does anybody else have input or know from experience. I want to use a musicians name on a t-shirt no picture or anything like that just a name. Is that illegal?
We cannot answer legal questions for you here since we aren't lawyers.
Even if 1000 of us said that it's fine or that we talked to a lawyer that we know and they said it was OK, it still wouldn't be a good idea for you to use that advice and move forward. Why? Because you could still get sued and it could still cost you a lot of money if someone decided to push it.
So sunnydayz advice of "talk to a lawyer" is probably the safest, since we really can't advise on legal matters.
The laws are pretty complicated, so even if you found someone to say "it's legal", you could still get sued.
I'll close this thread out, since there's not much we can help you with on this particular topic. For research purposes, you may want to Google "right to publicity".