Match the Music Star With Their Memoir (Part 3) Quiz

Answer: Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen's memoir "Born To Run" was published September 27, 2016 (in print form), and he narrated the audio-book version December 6, 2016. Spurred by the rush of performing at the Super Bowl halftime show, Springsteen began writing "Born to Run" in 2009.

It's named after his iconic 1975 album and song, and reflects on his life and career, a self-examination recounting his Catholic upbringing in Freehold, New Jersey, and "The Big Bang" moment of seeing Elvis Presley on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1956 that "lit the fuse" of his rock and roll dream.

Answer: Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan began writing "Chronicles: Volume I" around 2001, mostly by himself, in longhand, just like Springsteen. Published October 5, 2004, Rolling Stone magazine would later dub it "the greatest rock memoir" in 2020. The non-linear meditation focuses on three periods of his life: the early 1960s in New York City's Greenwich Village, 1970 (The "New Morning" Period) during which he explores his thoughts about being called the "voice of a generation" and his efforts to protect his own and his family's privacy, and 1989 (The "Oh Mercy" Period) in which he writes about creative burnout and his artistic rejuvenation while recording the album "Oh Mercy" in New Orleans.

Answer: Bobby Brown

Co-written with journalist Nick Chiles, Bobby Brown's "Every Little Step: My Story" was published in June 2016. It covers his early Boston Orchard Park housing projects upbringing, and his joining the New Edition group when he was just 12-years-old. His solo career featured his recording the 1988 album "Don't Be Cruel' and his part in the "new jack swing" genre. And what would his memoir be without covering his marriage to Whitney Houston and the drug abuse, infidelities, and other pressures that led to its downfall.

Answer: Willie Nelson

Published May 5, 2015, Willie Nelson's "It's a Long Story: My Life" was co-written with David Ritz a music biographer who'd collaborated with other famous music stars on their autobiographies. The book recounts Nelson's growing up in Abbott, Texas, listening to gospel and polka, picking cotton, and then goes on to his playing honky tonks in the 1950s, and being a radio DJ in Fort Worth.

He moved to Nashville in 1960, and wrote famous songs like "Crazy" for Patsy Cline, and other stars. He launched his own career in the "Outlaw Country" movement mixing country, folk, and jazz.

He also tackles writing about his four marriages and eight children, his "Red Headed Stranger" era hit records, his tax troubles, and founding Farm Aid.

Answer: Benny Goodman

Benny Goodman collaborated with the music critic Irving Kolodin to write his autobiography "The Kingdom of Swing", the first edition of which came out in 1939, just after his 1938 Carnegie Hall concert at the height of his career. It's one of the earliest books about jazz written by a musician and tells about Goodman's upbringing in Chicago, and his training as a clarinetist from an early age.

It continues through the Chicago and New York jazz scenes, and his rise to stardom and the birth of his own big band that made him the "King of Swing."

Answer: Questlove

"Mo' Meta Blues" is musician Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's unconventional memoir blending his life story with commentary on music and culture. Co-written with Ben Greenman it was first published June 18, 2013. Questlove is known as the drummer, bandleader, and co-founder of The Roots, the hip-hop group and house band for "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." He's also a producer, DJ, educator, and musical historian.

The unique format of the book blends traditional narrative with unusual features for an autobiography including email exchanges, Question & Answer segments between Questlove and his co-writer, footnotes, and personal playlists, all of which add up to a "scrapbook".

Answer: Diana Ross

The title of "Secrets of a Sparrow: A Memoir" comes from a lyric in Diana Ross's song "Brown Baby", in which she sings of the "secrets of a sparrow." Released in October 1993, the book starts with her childhood in the Brewster-Douglass housing projects in Detroit, where her parents emphasized hard work and education. Diana Ross writes about forming the Primettes with Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard, which later became the renowned Supremes after signing with Motown, where Ross found a mentor and lover in founder Berry Gordy.

She writes also about her fame and solo career and her film work, and her children.

Answer: Grace Slick

Grace Slick was a lead singer of Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship, who wrote and sang some of their iconic songs like writing and performing classics like "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love". Writing her memoir with help from biographer Andrea Cagan, the tone of the memoir has been considered witty, down-to-earth, irreverent, and often self-deprecatingly humorous.

She takes on events in the book that she bore witness to, such as the 1960s Haight-Ashbury San Francisco counterculture, the Summer of Love, the Monterey Pop Festival, Altamont, and Woodstock.

Answer: Jimi Hendrix

The author of "Starting at Zero" is Jimi Hendrix (compiled and edited by Alan Douglas and Peter Neal and published in 2013), making it a somewhat a "posthumous autobiography" consisting of content in his own words (letters, interviews, lyrics, and journals).

He grew up poor in Seattle, but was fascinated with his aural sense - the hum of electricity, the sounds of the city, and his first acoustic guitar, which his father, Al Hendrix, bought for him at a second-hand store for just $5 when Jimi was about 15 years old in 1958.

He was in the Army (101st Airborne Division), and he discovered that music was the only thing that made sense in his life. When he moved to London in 1966, he formed The Jimi Hendrix Experience with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell.

Answer: Bonnie Tyler

Born Gaynor Hopkins in 1951 in Skewen, Wales, Bonnie Tyler (with Chris Cowey) wrote "Straight from the Heart: My Life in Music", which was published September 28, 2021. The title of the book comes from her 1983 hit song of the same name. Before stardom she sang in clubs under the stage name Shereen Davis, and was discovered by a talent scout, and soon appeared on "Top of the Pops." Scarring from childhood tuberculosis exposure and nodule surgery, gave her the trademark raspy voice that perhaps helped make hits out of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "It's a Heartache".