The 7 Most Impossible Rock Stars to Deal With

Being a musician requires at least a few years spent starving to death in a van. Once a rock star reaches a certain level of success, he tends to take advantage of all the things suddenly available to him, particularly the liquor, drugs and ability to destroy inanimate objects. From the point of view of the fans, this is perfectly cool. We expect these guys to live the life of excess that we can't.

"Dude, I would love to do $3,000 worth of drugs and then crash our motorcycles into a trampoline store, but I'm going to IKEA with my girlfriend this afternoon."

The problem is that reaching the hotel destruction stage in a rock career means a lot of people are depending on you. Agents, record companies and concert promoters all have an interest in getting their man to the next concert, or to the next recording session, or out of the children's ball pit and into some pants. And as the latest Apatow movie Get Him to the Greek demonstrates, that's not always going to be easy.

Below, we've listed some of the rock stars who were the most difficult to handle, along with some hypothetical scenarios illustrating why it might suck to be their personal assistant.

Liam and Noel Gallagher are the immensely talented brothers responsible for Oasis, the most successful band that everyone wants to punch in the face. Brash and outspoken, they're known for spouting off about Blur, AIDS and how they hope everyone in Blur gets AIDS--comments which have predictably not gone over well with Blur, AIDS sufferers or anybody else.

Rock stars saying stupid things isn't that remarkable. What really makes the Gallagher boys so difficult to deal with is the ridiculous amount of fistfights they manage to get into between themselves. A typical example: Following a canceled show in Barcelona, during a friendly conversation Liam raised his doubts about the fidelity of Noel's wife and legitimacy of his daughter. (We will assume that Liam did so as delicately as he knew how.) This ended unsurprisingly when Noel headbutted his brother and then punched him in the face.

Who could hate a face like that?

Our favorite story, though, is the one where Liam decided to bring a bunch of people he'd met at the pub back to the recording studio where Noel was working, which understandably irritated Noel somewhat. Noel's role as the reasonable person in this story ends when he reacts to this interruption by attacking Liam with a cricket bat, breaking his foot.

Given that their creative partnership is based on barely contained homicidal rage, getting both Gallagher brothers on the stage at the same time has proven to be a bit like refereeing a slap fight between two chimpanzees--only with less poo throwing (probably) and more shrieking of the UK's favorite C-word (definitely).

A Typical Day If You Were Oasis' Personal Assistant:

You: Liam, don't. Don't throw that poo. Don't throw that poo, Liam. Listen to me, Liam. Do not throw that poo at Noel. He is your brother and you love him.

Noel: You fookin love me, man. Don't you throw that poo at me.

Liam: Fook! -he throws the poo at you instead-

You: AGHR! Ahh! What the hell have you been eating? Is this... is this a battery?

Musicians often put on an exaggerated persona when on stage to make themselves seem more legitimate to the audience. Whether it's bragging about the number of women they lay or the fineness of the Maseratis they drive, this kind of casual exaggeration is perhaps most common in hip-hop artists, but can also be found in nearly every other musical genre. For example, despite repeated claims to the contrary, Elton John is not, nor has he ever been, a rocket man.

DMX on the other hand is not in any way exaggerating when he describes being a bad, bad man in his songs. The man collects criminal charges like they're Pokemon. These include:

Assault
Possession of Illegal Substances
Possession of an Illegal Weapon
Animal Cruelty
Driving Without a License
Possession of Illegal Substances
Possession of False Identification
Possession of Illegal Substances
Impersonating a Federal Agent
Hijacking a Car
Possession of Illegal Substances
and finally, Possession of Illegal Substances.

Every seven seconds, somewhere in America, DMX is committing a crime.

One does not handle DMX so much as one aids and abets DMX. The rapper doesn't need you to get a fresh towel and a bottle of water, he needs you to put your fingerprints on something for him.

Our favorite DMX story relates to a mysterious incident in a New Jersey hotel in which his uncle/manager was accidentally shot in the foot. That's right, the poor guy with the impossible job of making sure stuff like this doesn't happen around DMX, has it happen right in his foot.

A Typical Day If You Were DMX's Personal Assistant:

You: -entering room- Hey dude, I got you the ski masks and 50 yards of rope you asked for, and OH GOD MY FOOT! OH NO! I NEED THAT TO WALK! AND THE BLOOD! YOU ASS! THAT'S SUPPOSED TO STAY INSIDE OF ME!

Keith Moon was the drummer for The Who, and if he didn't invent insane rock star behavior, he did his best to popularize it. What are now common rock star cliches, were daring and original back when Moon was doing them. Trashing hotel rooms, consuming horse tranquilizers, engaging in naked cake fights--Moon did it all, with vigor, passion and creativity. The best Keith Moon story is the time when shortly after leaving a hotel, he sat up in a panic and told the driver to stop and turn around. "I forgot something! We've got to go back!" Upon returning to the hotel, he ran to his room, grabbed the television and threw it out the window and into the pool. Returning to the car, he said with a great sigh of relief, "I nearly forgot."

His signature stunt was ruining toilets, and not in the way Kevin Smith ruins toilets. Moon actually demolished them. He went on the road with an enormous supply of cherry bombs, M-80s and dynamite, exploding toilets wherever he went. Moon was ultimately banned from every Holiday Inn, Sheraton and Hilton in the country for his trouble--though he was heralded Man of The Year by several plumbing supply industry associations.

A Typical Day If You Were Keith Moon's Personal Assistant:

You: Keith? Please come out of there, Keith. Please don't flush that down the toilet, Keith. I could see why you'd think it's funny the first 60 times, but this is too much. Exploding Toilet 61 is going to be no different than any of the rest. We're just gathering redundant data now. There is no logical, scientific or statistical need for this.

Keith Moon: -Opens bathroom door, runs past, cackling-

You: -Rolls for cover-

Ozzy Osbourne, front man for Black Sabbath, and later day marble-mouthed father figure, was the central figure in one of the most legendary rock star stories of all time: He ate the head off a bat. He has since claimed that he thought the bat was fake, it having been thrown on stage during a concert. That actually sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption to make--though the decision to rip even a fake bat apart with his teeth ratchets the reasonableness meter back a bit. One assumes he had his reasons. Were his "reasons" a garbage bag full of drugs? The answer is lost in the seas of time.

Somewhat less gloriously, Ozzy also once drunkenly took a leak on the Alamo, or more precisely, on the memorial across the street. As would be expected, this action pissed off Texans, a car rental company and dead soldiers everywhere. He was actually banned from San Antonio for a decade, and suffered repeated nighttime visits by the ghost of Davy Crockett. To his credit, Ozzy did later apologize profusely for the incident, although the whole thing makes us wonder what other sacred artifacts Ozzy peed on in his day.

A Typical Day If You Were Ozzy Osbourne's Personal Assistant:

You: Wow, this tour of the eyewash solution factory is a great way to take our minds off all the lawsuits we currently have pending against us, right Ozzy? Ozzy? OH JESUS NO.