The Story Behind the Nickname
I was at an At Random rehearsal with Jon Anderson and the rest of the band and crew when I first made up Rock Star. It happened in the middle of the noise, chatter, and half-focused energy that always seemed to fill the room before we settled into playing. In other words, it was a perfectly normal band rehearsal, which meant nobody was entirely sure whether we were working, waiting, or just standing near amplifiers.
A few days earlier, some people had been out at my place in the country, and we were doing what musicians did when they weren’t playing: hanging around, talking too much, listening to music, and causing the night to stretch out longer than anyone had planned. It was well into the following morning when Scott Morgan (The Rationals) and Scott (Rock Action) Asheton (The Stooges) showed up. At the time they were playing together in Sonic’s Rendezvous Band. Morgan and I both worked at an organic food company to pay the bills, which sounded healthier than it felt at the end of a shift, but Rock Action and I would be best described as acquaintances who circled a lot of the same people and drifted through some of the same late-night rooms.
I’m pretty sure it was closer to 3 AM than not, the kind of hour when everything feels a little strange and exaggerated, but the point is, “Rock Action” was wearing sunglasses. Even in the condition we were all in, that detail cut through the fog and struck me as both ridiculous and perfectly fitting. At that hour, sunglasses are either a fashion statement, a medical condition, or for our crowd, a warning label.
For some reason, that small the moment was still lodged in my head the following Monday, lingering there the way odd little details sometimes do. While I was telling the bandmates who had not been at my place that particular evening about the scene, I just blurted out, “If Scott can be Rock Action then I’m Rock Star”. It was not a carefully planned branding strategy, unless blurting counts as marketing.
For some unknown reason, the moniker stuck with me almost immediately. Our crew and everyone in the band started referring to me as Rock Star, first as a joke and then, before long, as if it had always been there. That’s what I was called for years, which proves that a nickname can have better management than a musician. I still run across people who use that name when I’m back in Michigan, and every time it happens I’m reminded how casually a name can attach itself to you. Be careful what you call yourself because people have long memories, especially when the name is short, loud, and easy to yell across a parking lot.
RLH 7.19.2026
Written by Robert L. Hunt
