WORST JOBS IN ROCK AND ROLL

Pete Doherty’s lawyer
Making more court appearances than Roger Federer

Since his 2003 criminal debut for burgling then-bandmate Carl Barat’s apartment, the Baby­shambles frontman has been arrested at least 20 times — including three times in one magical day in January 2006. Most of the busts have been for heroin and crack possession, with the odd assault charge thrown in. Doherty has shown up late to court, assaulted a reporter in front of the courthouse and allegedly given one judge the finger. “The hardest part is probably his unpredictability — whether he’ll turn up for conferences,” says Samantha Cohen, a criminal-defense lawyer in London. Despite Doherty’s string of broken pledges to clean up, his indefatigable lawyer, Sean Curran, has mostly kept him out of prison. “He has a fairly faultless record,” Cohen says. “Pete’s a complete moron if he isn’t grateful.”
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Snoop Dogg’s bodyguard
Imagine: Suge Knight is the least of your problems

Guarding high-profile rappers involves everything from chauffeuring to managing angry girlfriends: “What it boils down to is, you’re a babysitter,” says Byron Williams, who has looked after Eminem, Snoop and Lloyd Banks. “These so-called tough guys are in the club and they need you to take them to the restroom. Or when the heat goes down and they realize they’ve bit off more than they can chew, they want you to handle their beef.” Snoop’s bodyguards in particular have been magnets for trouble: One, McKinley Lee, stood trial for murder after shooting and killing a man Lee claimed had been harassing Snoop in 1993. Another caught a bullet when Snoop’s car was showered with gunfire. Then there are the alleged death threats against Snoop from ex-label boss Suge Knight. “I prefer not to work with rappers now,” Williams says. “They don’t want to pay, and there’s a good chance you’re going to have to shoot somebody.”
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Guns N’ Roses’ tour manager
How do you solve a problem like Axl?

A tour=2 0manager’s job should be simple: Get your band to the gig and make sure their needs (drugs, girls, bail money) are met along the way. Naturally, with Guns N’ Roses, nothing is simple. “As far as trouble goes, mainly it’s dealing with Axl,” says John Reese, who comanaged and tour-managed the band between 1988 and 1997. “He walks to the beat of his own drummer. He’s not real aware of the stimuli around him.” Reese bribed customs officials and once shuttled GNR out of Bogotá, Colombia, on a private plane to escape the clutches of a drug cartel. More recent tour managers have endured their own headaches: riots resulting from canceled dates in Vancouver and Philadelphia, when Axl failed to turn up on time, and springing Axl from a Swedish jail after the singer allegedly bit a hotel security guard’s leg. “Every single night there’s a possibility of a riot,” Reese says. “Axl would go on an hour and a half late, on average. Every travel arrangement, every hotel consideration — everything’s centered on ‘How am I going to get Axl Rose onstage tonight?’”
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Britney Spears’s hairstylist
Tending the most infamous head of hair since Samson's

Being a celebrity hairstylist means working with finicky, insecure, image-obsessed egomaniacs, then seeing your work constantly critiqued by the likes of Melissa Rivers. Being Britney Spears’s hairstylist adds an element of extreme unpredictability. “Her attitude is, ‘I want it blond today, brown tomorrow; shave it today, back on tomorrow,’” says Sheila Stotts, who often works on the pop star’s hair but — as she takes pains to point out — not recently. “I’ve done an incredible job, then two days later she puts in brown dye from Sav·On.” Reports say that all the bleaching and extensions have left Britney’s hair so damaged it was falling out even before she shaved it off earlier this year. Since then, gaudy wigs, subpar extensions and half-baked dye jobs have made things worse. “She’s impulsive,” Stotts says. “A lot of hairdressers don’t step up and say no, so I’m consequently doing corrective work. Something that should take four hours takes twelve. It’s frustrating.”
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