70 free David Bowie trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
57 free David Bowie trivia questions with answers. David Bowie changed his name to avoid a Monkee, got his famous eye in a schoolyard punch-up, and spent the next five decades reinventing himself faster than anyone could keep up. This quiz walks the whole arc: the mime student and the Laughing Gnome, Space Oddity's launch alongside Apollo 11, Ziggy Stardust and his Hammersmith farewell, plastic soul and the Thin White Duke, the Berlin years with Iggy Pop and Eno, Let's Dance with Nile Rodgers, Tin Machine, the Bowie Bonds and the secret jazz sessions that produced Blackstar two days before he died. The films get their own share, from The Man Who Fell to Earth to Labyrinth and The Prestige, along with the Broadway run as the Elephant Man, the Queen collaboration and the Vanilla Ice lawsuit. It suits music trivia nights and Bowie obsessives alike, with easy questions up front and genuinely obscure ones toward the end. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia articles on Bowie, his albums, his songs and his films, and each question shows the sentence that supports it once you answer. No lyrics are quoted. Free, no signup.
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Q 01Bowie was born with which surname?
Jones
He was born in Brixton, south London, on 8 January 1947.
Q 02Why did the young singer switch from performing as Davy Jones in the mid-1960s?
A Monkee shared it
He took the name from the 19th-century American pioneer James Bowie and the knife he popularised.
Q 03Bowie's permanently dilated pupil was the result of what?
A school fight over a girl
His friend George Underwood punched him in the left eye in 1962; Underwood later designed the artwork for Bowie's early albums.
Q 04What is the medical name for Bowie's eye condition, a permanently dilated pupil?
Anisocoria
It also left him with faulty depth perception after a four-month hospital stay.
Q 05Which of Bowie's older relatives introduced him to modern jazz, Buddhism, Beat poetry and the occult?
His half-brother Terry Burns
Terry had schizophrenia and lived alternately at home and in psychiatric wards.
Q 06Space Oddity was released as a single on 11 July 1969, five days before what event?
The Apollo 11 launch
The BBC used it as background music during its coverage of the Moon landing.
Q 07The 1969 Major Tom single's title and subject were partly inspired by which film?
2001: A Space Odyssey
Gus Dudgeon produced the song at Trident Studios; it peaked at number five in the UK in 1969.
Q 08Which astronaut's 2013 cover of Space Oddity produced the first music video filmed in space?
Chris Hadfield
Bowie's original finally reached UK number one on reissue in 1975.
Q 09Bowie wrote the Hunky Dory song Kooks for whom?
His newborn son
Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones was born on 30 May 1971 and grew up to direct the film Moon.
Q 10Who were the three members of the Spiders from Mars?
Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey
Guitarist Mick Ronson had also played on The Man Who Sold the World.
Q 11The Ziggy Stardust character melded the persona of which friend with the music of Lou Reed?
Iggy Pop
A girlfriend recalled him scribbling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy.
Q 12Bowie's July 1972 Top of the Pops performance of which song cemented his UK breakthrough?
Starman
Both the single and the Ziggy Stardust album charted rapidly afterwards.
Q 13Where and when did Bowie abruptly 'retire' Ziggy Stardust on stage?
Hammersmith Odeon, July 1973
D. A. Pennebaker's film of the show premiered in 1979 and was commercially released in 1983.
Q 21With whom did Bowie move to West Berlin in August 1976?
Iggy Pop
He produced his friend's albums The Idiot and Lust for Life around the same time as his own Berlin Trilogy.
Q 22Which three albums make up the Berlin Trilogy?
Low, Heroes and Lodger
Philip Glass later turned all three into symphonies.
Q 23Which of the trilogy's albums was the only one recorded entirely in Berlin, with Robert Fripp on guitar?
The second, 1977
Guitarist Robert Fripp joined for it; Low was actually recorded in France.
Q 14Which 1973 album was Bowie's first UK number one?
Aladdin Sane
He described it as 'Ziggy goes to America'; it produced The Jean Genie and Drive-In Saturday.
Q 15Which song did Bowie write and produce for Mott the Hoople in 1972?
All the Young Dudes
The same year he co-produced Lou Reed's Transformer with Mick Ronson.
Q 16Diamond Dogs grew partly from a plan to set which novel to music?
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Its title track introduced the persona Halloween Jack, who lived atop Manhattan Chase.
Q 17Fame, Bowie's first US number one, was co-written with which Beatle?
John Lennon
It came from Young Americans, recorded in Philadelphia in a 'plastic soul' style.
Q 18Bowie mimed Fame and Golden Years on which US show, becoming one of the first white artists to appear on it?
Soul Train
It capped his mid-70s soul period.
Q 19Which persona did Bowie adopt for the 1976 album Station to Station?
The Thin White Duke
Visually it extended Thomas Jerome Newton, the alien he played that year in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Q 20In The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Bowie played an alien named what?
Thomas Newton
Nicolas Roeg directed; it was Bowie's first major film role.
Q 24Two days after Marc Bolan's TV show in 1977, Bowie recorded a Christmas duet with whom?
Bing Crosby
Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy was taped for the singer's final CBS Christmas special.
Q 25Which composer adapted the Berlin Trilogy albums into three of his symphonies?
Philip Glass
They became his first, fourth and twelfth symphonies, in 1992, 1997 and 2019.
Q 26Bowie narrated a 1978 recording of which classical work?
Peter and the Wolf
It came out the year of his Isolar II world tour.
Q 27Bowie recruited regulars from which London club, including Steve Strange, for the Ashes to Ashes video?
Blitz
The video gave international exposure to the New Romantic movement.
Q 28From July 1980 to January 1981 Bowie played which role on Broadway, without stage make-up?
The Elephant Man
He starred as Baal in a BBC television Brecht adaptation the following year.
Q 29Under Pressure, Bowie's 1981 one-off with Queen, was recorded at which studio?
Mountain, Montreux
It went to number one in the UK, and Vanilla Ice later sampled it without credit for Ice Ice Baby.
Q 30Which rapper was sued by Bowie and Queen for sampling Under Pressure without credit?
Vanilla Ice
Ice Ice Baby now carries a songwriting credit for both.