One for the ages

The Great Rock Music Quiz Book hopes to be the Wikipedia of rock music history

Embedded in entertainment journalism for over two decades, Mumbai writer Verus Ferreira finally got around to combining his passion for quizzing and music in 2013, when he released The Great Music Quiz Book . Of course, he found that he’d omitted a fair amount of questions and categories on his favourite rock musicians.

Ferreira then put together a list of over 35 bands and whittled it down to just 16 of what he calls his “all-time favourites” for The Great Rock Music Quiz Book , which released a few months ago via Story Mirror publishers. He says all the not-so-common facts, history lessons and common knowledge has been drawn mainly from music albums, DVDs, LP records and music books of the bands in Ferreira’s own collection.

Beginning with basic questions to even posing a few myth busters, there are 16 artiste-specific quiz chapters in

The Great Rock Music Quiz Book . Going from Aerosmith and Bon Jovi to Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin and U2, the book also includes miscellaneous info disseminated by Ferreira – including quotes from rock gods, a note on gospel rock, a guide on how to attend concerts and a few jokes to lighten the mood. Obviously Ferreira’s personal taste did dictate some of the inclusions in the book. He says, “All the bands featured in the book were bands I grew up listening to and followed closely. In fact, I interviewed all the members of Iron Maiden when they visited Mumbai and performed here in 2008. Similarly I also attended concerts of artistes like The Scorpions, Roger Waters, Guns N’ Roses, Gilby Clarke and Coldplay. The cover picture of Slash was shot by me at his concert in Mumbai in 2015.”

When you can ask about Jon Bon Jovi’s early profession (janitor), the origin of Eric Clapton’s ‘Cocaine’ (a cover of his old friend, the late JJ Cale), the name of the customised aeroplane Iron Maiden took on their world tour (Ed Force One), The Great Rock Music Quiz Book becomes a useful source of entertainment to prove who can be most knowledgeable about bands and music history. Ferreira says, “Instead of looking up a Wikipedia page and learning about the band, in this book I offer you the same thing.”

Of course, it’s not all clean and fun – it can’t be when you’re talking about rock and roll. Ferreira mentions the most “entertaining” part of putting together the book was working on chapters for some of the most notorious bands in rock history – Guns N’ Roses, The Scorpions and The Rolling Stones. “The Scorpions have some obscene album covers that never really made it to the shelves, one of which I have used in the book,” he says.

Get the book on Amazon.in, Flipkart and bookstores at ₹225.