Top talent manager Scooter Braun feared his client Justin Bieber would die at the height of the pop star’s wild phase.
The Sorry singer found himself in trouble with the law several times ahead of his first arrest in 2014, when the Canadian hitmaker was taken into custody in Miami, Florida for allegedly driving under the influence.
At the time of Bieber’s fall from grace, Scooter admits he was deeply concerned for the 23-year-old’s welfare, and sometimes worried the star’s dangerous behavior would end in his demise.
“To me, the only point I had where it was, ‘Is it over?’ wasn’t a scary career over,” he explains to Complex’s Blueprint program. “I thought I was going to lose him. I thought he was going to die, you know? That was the scariest point, because he was an adult, so he could go away from me. I couldn’t force him to stay next to me. There were points where I didn’t know if in the morning he was going to be there, and I was petrified.”
Scooter, who discovered Justin online in 2007 after coming across one of the singer’s homemade videos on YouTube, is happy to see his long-time signee on the mend, with Bieber having turned his life around in recent years in favor of attending church and becoming a positive role model.
But the manager is also eager for the What Do You Mean? star to address his “rough patch” himself in full detail when he is ready to do so, hinting at a big reveal in the near future.
“I think that’s his story to tell, and I think at the right time he’ll tell the complete story,” Braun notes. “I think – funny enough – his perspective and maybe some of who were there are (at the time) going to be very different, because a lot of it, he doesn’t remember.”
