People are always asking "Where did the band name come from? Why Iron Fist?". Truth is…I have no idea. Or, rather, I have no memory. My memory is notoriously bad. I think it's because I have WAY too many song lyrics and movie quotes stuck in my head, and all the actual relevant stuff about my life gets sucked down into a mental garbage disposal. Whatever. Let's just say that at a moment's notice I can sing you the entirety of "The Brady Bunch" theme song, or recite innumerable quotes from "If You Could See What I Hear," but the origin of the band name is lost to me.
If I had to make some intelligent guesses, I'd say that Rebel and I, as teenagers, liked the visual imagery of "Iron Fist." Authoritative. In control. RULING. And don't think we didn't make much hash of the use of Mike's last name in that equation, either. It's also a good syllable combination to use as a lyric. "Iron fist." HARD-soft-HARD. Back in the '80s, when the band first formed, we had a whole song titled "Iron Fist (Gonna Rule)," the lyrics to which went: "My iron fist is ready for you/I've got a lot to say, so here's a thing or two/My iron fist is ready for you/I'm wild and I'm crazy and I'm gonna rule." Cheesy stuff, to be sure, but what else are you gonna write when you're 17 years old, I ask you? Turning the corner on the present, Mike put the term to good use in our standard concert opener, "Look Out," when, in describing the shadowy character of a woman who is not what she seems to be, he wrote "Iron fist in a velvet glove/Softest touch, but a hardcore love." Powerful stuff.
Because we're both such big Kiss fans, I also seem to remember fantasizing about what our stage might look like, when we were prone to sketching such things in study hall during our bygone years at Cass City High School. It seems logical that I would have thought: "Well, if Kiss can have the 4 letters of THEIR name up in lights behind them, WE ought to be able to put EIGHT lighted letters behind US, set at angles off to either side of the stage!" Perhaps I imagined a platform built behind the letters, so that Mike could run up some steps and lay down a scorching lead guitar solo while standing triumphantly atop our name. Oh, the vagaries of the teenage mind, obsessed with fame and the daydreams of outpacing our heroes! Again: powerful stuff.
What I CAN tell you is that the song has nothing to do with the Motörhead song of the same name. I was never that into Lemmy et. al., their music being heavier than the hook-laden melodic rock I heard in my head. We're not related to the clothing line, nor to the Norwegian band of the same name…and, we don't want to step on their toes, they've got some good tunes and a nice career going. We're Iron Fist because that's what we always were, and we'll stay Iron Fist without any real regard for what fans and/or critics try to assume about the name. We thought it up as teenage boys around 1983. We're grown men seeking a better life through rock-&-roll, and we'll move forward with that name. We STILL think we're gonna rule. And, with a lot of perseverance (and just a touch of luck) one day you'll be able to hear the rough demo of that song on an outtakes disc.
Special thanks go out to Mike's kids, Joe Rule and Rachael Rule, for designing our awesome logo. Y'all rock.
