Rock n’ roll is not just known for its music but also the outrageous rock star lifestyle and the characters of its purveyors. Whether those characters are narcissistic, megalomaniacal, booze-ridden or drug-addled just adds to the value, mileage and ultimately quotability of the nuggets that come out of their mouths.

It’s a given that if you want to be a rock star you must have an ego big enough to match the size of the career that you want. Clearly, John Lennon was under no illusion of just how big the Beatles were:

“We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.”

Whilst Lennon felt the Beatles were bigger than a religion, Bowie’s ego transcended the ordinary:

“I always had a repulsive need to be more than human. I felt very puny as a human. I thought, ‘Fuck that. I want to be superhuman.’”

Clearly a full body leotard was the best vehicle for achieving that ambition. But perhaps there’s something in that. He is after all still releasing music at 66 years of age and the Mercury Music Prize panel still think it’s significant.

Fast-forward to present day where Kanye West has labelled himself a deity. In an interview with BBC Radio 1 he said;

“I just told you who I thought I was: A god. I just told you. That’s who I think I am.”

His philosophy of “I’m Kanye therefore I’m God” (or “Kanye sum ergo deus sum” for any Latin speakers out there) certainly poses a challenge to Cartesian musings. If he proclaims it does it make it true? In his typical self-aggrandising fashion he has deemed that “Rap’s the new rock n’ roll. We the rockstars and I’m the biggest of all them.”

But West is not alone in contemplating being God. Axl Rose has also shared his idea of an ideal world

“I’m not God but if I were God, ¾ of you would be girls, and the rest would be pizza and beer.”

Kurt Cobain’s widow and Hole singer Courtney Love felt her extra-ordinariness somewhat differently,

“I’m not a woman. I’m a force of nature.”

In addition to an over-inflated sense of God-like importance, self-belief and confidence are also key ingredients to become a successful rock star. Noel Gallagher had that in spades.

“What inspires me to write music? It’s just what I do. And I’m fucking brilliant at it.”

But Noel’s self-grandiose doesn’t stop there, in The Guardian in 2006 he reflected on Oasis’ ‘Definitely Maybe’,

“Look. I was a superhero in the ’90s. I said so at the time. McCartney, Weller, Townshend, Richards, my first album’s better than all their first albums. Even they’d admit that.”

Freddie Mercury’s assertion of grandeur became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.”

In rock n’ roll, as in religion, being a martyr goes hand in hand with being a “deity” as Marilyn Manson has discovered:

“Society has traditionally always tried to find scapegoats for its problems. Well here I am.”

Presumably to successfully execute your rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and fuel your enormous ego you must have to have a particular mindset although Joey Jordison’s of Slipknot is rather questionable:

“I wake up: I am mental, I got to bed and I am mental, I am mental within my dreams, I am mental within my normal state, I’m out of my mind.”

Perhaps Gene Simmons hit the nail on the head in identifying exactly why rock stars are so very quote-able.

“James Bond has a license to kill, rock stars have a license to be outrageous. Rock is about grabbing people’s attention.”

In the same vain Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler agreed with the OTT nature of rock n’ roll,

“We believed that anything that was worth doing was worth overdoing.”

But I think I’d have to tip my cap and give kudos to the late great Keith Moon, remembered here by Who bandmate, Pete Townshend in 2005:

“Keith Moon, God rest his soul, once drove his car through the glass doors of a hotel, driving all the way up to the reception desk, got out and asked for the key to his room.”

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea – certainly not that of legendary crooner Frank Sinatra:

“Rock n’ roll: The most brutal, ugly, desperate, vicious form of expression it has been my misfortune to hear.”

Rock n’ roll will always generate gossip and strong views because of its characters. The very music it spawns evokes so many feelings in its listeners that the guys (and gals) making it are bound to be a bit “special”. Through music, lyrics and general bad ass behaviour they do things that we normal folk only wish we could. Sinatra was right. It IS an expression. As Kim Fowley, former manager of The Runaways put it:

“Rock and roll is a nuclear blast of reality in a mundane world where no-one is allowed to be magnificent.”