Alter Egos and the Rock Stars that Wore Them
By Gord Ellis
Halloween is approaching, and that means it will be time for many of us to dress up as someone (or something) different from ourselves. It’s an oddly liberating thing to do, and some of us like to do more often than just October 31. For a musician, creating an alter-ego can allow for a creativity and freedom that their public persona doesn’t allow. Here are three artists who took the alter ego path, with varying degrees of success.
David Bowie
There really are few artists in modern music who shape-shifted like David Bowie. He burst onto the scene as something closer to a folk singer than the genre-twisting rocker he would become. While Bowie always looked like he was visiting from another galaxy, he began to embrace different characters in the 1970s. Perhaps his most famous persona was the iconic Ziggy Stardust, whom he unveiled in 1972. With Ziggy Stardust, Bowie created a glam rock fever dream who could rock out in eyeshadow, red spiked hair, and four-inch boots. The world had never seen anything like Ziggy Stardust, and likely won’t ever again. That the songs were as potent as they were—“Starman” being a prime example—meant that when Bowie deserted Ziggy a few years later, those songs would live on. But Bowie was just getting started. His next act was as the Thin White Duke, a debonair, elegantly wasted singer with a leaning towards soul and modern rock. Although not popular with his early 70s glam fans, albums like Young Americans and Station to Station solidified Bowie as a singer/songwriter with incredible chops. To this day, “Fame” and “Young Americans” sound both incredibly fresh yet entirely of their time. Bowie would continue to shed musical skins throughout his career, a brilliant enigma until his untimely death in 2016.
Garth Brooks
Perhaps the most surprising alter ego is also the most controversial. In the late 1990s, Garth Brooks was the biggest name in country music. He was the Morgan Wallen of the day, filling stadiums and crossing over to people who might not normally consider buying a country album. Yet, right at the height of his popularity, Brooks dropped an album called Garth Brooks…In the Life of Chris Gaines. On the album cover, Brooks was pictured with a brown shag wig, soul patch, and a decidedly steely look, complete with makeup. Originally planned as the soundtrack for a movie that was never made about a fictitious Australian rock star, the album dropped to a somewhat confused country audience. It was made even more confusing when Brooks did a VH1 mockumentary about the character and performed as Gaines on Saturday Night Live. The Chris Gaines album featured an adult-oriented rock sound, featuring the top studio musicians of the time. Some of the songs, particularly the single “Lost in You,” were sung in a way that was nearly unidentifiable as Brooks. While Brooks never revisited the Chris Gaines persona, it remains one of the stranger footnotes in popular music.
Prince
For an artist as bristling with talent as Prince Rogers Nelson was, it was almost inevitable that he would take on an alter ego. Prince loved to be the unseen person behind many of “his” artists, like The Time and Vanity 6. He also wrote or helped record some of the biggest hits of the 80s, including the Bangles’ “Manic Monday” and Stevie Nicks’s “Stand Back.” While he played characters in his various movies and often changed his look, it wasn’t until he recorded an album under the name Camille that Prince fully embraced the alter ego. Camille was all Prince, but his voice was altered via pitch-shifting. An album was planned for release in 1986, and was not going to have any mention of Prince on it. The Camille release was scrapped, although a few test pressings have since leaked out. You can find one of the Camille songs on YouTube and, honestly, it sounds like Prince to me. But God bless him for wanting to try something so unusual, even if it didn’t really pan out. Prince didn’t fear failure. He feared stagnation. Camille was just one way the Purple One wanted to express his art. Apparently Jack White’s Third Man Records will release the Camille album some time in the future.