I've long believed that in order to be a rock star on the order of someone like Bono or Kanye West, you need to have a gigantic ego. To be able to stand in front of thousands of people and effectively tell them, "I have something important to say and all of you need to shut up and listen" requires a person to have a tremendous sense of self-importance. And, of course, this ego makes a person something of an asshole, but I don't see how you can have one without the other. And I think this may have been the biggest problem for Kurt Cobain, who never seemed to enjoy fame when it was thrust upon him.
*Last night I read an article by Steve Nash about the Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, in which Nash wrote the following, "When I see Ronaldo, with all his bravado, I think I might not have gravitated toward him initially because that bravado exposed a weakness in me, that maybe I was afraid to call my shot...I wasn’t afraid to take it, but maybe I was afraid to call it. Maybe a weakness of mine was not having more of an ego."