Musical Alter Egos Trivia Quiz

Answer: Steve Miller

This is the opening line to "The Joker", the Steve Miller Band's signature song. Actually, each of those lines refer to previous Steve Miller songs--"Space Cowboy", "Gangster of Love", and "Enter Maurice" are all Steve Miller songs, and "Enter Maurice" is quite possibly the first recorded usage in the English language of the word "Pompatus" (with "The Joker" being the second).

As for the other options, in the small world of music in which the beginnings of careers build off each other, Les Paul, the inventor of the electric guitar, was Steve Miller's godfather and taught him to play. Miller taught Boz Scaggs ("Lido Shuffle", "Lowdown") how to play guitar so they could play in a college band together, and after college Miller joined in a Chicago band with harmonica player Paul Butterfield, later of the greatly influential Butterfield Blues Band.

Answer: Garth Brooks--"In the Life of Chris Gaines"

Elton John's real name is Reginald Dwight. He took his stage name from Elton Dean and Long John Baldry, members of his first band, Bluesology. Eminem's real name is Marshall Mathers, while Queen Latifah's real name is Dana Owens.

Chris Gaines was an alter ego alternative rock singer Garth Brooks developed for a movie project to be called "The Lamb", but the movie project was shelved when the soundtrack "Garth Brooks in... The Life of Chris Gaines" proved that as an alt-rocker, Brooks was pretty good at singing country.

Answer: Harry Chapin had a taxi license

Harry Chapin was married to a woman named Sandy, who co-wrote many of his songs. They had two children. His daughter, Jennifer, is now a singer and heads up one of the charity foundations that he had started before his death in an auto accident on the way to a concert.

In his early days as a musician, he wondered, as many musicians do, whether he would be successful and whether he would have a career to fall back on. Consequently, he decided to get a taxi license so that he could get a job quickly and dump it just as quickly if need be. Though he got the license, he reportedly never actually drove a cab, as the words to "Taxi" came to him before he took the taxi license exam and his career took off immediately afterward.

Answer: Buster Poindexter

This was one of the greatest reinventions of all time. Buster Poindexter's carefree party pop novelty songs, jazz, and calypso music had nothing in common with Johansen's angst-ridden punk, and needless to say, Buster sipping a martini in a tuxedo was a bit of a change from David performing in drag.

Buster Poindexter is now retired, but David Johansen is not. He again reinvented himself, this time as "David Johansen and the Harry Smiths", playing traditional country and blues from the 1920's and 1930's.

Answer: Johnny Cash

The Traveling Wilburys were George Harrison (Nelson), Roy Orbison (Lefty), Bob Dylan (Lucky), Tom Petty (Charlie T. Jr), and Jeff Lynne (Otis). While Lynne may not be as recognizable by name as the rest, he was the lead singer and creative drive behind the Electric Light Orchestra, one of the most innovative bands of the 1970s.

The Wilburys came together originally when Orbison, Harrison, and Lynne met over a meal, then went to Dylan's studio to record a track for a B-side to a Harrison album. Harrison had left his guitar at Petty's house, and upon picking it up, invited him to join up, and soon the Wilbury song "Handle With Care" resulted. The rest of the Wilbury's first album came shortly thereafter, "Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1", good enough for a Grammy nomination. Sadly, Orbison died shortly thereafter, though the remaining Wilburys did reunite to record "Vol. 3" later (there never was a "Vol. 2").

Answer: Simon & Garfunkel

"Tom & Jerry" were the name used by high school juniors Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in their 1957 song "Hey Schoolgirl", sounding almost exactly like the Everly Brothers, which they have cited as their primary influence at the time.

After they failed to chart on any followups, they disbanded and went to separate colleges, Simon to Queens College and Garfunkel to Columbia, before reuniting in 1963. Their tastes had changed to the Greenwich Village folk scene, and with the 1964 release of "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." (and with it, "The Sounds of Silence") musical history was made.

Answer: Bruce Willis

"The Return of Bruno" was actually a soundtrack to a one-hour mockumentary starring Willis as Bruno Radolini, and several real musicians and people connected to music (Phil Collins, Dick Clark, Clive Davis, the Bee Gees, Wolfman Jack) talking about how Bruno influenced them and their music. Willis is actually not a bad singer, if you don't take the music too seriously (His take on the Coasters' "Young Blood" is an improvement on the original, as far as I'm concerned), but it's probably a good thing not too many people have seen the mockumentary and Willis has focused more on acting than on music.

Answer: Andy Kaufman

There was probably nothing Andy Kaufman liked to do more than rile an audience, and the thoroughly offensive Tony Clifton, strutting out on stage smoking a cigar after demanding that all cigarettes be extinguished to save his voice, insulting the audience, and singing absolute drivel in a nasal whine was a surefire way to do it.

Then, when people figured Kaufman and Clifton were the same person, Kaufman and Clifton would appear at the same show together. Kaufman died several years ago (some would question this), but Clifton has been known to surface from time to time (which only adds to the speculation).

Answer: Prince

Prince had originally written the song as a duet for Apollonia Kotero, his co-star in "Purple Rain", for her group Apollonia 6. However, it was scrapped, then eventually offered to Susannah Hoffs, the lead singer for the Bangles two years later. With her singing it as a solo, it reached #2 on both the US and UK charts, after "Christopher's" own song "Kiss".

Answer: Mariah Carey

"The Emancipation of Mimi" was an emancipation of Mariah in many ways. As the wife of Tommy Mottola, the head of Sony Music Entertainment, she didn't have a great deal of independence over the direction of her career, regardless of what kind of personality Mottola would have had. Now that he was out of the picture, she was able to go to another label and decide on her own style.

She also could experiment with a wide variety of styles, whereas many of her previous albums carried a very homogeneous sound. Finally, she had expressed that there was an emancipation from much of the baggage that had come with being Mariah Carey the last several years--the promotion of the image of Mariah Carey, the breakdown, the "Glitter" movie's failure, the pressure to meet others' expectations.