Where did the excess of rockstardom go, and should it make a return?

There was a time – not too long ago, depending on your age and whether you measure the passage of time by hairstyles (what hair?) or speaker upgrades – when the phrase “rock star” didn’t just mean “famous musician.” It meant unhinged, unruly, and unreachable. It meant living life not just on the edge, but swan-diving over it in a plume of fire, feathers, and shattered hotel mini-bars.

Rock stars weren’t just performers; they were mythological beings. Demigods with a many-necked Gibson SG in one hand, a bottle of Jack in the other, and zero interest in flying commercial. The tales of their antics bordered on fiction, if not outright farce—but many of them were true, or at least too good to fact-check.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted. Our rock stars grew up. Or worse, they hired accountants. They swapped the smashed guitars and TV sets for green juices and yoga instructors. Many now post about their meditation practice on Instagram and live in eco-conscious mansions with underfloor heating and bespoke kombucha fridges.

So… whatever happened to rock star excess?

If you want a crash course in rock star indulgence, you’d be hard pressed to top Led Zeppelin. In the 1970s, Zep toured America in a custom Boeing 720 called The Starship, which they shared with other bands when they weren’t using it. It had, among other things, a fireplace. Yes, a functioning faux-fireplace in an aircraft—because nothing says “above the clouds” like simulated logs and velvet upholstery. The story behind the plane is a whole article in itself…

The plane also featured a bedroom with a waterbed (this was the ‘70s, after all), a 30-foot-long settee, and a mirrored bar. Rumours swirled of in-flight parties so debauched they would make even the most party-hardy person blush. One story—often attributed to a certain hotel in Seattle—involves band members catching a red snapper and, shall we say, introducing it to a female groupie in a scene of alleged marine misadventure that we won’t go into here – use your imagination (or Google), folks. Whether or not it’s true isn’t the point. The fact that we believe it might have happened tells you everything you need to know about the era.

And then there’s Keith Moon.

Where do you even begin with Keith Moon?

The Who’s drummer lived life like a human grenade – beautiful, brilliant, and always about ten seconds away from catastrophic detonation. Seemingly, one of his favourite pastimes was throwing televisions out of hotel windows. In one particularly over-the-top instance, he reportedly had a street closed off so he could do so without harming pedestrians. That’s not vandalism; that’s performance art.

He also once allegedly drove a Rolls-Royce into a swimming pool, though later accounts suggest it might have been a Lincoln Continental. Does it matter? The visual is the same: rock star plus expensive car plus chlorinated water equals legend. I’d have quite fancied a night out on the lash with Mr Moon.

The 1980s, never ones for subtlety, took the groundwork laid in the ‘70s and cranked it up to eleven. Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx made Zeppelin look like the Temperance Society. Sixx seemingly once “died” of a heroin overdose, was declared clinically dead, and then revived by paramedics – before heading back home and shooting up again. They filled hotel rooms with mud-wrestling strippers, rode Harleys through the corridors of luxury hotels, and drank like booze was going out of fashion. I’d also not have said no to a night out with Mr Sixx, though you can leave the smack bit out, thank you very much!

And yet, it wasn’t just about destruction. It was about scale. The outrageous wasn’t accidental – it was curated, cultivated and celebrated. Prince rented out an entire theme park. Elton John apparently once spent over £300,000 on flowers because he “likes flowers.” David Lee Roth seemingly had a clause in his Van Halen contract demanding a bowl of M&M’s with all the brown ones removed—not because he was fussy, but because he wanted to see if promoters read the rider.

There was a sense that these larger-than-life figures were playing a role, and we were willing participants in the fantasy. You bought the album, you bought the myth. Rock and roll wasn’t just about the music—it was about escape, attitude, and living vicariously through people who did all the things you’d never dare.

Now, don’t get me wrong—I like a good Coldplay tune as much as the next person who accidentally finds themselves in a lift/elevator. But Chris Martin doesn’t exactly scream rock god. He screams “certified organic sourdough and intermittent fasting.” He’s more likely to install a solar panel than fling the TV out of a hotel window.

Bono now lectures at climate conferences, and potentially narrowly avoided becoming the latest Pope, by all accounts. Actually, I read only this very morning in the Observer newspaper that Bono is laying off on the activism and getting back to spending more time with the band though whether he’ll be going a bit Keith Moon remains to be seen.

Even Ozzy Osbourne, once the bat-biting Mad Prince of Darkness, has mellowed into a charming, barely understandable granddad who says “Sharon!” more than “Satan!”

There’s something undeniably comforting about these once-feral beasts becoming domesticated. But let’s be honest: a little piece of us misses the madness. The excess. The unpredictability.

Here are a few theories as to why all this debauched lunacy ended.

First, money. Not that today’s musicians don’t have any—Taylor Swift could buy a small country—but the industry itself is different. Record sales have dwindled. Tours are meticulously budgeted. Social media means that every indiscretion is broadcast instantly to millions. If Keith Moon were alive today, he wouldn’t be able to throw a telly out the window without three angles of smartphone footage, a viral TikTok, and a Change.org petition to ban him from all Marriotts worldwide. Ah, the joy of cancel culture. 

Second, the changing definition of rebellion. What was once shocking is now cliché. We’ve seen it all. Sex tapes, drug overdoses, backstage meltdowns—they no longer scandalise; they saturate. The modern version of rebellion is restraint. Sobriety is cool. Mental health is openly discussed. And frankly, that’s a good thing. 

But, for baby Jesus’s sake, it’s boring!

Every now and then, you see a flicker of the old chaos. Kanye West (before descending into outright confusion and nutterdome) built floating stages and stopped shows to rant at invisible enemies. I’m told Post Malone lives in a Utah bunker and occasionally crashes beer pong tournaments – edgy. And of course, there are always rappers beefing, TikTokers feuding, and influencers being caught saying something wildly inappropriate in an Uber – crikey, hold the front page!

But it’s performative. Sanitised. Marketed. Rock stars today have PR teams, brand partnerships, and social media managers. There’s no mystery. You don’t wonder what Harry Styles is doing right now. He’s likely on Instagram baking banana bread with his mum or knitting a scarf for endangered wallabies.

Compare that to Jimmy Page, who once disappeared for months, allegedly holed up in a castle reading Aleister Crowley and recording backwards guitar solos under the light of a full moon. Nobody knew where he was, and nobody wanted to. That was part of the magic.

Even HiFi has lost some of that reckless abandon.

There was a time when eccentricity ruled the roost. Mad inventors with wild moustaches and names like Nigel or Ernst would build amplifiers in sheds powered by nuclear batteries and sell them in velvet-lined boxes with handwritten notes and a bottle of absinthe marked “Drink Me”. You’d go to a HiFi show and stumble across a turntable suspended in a magnetic field, being levitated by vibrations harvested from the music of whales. Well, perhaps…

Now it’s all clean lines, brushed aluminium, and remote apps. Wonderful sounding – but where’s the madness? Where’s the man who demands his valve amp be filled with whisky instead of solder?

Of course, I exaggerate. But only slightly. There is still some bonkers stuff out there, and we’re off the High End in Munich next weekend where we’ll no doubt find loads of stuff that is totally brilliant but also completely barking – I love all that stuff.

There’s a temptation to look back and say, “That was when rock stars were real.” And to some extent, it’s true. They lived louder, burned brighter, and left behind stories so wild they seem like fever dreams.

But those tales often came with real consequences – burned-out lives, broken families, deaths far too young. For every hilarious anecdote about a fish in a hotel room, there’s a tragedy lurking underneath.

So maybe today’s artists are wiser. Maybe we’re wiser. Perhaps it’s better that the music has outlived the mayhem. But still—just once—it might be nice if someone flew over Reading Festival in a blimp and dropped marshmallows laced with acid, that were shaped like Lemmy.

We can but dream.

And until then, I’ll be here at HiFi PiG Towers, drinking my not-quite-rock-star glass of Rioja (unless I’m on the wagon again), and wondering just how much it cost Led Zeppelin to install a fireplace in a jet.

Stuart Smith

What do you think? Bring back the excess, or think about those cold, needy wallabies and break out the knitting yarn and needles? Join the chat…