Better known as: David Bowie

Peak era: 1972

Greatest hit: “Starman” on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars

Bowie spent years kicking around the London music scene, never tasting the stardom he knew was his destiny. So he invented a whole new rock star to play: an orange-haired omnisexual alien named Ziggy Stardust. The result: a classic concept album about the extraterrestrial “leper messiah” with the God-given ass. In Bowie’s mythology, Ziggy came down from outer space to save the Earth by letting the children boogie, with his glam band, the Spiders from Mars. “What I did with my Ziggy Stardust was package a totally credible, plastic rock & roll singer — much better than the Monkees could ever fabricate,” Bowie told Rolling Stone. “I mean, my plastic rock & roller was much more plastic than anybody’s.” 

What happened?: Ziggy blew Britannia’s mind on Top of the Pops, rocking “Starman” with a blue guitar, on the night of June 6, 1972 — an instant international scandal. Ziggy made Bowie more notorious than he’d ever dreamed. He was never unfamous a day in his life after that, turning into Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, and countless other characters.

Better known as: Kool Keith

Peak era: 1996

Greatest hit: Dr. Octagonecologyst

Nobody came up with more outrageous alter-egos than Kool Keith. The Ultramagnetic MCs rapper made noise as Dr. Dooom, Mr. Nogatco, Black Elvis, Number One Producer, and so many more. But he really went off the deep end as Dr. Octagon, the persona of a mad scientist from Jupiter, performing macabre surgical experiments on the “Earth People” he encounters. The 1996 concept album Dr. Octagonecologyst is his funniest, darkest, most disturbing tour through the Doctor’s sick mind — Nineties hip-hop at its most out-there, produced by Dan the Automator. (He later gave us the great Handsome Boy Modeling School, with Prince Paul.) What Happened?: Dr. Octagon got killed off by another Kool Keith character, Dr. Dooom, though he’s been resurrected many times, most recently on the 2020 album Space Goretex.

Better known as: Garth Brooks

Peak era: 1999

Greatest hit: Garth Brooks in…The Life of Chris Gaines

By announcing his new identity as the fictional rock star Chris Gaines. Weird flex, but hey, who was gonna tell him no? Garth went bonkers with this character, trading in his cowboy hat for black eyeliner, a cheap grunge wig, a soul patch, and a spandex codpiece. In 1999, he dropped his Chris Gaines album, with a CD booklet chronicling sex-crazed albums like Fornucopia. He planned on turning it into a movie, The Lamb. He even hosted Saturday Night Live as Garth, with Chris as the musical guest. “The thing I’d like to get across is how serious we are about this,” Garth told the L.A. Times. “There’s the Rutles and there’s Spinal Tap, and this is exactly the opposite.” [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-05-ca-53037-story.html]What happened: The album became one of the decade’s most infamous superstar disasters, as fans fled in terror. It was a historic flop by Garth standards — it sold ONLY two million copies. (Those were different times.) But some of us believe Chris was the obvious model for Bradley Cooper’s fictional rocker in A Star Is Born. As of 2024, Chris Gaines is now eligible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Better known as: Lady Gaga

Peak era: 2011

Greatest hit: “You and I” at the MTV Video Music Awards

Lady Gaga had already built up an impressive resume for messing with people’s minds, screwing with conventional stereotypes about gender and identity, one meat dress at a time. But she built her most iconic alter ego with Jo Calderone, a chain-smoking male greaser with a rock & roll pompadour and a Jersey accent. Gaga debuted Jo in a 2010 fashion spread for Japanese Men’s Vogue. Then he appeared in her “You and I” video. But Jo’s big splash came when he hosted the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards—nobody had any clue this was coming, or what Gaga was thinking. But she stayed in character as Jo all night, with no explanation. He sang “You and I” with Queen’s Brian May on guitar — one of the all-time great Gaga mind-freaks. Jo also got to present a lifetime achievement award to a totally baffled Britney Spears. Jo: “So we’re just a good old-fashioned American man, and a good old-fashioned American girl.” Britney: “Thank you?”

What happened?: Gaga quietly let him die off. “Jo was an important character for me,” Gaga told Them last year. “It’s the way I explored what I was looking for in men, and also what I was maybe lacking in myself.”

Better known as: Prince

Peak era: 1987

Greatest hit: “If I Was Your Girlfriend” on Sign o’ the Times

Prince was so busy being Prince in the Eighties, it’s astonishing he found time to be anyone else. But Camille was his feminine guise — he sped up his voice in the studio to transform into the girl of his dreams. She wasn’t just another pseudonym, like “Alexander Nevermind” or “Christopher” — Camille became his muse. The Minnesota mastermind recorded an entire Camille album, with brilliant tunes like “Feel U Up” and “Good Love,” planning to release it under her name. 

What happened? The album got shelved. Instead, Prince put three Camille songs on Sign o’ the Times. It’s no coincidence that all three are absolute classics: “Housequake,” “Strange Relationship,” and “If I Was Your Girlfriend.” The Camille persona brought out something uniquely vulnerable in his songwriting—she made him feel things we never got to hear him feel with anyone else. 

Better known as: The RZA

Peak era: 1999

Greatest hit: “B.O.B.B.Y.” on Bobby Digital in Stereo

The ruling god of the Wu-Tang Clan empire was all over the place in the Nineties, presiding over a couple dozen of the most vivid characters in the hip-hop world. (Several of whom were Ol’ Dirty Bastard, a.k.a Dirt McGirt a.k.a. Big Baby Jesus.) But RZA finally went wild with his own sci-fi alter ego Bobby Digital, tripping on sex and drugs and computers. “It came from a really good bag of weed one day, right?” he told The A.V. Club. “I was in my studio. My birth name is Bobby Diggs. So at the time, creatively, I felt like I was in a digital frame. I felt like I was in high-speed, where everything was digital, in numbers, mathematics.” 

What happened?: Bobby let the RZA explore the hedonistic id behind his intellectual mystique. After his divisive 1999 debut Bobby Digital in Stereo, he wore the mask for two more albums. “As Bobby Digital, I could use a character to describe some of the earlier days of my own life,” he said. “Partying, bullshitting, going crazy, chasing women, taking drugs. At the same time, I would mix in my love for comic books. It was a mixture of fiction and reality together to make a character I thought would be entertaining, and I could utilize that character to get fans into me as an MC, as a lyricist, and also following the path of my life.” 

Better known as: The Beastie Boys’ Adam “MCA” Yauch 

Peak era: 1994

Greatest hit: The MTV Video Music Awards

This crusty old codger from Switzerland directed videos for the Beastie Boys, like “So What’cha Want,” always with his curly mustache, his pipe, and his lederhosen. Funny how he was never seen in public at the same time as Adam Yauch, right? But he stole the show at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards. (One of the most fun ones ever, featuring the Michael/Lisa Marie kiss.) When R.E.M. won for their “Everybody Hurts” video, Nathaniel Hornblower stormed the stage, grabbing the mic from Michael Stipe, arguing that Spike Jonze deserved to win for directing the Beasties’ “Sabotage” video. “This is an outrage!” he ranted in his fractured Swiss accent, adding, “I had all the ideas for Star Wars and everything!” Nobody had any idea who the hell it was, even as security dragged him away. 

What happened?: As Stipe said after the show, “At first I thought it was Bono.” One of the Nineties-est moments of the Nineties. Yauch later directed A Day in the Life of Nathaniel Hornblower in 2004, starring David Cross in the title role.

Better known as: Paul McCartney

Peak era: 1977

Greatest hit: “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” on Thrillington

Paul McCartney was always a big fan of dreaming up new people to be, just to try out another kind of mind. In 1967, when the Beatles felt trapped by fame and touring, he was the one who came up with the liberating idea to change their name and start over debuting as a whole new group: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But solo, Paul recorded a bizarro big-band instrumental version of his own 1971 album Ram, as the Irish bandleader Percy “Thrills” Thrillington. According to the official bio, as reported in Rolling Stone at the time, Percy was born in 1939, in Coventry Cathedral, then studied music in Baton Rouge. 

What happened?: McCartney kept Percy’s identity a secret for years, until finally admitting in 1989 that this Walrus was Paul. He later made wild experimental electronic records under the alias “The Fireman,” with Flood. All four Beatles loved alter egos: John went undercover as “Dr. Winston O’Boogie,” George as “L’Angelo Misterioso,” and Ringo as “Billy Shears.”

Better known as: George Harrison (Nelson Wilbury), Bob Dylan (Lucky Wilbury), Tom Petty (Charlie T. Wilbury Jr.), Roy Orbison (Lefty Wilbury), Jeff Lynne (Otis Wilbury)

Peak era: 1988

Greatest hit: “Handle with Care” on Volume One

The best-case scenario for an alter-ego band. Five rock & roll legends, all struggling to get past their own fame, find a whole new kind of inspiration by posing as a down-home band of brothers. As the Wilburys, they wrote their liveliest tunes in years, sounding refreshed with the pressure off. The craziest part? Nobody planned a thing. George just wanted to bash out a quickie B-side with producer Jeff Lynne, but first he had lunch with Roy Orbison…then he needed to retrieve his guitar from Tom Petty’s house…until they all wound up in Bob Dylan’s garage studio in Malibu, whipping up a tune that turned out to be a gigantic classic hit, “Handle With Care.” They also banged out an album that didn’t have their real names anywhere on it.

What happened?: The most accidentally perfect supergroup ever. See you at the end of the line, Nelson and Lefty.

Better known as: ?

Peak era: 1999-2020

Greatest hit: Madvillainy

Nobody ever did it like MF Doom, the British-American rap genius who spent his career making sure you never knew who he was. He kept flipping secret identities like a virtuoso card shark. The world first met the teenage Daniel Dumile as Zev Love X, from the tragically underrated early-Nineties crew KMD. But he came back as a supervillain in a metal mask, MF Doom, on his 1999 debut Operation: Doomsday — such a master of disguise he famously sent masked impostors to impersonate him for live shows. 

What happened?: The underground legend had one of the most eccentric yet influential careers in hip-hop, in his various incarnations: Madvillain (his duo with Madlib), King Geedorah (a three-headed dragon out to conquer the Earth), Viktor Vaughn, Metal Fingers, Danger Doom (with Danger Mouse). He tragically died on Halloween 2020, though it wasn’t announced until New Years Eve. But he exited the planet just as he lived — a total enigma to the end.