Stage names play an important role in how a rock star expresses their personal image and style to the public. It’s certainly a more permanent part of their wardrobe than any guitar, shirt of leather jacket. Ever wonder how some of rock’s biggest stars came up with the names they use in public?

Over the next several pages, you’ll meet Frank Carlton Serafino Ferranno, Robert Zimmerman, Chaim Weitz and many more legendary classic rockers, and find out what drove them to shorten, modify or even completely abandon those handles in favor of the flashier, easier-to-remember or more symbolic names we know them by today.

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