M&M’s maker Mars is doing away with brown and blue M&M’s and of course Van Halen is “somewhat” involved.
So if you know your rock history you most-likely know that Van Halen stipulated in their rider contract that there were to be no brown M&M’s in their dressing rooms. Contrary to opinion, this wasn’t a pretentious, “rock star” rider request the clause was placed in a place in their contract among the technical and power requirements they needed to perform. IF the band walked into their dressing room and saw brown M & M’s, they had a good idea that no one had read the contract and the power would be a problem during the show. Alex Van Halen wrote about it in his 2024 book, Brothers.
“I know. We sound like jerks. Like rock star prima donnas looking to make some poor kid sit around picking through candies till he goes blind. But it wasn’t about a power trip, and it wasn’t about some strange aversion to the color brown. If we see brown M&M’s, we know: we are not in the hands of professionals. If they didn’t bother with this, what else didn’t they bother with, what other corners are being cut?”
The penalty for not sifting out the brown M&M’s was the promoter forfeiting the entire show at full pay, with David Lee Roth once saying they would also “ceremoniously and very theatrically destroying the dressing room to try to get the message across, lest we have a disaster” if they found any.
