While he may have parted ways with his signature 'fro since going into self-imposed exile eight years ago, Maxwell certainly hasn't lost the silky-smooth voice that earned him the title "the Marvin Gaye of the '90s."

What music were you obsessed with in high school?
Iron Maiden. When I was 13, I silk-screened an Iron Maiden Eddie on the back of my Repo Man and Clockwork Orange T-shirts. Even though I was really fat, I avoided getting beat up because the tough kids would pass me their jean jackets and be like, "Do Eddie from Number of the Beast."

What was the first album you bought with your own money?
Vanilla Ice’s To the Extreme, but let’s not put it all on me. Plenty of people were into the Ice Man. It’s not like Vanilla Ice sold ten records, and I’m one of the ten people that bought it. We all got fooled. I just happened to be at the age when it was the first album I bought.

Seventeen years after achieving instant diva status with her landmark debut album, Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos still doesn't care if you like her. "Lionesses, we're not cuddly," she says.

David Johansen has found the most success as a solo artist, both as himself (for 1978's campy rocker "Funky but Chic") and as his louche lounge-singing alter ego Buster Poindexter (for the still-ubiquitous 1987 conga-line generator "Hot Hot Hot"). But that's not a knock on the New York Dolls, the revolutionary glam-punk outfit that launched Johansen's career in 1971.

You famously met Slash for the first time in 1984 at Canter's Deli in Los Angeles. What did you order?
You would think that somebody would have asked me that over all these years, but no one ever has. Sadly, I don't remember.