Licked stamps for a living. Demoted to international superstar.
 |
ALANIS MORISSETTE
The only non-music job I ever had lasted a day and consisted of
me working in a basement in Ottawa licking stamps on envelopes.
While I was working, a song by one of the producers I was working
with came on the radio and another person in the room said how much
she liked that song. At that point I realized this was not where
I was supposed to be. |
Can you guess which one wore the sandwich board?
 |
BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB
Robert Turner: Me and Peter for awhile did a paper route.
It was a 4 a.m. drive to 300 houses. It wasn’t like a kid route.
It was twelve guys – insane insomniacs – just driving
around all night.
Peter Hayes: [Car] mechanic was my first job.
Nick Jago: A walking advertisement. A sandwich board thing
for a restaurant called The Starfish Cafe. |
From chopping meats to making beats.
 |
CHEMICAL BROTHERS
Ed Simon: I worked in a sort of delicatessen counter chopping
cooked meat – ham and salami and all that.
Tom Rowlands: I used to deliver papers when I was eleven
but that didn’t last too long. |
Worked for a Ukrainian smuggler.
 |
EMM GRYNER
1997. I was hired as a graphic designer for a marketing company
which specialized in making CDs in various shapes. I was excited
to get this job because it was part-time and I was being
paid more money than I had ever made, never mind that I was being
paid under the table by my boss, a giant Ukrainian man with big
hair and big jewelry. Everything was going swell until the boss’s
partner (his new wife) told me my work clothes were "not professional,"
and as far as my hairdo went, she recommended that I "get a
brush."
After a month or so, a divider that usually shielded
my desk from the rest of the office was removed because my boss’s
wife felt I was making too many personal phone calls (to do with
my music). There were a couple of uncomfortable instances where
my boss would drive me across town at Mach 50 in his very tacky
Porsche just to deliver a file. Business itself was starting to
tank as the shaped CDs, which featured many sharp angles and points,
were starting to get jammed in rich people’s car stereos and
computers, or just wouldn’t play at all. Peculiar faxes and
phone calls started to trickle into the office and, upon closer
inspection, I realized they were death threats directed at my boss!
And to explain it all, a 200-page document showed up at the door
one day which detailed my boss’s life story – bad business
decisions, secret affairs, embarrassing old girlfriends, you name
it – but it also revealed that he was in fact an ex-con who
had been in prison for smuggling illegal hair growth products into
Spain. So I quit and have never worked a day job since. |
Spot the sports expert. (Hint: trick question)  |
FRANZ FERDINAND
Alex Kapranos: My first job was the most ridiculous thing.
It was in this outdoor sports shop called High Range Sports, and
it was funny because I’m the most un-outdoor sportsman in the
world. It was just so not me. I was working in this shop that sold
mountaineering equipment. So these big burly guys would come in
and would go, ‘Hello, I want a crampon and a carabiner’.
I’d be going ‘yeah? Is this one?’ Didn’t have
a clue about it at all, didn’t know what I was talking about.
I remember standing there saying ‘this is so boring!’
I remember my head throbbing with boredom. |
Forced to do volunteer work.
 |
GARBAGE
Steve Marker: Mowing lawns for anybody who would pay me three
dollars.
Shirley Manson: My mother forced me to work as a voluntary
worker in the Western General Hospital Cafe. |
You buy it, he'll fry it.
 |
LENNY KRAVITZ
I worked in a fish market in LA when I was out there. It was one
of those places like a soul food fish market. They call it ‘You
Buy It, We Fry It’, and you go and pick up the raw fish that
are sitting there in cases, and they say, ‘Okay, I’ll
have that, that, that’. You cut it up, you gut it, put the
cornmeal on and you deep-fry it. |
Worked hard to earn her food money. Now has lots of food.
 |
NELLY FURTADO
I worked for eight years at the Robin Hood hotel in Victoria chambermaiding.
That’s where my mother works; so does my aunt and cousin. And
so every summer I would clean rooms chambermaiding, and it was cool
when I was twelve or thirteen because no one else had a part-time
job so I had extra money for clothes. It was good experience. I
know what it’s like to work hard because I come from a working
class. |
Unable to master the politics of dishwashing.
 |
NICKELBACK
Mike Kroeger: I was a dishwasher in a restaurant and got
canned after a week. My first day I won a bet with my boss on a
baseball game. His team, the Expos, lost; mine, the Cubs, won. I
kept going ‘round the kitchen ‘Cubs win!’ We just
didn’t get along and he canned me.
Ryan Vikedal: My first job post-school was working in a parking
kiosk at the university. The band I was in had just broken up. I’d
sit in there and practice all day, then go to a friend’s house
and take jazz lessons. Then I’d play a show ‘til 2 a.m.,
then get up at 6 a.m. to go to the parking kiosk again. |
An expert at laying pipe... Or so we're told!
 |
NIKKI SIXX (MÖTLEY CRÜE,
BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION)
My real first job was moving irrigation pipe on a farm. How was
that? F**ked! |
Worked with ice cream and back bacon sandwiches. Apparently has
the metabolism of a hummingbird.
 |
SARAH HARMER
My first job was working at a little tea room scooping ice cream
and making back bacon sandwiches at the Lowville Tea Room. That’s
just north of Burlington where I went to public school. |
Understands the politics of dishwashing
 |
SARAH MCLACHLAN
My first job was washing dishes at the Trade Centre in Halifax,
Nova Scotia. I think it was about three months in the summer. It
was fourteen-hour shifts and you don’t get a break or you don’t
get to go home until it’s all done. There’s no union involved
there, that’s for sure. |
Worked at McDonald's and cleaned dirty shoes. Oh how the mighty
have fallen!
 |
SIMPLE PLAN
David Desrosiers: McDonald’s for, like, a year. Drove
me nuts. I started by [being] the clean-up guy/night guy from eleven
at night until seven in the morning for, like, two months. Then
I almost shot myself, and then I went up to the kitchen.
Jeff Stinco: I used to work at a bowling alley, actually,
cleaning the dirty shoes.
David: That’s f**king cool!
Jeff: No, dude, it wasn’t! I used to close the bowling
alley, like, at two in the morning. And I was in high school still
so I closed the alley to drunken men – I had to kick him out
and then go to sleep for a few hours. I broke so many machines.
Don’t tell anyone! And I’d go in the back and reset them
while the players would be playing. I did some bad things. |
