Sad and Inspiring Truth Behind Twenty One Pilots' Name

[0:01]What is the meaning behind the band name and logo? The meaning behind the band name and the logo? We play with a lot of bands and one of the questions everyone asks is where do you get your band name and uh, you'd be surprised how many bands say, I don't know, it just sounded good. Um and that's kind of disappointing a lot of times when you hear that and so we've always been intentional about every aspect of the band, especially the uh, the band name. So in background just the short version of where it came from, um, I was studying a play and in that play, uh, the band name is inspired by a play by Arthur Miller called All My Sons. Um, it was a play that I studied when I was in college, which I dropped out of. So I didn't finish the play. No, I did. Um, the main character of the play was creating airplane parts for the current war and when he found out that his parts that he was sending off for airplanes were faulty, he had a decision to make. Do I send these parts out or do I recall the parts? And for him, recalling the parts meant swallowing his pride. It meant losing money. It meant tainting his own name and his brand, but ultimately was the right decision, because it didn't put people in harm's way. He ended up sending the parts out after succumbing to the pressure and as a result, 21 pilots died. His son was also in the war and was a pilot. They weren't able to connect the two stories, but ultimately when his daughter found out that her brother died and her father had sent those parts out, she blamed him. Didn't end well for him, actually, it was a very tragic play. But I, I took that story and Josh and I always knew, like, there's gonna be so many versions of sending the parts out for our career. Very early on, there's people maybe want us to sign this deal. If you give away this much of your music. If you give up this much creative input. If you sign away this part of your life, if you take this much money, we'll give you this. All of those things were happening. And it was so great to have a band name that continue to remind us not to take the easy way out, not to take a shortcut, um, but to continue doing what we thought was the right thing. And we use the band name all the time. Even today, there's decisions we're making where the band name itself is a bit of a, uh, guideline and an inspiration.