Billy Bob Thornton’s Failed Bid to Hide Behind an Alias
Billy Bob Thornton tried to mask his fame in his band by adopting an alter ego, inspired by the Traveling Wilburys, but soon dropped the act and returned to his real name.
Billy Bob Thornton isn’t too keen on being lumped in with the usual ‘actor-turned-musician’ crowd, and it’s not hard to see why. Sure, he’s got an Oscar for screenwriting, a couple of Golden Globes, and decades of experience in the film industry, but music was always his first love. When he left Arkansas for California in the 1980s, he barely knew a thing about acting. Over the years, he’s put out more albums than most other actors who’ve had a crack at music, and his band, The Boxmasters, has been churning out records since 2007. Despite releasing nearly twenty albums, they’ve never really troubled the charts.
For Thornton, music isn’t just a side gig. But being a well-known face means anything he does outside of acting gets labelled as a hobby, and he didn’t want his name to overshadow the rest of the band. To dodge the whole ‘Billy Bob Thornton’s band’ tag, he looked to the Traveling Wilburys for inspiration. That supergroup—made up of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty—took on fake names for their records, leaving their real identities out of the credits so the music could speak for itself.
Chasing Anonymity
Thornton figured he’d try something similar. He knew it’d be a stretch to blend in as just another bloke in the band, but he gave it a go anyway. He started calling himself WR ‘Bud’ Thornton, taking on the role of drummer and singer.
“Bud sounded like a good name for a guy who is a Boxmaster,”
he told The Boot.
“In the beginning, we were going to downplay me a lot. But sometimes, they won’t let ya. We made up this whole story, kinda like the Traveling Wilburys, who all had different names, but then we thought we don’t want it to look like we’re trying to trick people.”
It was a decent idea on paper, but with his face splashed across all the promo material, the disguise didn’t really stick. Everyone knew who he was, and the whole WR ‘Bud’ Thornton persona didn’t last long. Eventually, he just went back to being Billy Bob.
Letting the Music Do the Talking
Thornton admitted the whole thing was a bit of a lost cause.
“When you look at a record cover, and I’m on it, there’s no mystery,”
he said. Still, he liked the idea of being part of a group, not the main attraction.
“But I used the name because I simply like being part of a band. I don’t like to be the star of something.”
In the end, the attempt to hide behind an alias didn’t fool anyone, but it did show how much Thornton values the music over the spotlight. Even if the mystery was short-lived, the effort to let the songs take centre stage was genuine.