What's In A Name?
A question I am asked quite often is “why did you get the nickname “Hook”. Well I’m going to set the story straight so everyone knows the origin of this kind of funny nickname and why I chose to keep it, or had to!
Sometime back in the late 1970’s, a friend of mine that had been nicknamed “Bunyan” by a number of his friends, bestowed the nickname on me. It seemed a ritual of sorts in our particular neighborhood. Everyone had a nickname. I wasn’t to be excluded. And because of my funny last name to begin with, for a few years I had to endure such names as Fuzzy, Fozzy, Fuzzbucket, Fuzzbutt and even Fuzznuts to my less cherished friends. However none of them really stuck and I might be called any of them by the same person any given day.
Actually in some ways, I kind of came up with my own nickname because I once called my good friend “the Bunyan” Hook just because it sounded kind of funny at the time. One day I was at the Bunyan’s house standing next to a wall leading into his kitchen, and on that wall was a picture of Jesus Christ. In the corner of the picture was a signature, “R. Hook”. It seems this R. Hook artist has many Jesus themed pictures to his credit.
From that day forward, the Bunyan began calling me “Hook” and it wasn’t long after that, everyone of our circle of friends was calling me that on a regular basis as well. As I mentioned before, everyone in the neighborhood had a nickname; there were such names as “The Bear”, “The Munch”, “June” (for junior), “The F-Man”, “Waldo”, “Tedrow”, “Woody”, “Harv the Mark”….you get the idea. All harmless fun.
I knew it was to become a permanent name for myself when one fine day, there were a bunch of us hanging out in a garage and the Bunyan starts patting me on the head like a dog, exclaiming to the rest of the bunch, “our Hook”. The word “our” replacing the R entirely. I still get a chuckle over that and people telling me, “what up Hook?”
Looking back I suppose it was a time of fun and frivolity and a lot of well-known musicians were taking names; “Sting”, “Slash”, “Flea”, etc. So it just seemed logical to hang on to the name for myself and playing music. Besides, Hook is a lot easier to pronounce for many people than “Pfalzbot”. More on that name at a later date!
Gary