said, “Joseph, for the rest of my life, I get to tell people I was in a band called Fudge Tunnel.” I thought, oh yeah, that's something you think of when you're 20 years old that you're like, “That's clever.” When you're 50 years old, like, “What's the name of your band?” [Mumbles.] “Fudge Tunnel.” [Laughs.]

But then you also have to love the absolute audacity of Anal Cunt. The absolute “We don't care.” You can tell that those guys will be the first people to be like, “Yeah, my band's name is Anal Cunt.” They're not hiding anything. That's a band name that I'm like, “God, that's so good. I wish I thought of that one.”

I like action in band names. I always thought Smashing Pumpkins was a great band name. I remember seeing Gish the week it came out, and somebody was like, “Oh, they kind of sound like Jane's Addiction,” because it was alternative music with big guitars. I just remember looking at it and being like, “Smashing Pumpkins. That's neat.” Because obviously they like Halloween, and obviously it's something about little-kid violence and throwing something, but it's not that violent. It's not terror or anything. It's smashing pumpkins—it's kind of like fun violent.

BNB: Yeah, suburban mischief. You mentioned God Fires man. Where did that come from?

JG: Well, we were called Fires in the aughties, and there were a million bands called Fires, so we had to change it. I didn't come up with that one. I think that was the drummer. I always like “God” in band names.

Judas Knife was just because they sounded good together. Obviously biblical references are fun too. The name Judas evokes so much subtext in our culture and the idea of betrayal. I didn't want to call it Judas Kiss. I think a) that had been done before, and b) I wanted it to be a slightly harder-edged sound than kiss. So Judas Knife sounded fun to me, to juxtapose those two words together.

Garrison, I didn't choose. My roommate came up with that band name and he said, “If I'm ever going to be in a band, I'll do this name.” And I was like, “That's a really good name, and I don't think you're going to be in a band anytime soon. Can I steal that?” He was like, “Yeah, sure.”

Her Head's on Fire I love, but I didn't come up with that at all. That was [Her Head’s on Fire guitarist] Jeff Dean, and it's a Dag Nasty reference. But it's also a Cure reference too, I think, "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea."

I think you want a band name to be cool enough that somebody's happy to say it, to tell their friends like, “Oh, have you heard At the Drive-In?” That's a cool enough sounding band name, but not so absurd that you can't get out from under it.

BNB: This is a question I ask everybody I interview: Is it better to have a name that kind of fades in the background or have something that's maybe not good, but at least memorable?

JG: Somewhere between the two? You don't want it to be innocuous. You don't want it to be so forgettable. It's like, are they called Consolidated, or are they called Converge, or is it Coalesce? Although Converge is a great band name, so is Coalesce, but everybody piggybacks. A bunch of bands try and do that because they think that Converge has defined that genre.

There's a band on Iodine Records called Love Letter, and they used to be called Death of a Nation. Love Letter, to me, is such a better band name, especially because they are a very aggressive-sounding band. I think that Death of a Nation, it's too same-y—they're obviously political hardcore, whereas Love Letter, having it be somewhat political and then now turning into emotional hardcore, I dig that. I like that a little bit better, and that's something I would want to wear on a shirt.

BNB: Death of a Nation feels a little rote, I think, for that style, and it makes me think of “Television, the Drug of a Nation,” by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, which is a mouthful of a name that I've thought about a lot over the years.

JG: There's a band called Acid Rooster from Germany, and it sounds exactly like you think a band called Acid Rooster would sound. That's great because they hit the nail on the head. When I want to hear psych-rock, Acid Rooster, that's what I need.

Sometimes people do hit the nail on the head, if they're very specific within the parameters of a particular genre. I think Saetia is a great name. Saetia is a misspelling of the Miles Davis song, but “Saetia” is fun to say if you just discovered Andy Warhol and you're in high school and you wear all black. You're like, "Um, I'm, like, into Saetia."

I think certain band names just happened to hit the nail on the head at the right time. Cap'n Jazz, that was a great band name.

Then it fucks me up sometimes too. I didn't listen to Nada Surf for years because I didn't want to be into a band called Nada Surf—because it was too California for me, like, “Yeah, bro, Nada Surf!” I was like, “Fuck that.” Then I heard it, and I'm like, “This is beautiful. It's brilliant songwriting. Why did I sleep on this? I'm an idiot.”

Find Her Head’s on Fire on Bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, and Facebook.