Born on November 4, 1956, in Great Neck, New York, Jordan Rudess entered Juilliard's Pre-College Division at age nine as a classical pianist before discovering progressive rock and synthesizers as a teen, abandoning classical training against his parents' wishes to chase a career behind keyboards instead. In 1994, both Dream Theater and the Dixie Dregs invited him to join, and he chose the Dregs for the sake of his young family, a choice he wasn't offered a second time. He connected with the band anyway through Liquid Tension Experiment, the 1997 supergroup pairing him with Mike Portnoy, John Petrucci, and Tony Levin, chemistry that convinced Portnoy and Petrucci he was the keyboardist they needed. Rudess became Dream Theater's full time member during the 1999 sessions for Metropolis Pt. 2, anchoring the band's sound on eleven albums since.

Born on November 4, 1965, Wayne Static spent the late 1980s fronting an early band called Deep Blue Dream alongside guitarist Billy Corgan, who left after about a year once his other project, Smashing Pumpkins, started taking off. Static later said of Corgan's choice, "He obviously made the right choice," and he eventually found his own breakthrough by forming Static-X in Los Angeles in 1994. Blending industrial textures with crushing, downtuned riffs in a style he jokingly dubbed "evil disco," Static built the band's signature sound around influences like Ministry and Skinny Puppy layered over Pantera level heaviness, all topped off by his trademark vertical hair. Static-X's 1999 debut Wisconsin Death Trip went platinum, powered by "Push It," cementing Static as one of nu metal's most instantly recognizable frontmen.

On November 4, 1970, David Bowie released The Man Who Sold the World in the US through Mercury Records, a hard rock turn away from the acoustic folk of his previous album that found him working for the first time with guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Mick Woodmansey. Producer Tony Visconti, who also played bass, and Ronson largely built the arrangements while Bowie was distracted by his new marriage, crafting a darker record steeped in madness, Nietzsche, and alienation across tracks like "The Width of a Circle" and "All the Madmen." Mercury controversially swapped Bowie's chosen UK cover, a photo of him reclining in a satin dress, for a cartoon cowboy image on US copies, and the album originally flopped, selling barely over a thousand copies before a 1972 reissue finally caught on. Produced by Tony Visconti.