Chino Moreno recently shared the origin story of the Deftones’ iconic band name on the Broken Record Podcast. The revelation shows a surprisingly spontaneous and informal beginning for one of rock’s most recognizable acts.
The band needed a name before their first show, which required them to purchase tickets to perform. Stephen Carpenter came up with the name “Deftones” on the spot, and the band accepted it without much deliberation.
“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,” Moreno explained.
Carpenter quickly corrected the misspelling when clarifying the intended spelling. “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,'” Moreno said.
The name choice was far from a carefully planned decision, as Moreno emphasized. “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.'”
The casual nature of the Deftones’ naming reflects the band’s organic formation in Sacramento, California. The band emerged in 1988 when three childhood friends—Chino Moreno, Stephen Carpenter, and Abe Cunningham—bonded through the local skateboarding scene. They began playing together in Carpenter’s garage, having known each other since around age 10 and sharing a passion for skateboarding before transitioning into music, according to Wikipedia.
Carpenter’s path to becoming a guitarist was shaped by an unexpected tragedy. He was hit by a car while skateboarding at age 15-17, an accident that left him confined to a wheelchair for several months, as documented by Deftones World. During his recovery, he taught himself guitar by playing along with thrash metal bands like Anthrax, Stormtroopers of Death, and Metallica. This self-teaching laid the foundation for the band’s distinctive sound.
The band took their time developing their craft before performing their first real show. Pollstar notes that approximately two years passed after the band’s formation before they performed at a local Sacramento club. Rather than aggressively pursuing gigs early on, the three members focused on improving their songwriting and musical abilities. This deliberate approach would pay dividends as they gradually built a dedicated fanbase in the Sacramento area.
The Deftones expanded their touring territory from Sacramento to San Francisco and Los Angeles. They caught the attention of record labels while playing shows in Los Angeles. The band’s early lineup eventually solidified with the addition of bassist Chi Cheng and keyboardist Frank Delgado in 1999. This created the quintet that would become known for their experimental sound spanning alternative metal, dream pop, and progressive rock. What began with a hastily misspelled band name on concert tickets would evolve into one of the most influential metal acts of the modern era.
