In an attempt to see just how “almost-impossible” Rolling Stone’s Almost-Impossible Rock & Roll Quiz is, we dared E Street Band guitarist, Sopranos consigliore and “Underground Garage” host “Little” Steven Van Zandt to give it a shot. Van Zandt — whose new music-education program Little Steven’s Rock and Roll High School will launch in middle and high schools starting next year — was up for the challenge. A week after Korn’s Munky took forty-five minutes to complete the test, we gave Little Steven a strict half-hour time limit to show off his rock smarts. Here are some of the highlights from his exam:

• “I’m gonna fail this quiz miserably,” Van Zandt said, before kicking off with six consecutive correct answers. Question seven, though, knocked Van Zandt off his streak. “Match the Character in the Beach Boys’ ‘Sloop John B’ with His Maritime Mishap,” the question asks, then lists the First Mate, Captain, Cook and Constable. “I must have listened to this song a million times,” Stevie said, before singing the song’s famed verse. He nailed the First Mate and Cook’s roles, but stumbled on the Captain and Constable, forgetting that it’s the Constable’s job, not the Captain’s, to “arrest the first mate.”
• Despite its sinister nature, Question seventeen posed no threat. “Which of the following artists did Phil Spector (allegedly) not threaten with a gun?” The choices are John Lennon, Dee Dee Ramone, Leonard Cohen and Ike Turner. “Ike Turner,” Van Zandt exclaims. “You don’t want to mess with Ike.”
• Van Zandt dominated the Sixties and Seventies portions of the quiz, answering the great majority of the questions correctly. But when we got to the Eighties and Nineties portions, he stumbled, as many answers are incorrect and his guesses no longer hit the mark. Luckily, there are a few Springsteen-related questions in the mix, which Van Zandt answers correctly in a nanosecond to stop the losing streak. To close out the quiz, Little Stevie missed four of the five 2000s bonus-round questions to send his score back into the mere mortal range.

Despite faltering in the later rounds, Van Zandt gutted out a score of thirty-nine, giving him the distinction of a Rock & Roll Whiz. “Is that good?” asks Van Zandt. It’s not David Fricke numbers, but it’s pretty damn good — definitely good enough to place Van Zandt atop our trivia quiz leader board, well ahead of Munky’s twenty-nine and Howard Stern’s score. Think you can beat Little Steven? Take our Almost-Impossible Rock & Roll Quiz and find out.