I’m sure this has been done before on this website, but WTH, I’ll just go ahead and start my own thread on this.
We’ve all heard the story about Van Halen wanting a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed.
These are even better, if they’re true.
I met a guy today who said he’s worked in the entertainment industry in varying capacities, and he said that Barry Manilow wants a curtain put up between his dressing room and the stage, so he doesn’t have to look at the stage crew/they don’t have to look at him while he’s walking to the stage at the beginning of a show.
But he said the strangest request he ever encountered came, by far, from Janet Jackson. She demands that a new toilet be installed in her dressing room before she shows up; it must be a certain kind of toilet, and certified by the plumber before she will use it.
He said he didn’t remember the nice people, because they didn’t do anything to warrant stories like these.
:o
I’m sure there are plenty of Dopers who will have their own to add.
I’m given to understand that the purpose of riders is to make sure that the people from the venue pay attention to details. If the band shows up and there’s no bowl of M&Ms, or there’s a bowl of M&Ms including brown ones, it’s a sign that the venue is cutting corners. Where else are they cutting corners? With the lighting? That could be dangerous.
Mick Fleetwood’s new autobiography says that at the height of Fleetwood Mac, they demanded that hotels paint rooms pink for Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks. Stevie also demanded a white piano in her room, which often involved cranes to get it there. Why did they stay only at the most expensive hotels, some financial people once asked. The answer was obvious. Only the most expensive hotels would cater to requests like painting a room for a night’s stay.
None of that surprises me. I’ve definitely heard the story about Nicks taking cocaine, ahem, some OTHER way, when she couldn’t take it nasally any more.
That’s (supposedly) the purpose of the really bizarre stuff on the riders like the bowl of M&M’s with no green ones. But a venue would be nuts to not do exactly what’s on the rider. They signed it, do they really want a big name walking off (with their money) because they said ‘he wants _____, screw it’.
My store does catering for a lot of big names and we get some of that stuff. Most of it isn’t too strange. Fruit platters that must have papaya, meat platters with all kosher/organic meats, etc. During the season that we do most of this the venue won’t always tell us who it’s for (they host about 100+ major/semi major bands over the course of 10 days), but if you head over to The Smoking Gun and check out the riders we can usually figure it out who wanted, for example, recycled napkins or a block of soy cheese if you know what acts are in town in the next 48 hours.
That was in his list of demands in a hostage situation. He said you should make one nutty demand so if you got caught you could plead insanity. [sarcastic voice]“Getaway car!!”[/sarcastic voice]
I have heard that Roger Daltry demands bottles of fresh milk. One of the hair bands from the late '80s (Poison? Warrant?) demanded a cache of porno magazines be supplied back stage. And I read that Peter Gabriel requests a massage from a female that includes a happy ending. Don’t know how accurate that last one is.
There is a video on youtube with one of the guys from Metallica reading off a list of Axl Rose’s backstage demands. It shows what a narcissistic bastard Axl is.
My sister is a LCMT. One of the things they learn about in massage therapy school is what to do if a client requests this. In short, they tell them that they must get dressed and leave immediately, or the police will be called. They don’t fool around with things like this. Maybe it’s another kind of masseuse he hires, if that’s the case.
One of my college classmates was involved in a peripheral way with a Guns N’Roses concert when we were in school (early 1990s) and among other things, he had to go to a local grocery store and buy IIRC 40 loaves of bread for the backstage buffet (lots of crew and “camp followers” to feed too!) and he too had to go to an adult bookstore and pick up some porno mags. The one I remember him talking about was one called “Score”. I said, “Good heavens, you’d think they already had enough of the real thing!”
He has a new autobiography? I read one from a good, oh, 15 years ago - ah, here it is; heck, it is from 1991:
Came across like a complete idiot (to be clear, I have a deep respect for FM through their various incarnations). Stories about customizing a Ferrari (?) with a penis-shaped stickshift; attaching a foot-long rubber dildo with a suction-cup base to the front of his kick drum so it would bounce along; getting into a Catfish relationship via phone that (I think) led to a divorce. Just kinda “boys will be boys” cluelessness, told with a lack of self-reflection that was hilarious.
Similar to Ron Wood’s autobio, which was totally clueless as well, esp when read alongside Keith Richard’s which was definitive and brilliant, and Rod Stewart’s which is a wonderful collection of stories, well told.
Blues keyboard legend Pinetop Perkins was 93 when he played at a friend’s club. The day of the sold-out show, the club owner asked if I would be willing to be Pinetop’s bodyguard/gopher, which he just realized his contract stipulated. I agreed.
My friend told me to do whatever the guy asked. We got along great; his stories were amazing. Then he asked if I would get him anything he wanted. My mind went to the gutter, but I told him yes. He asked for vanilla icecream. I ran to the closest store and bought some. I spent the rest of the afternoon moving his icecream from the counter to the fridge to the freezer, as he slowly consumed the quart.
I put on small to medium sized shows (300-3000 seaters) throughout the late 90s and early 2000s. No “no brown M&Ms!” bullshit at that level of success, but plenty of demands for certain brands of beer or bottled water, oddball dietary requirements, along with weird ones like tube socks and batteries. However, I’ll offer one counter-example to all the weirdness and narcissism here.
Fugazi’s hospitality rider called for:
4 bottles of water
4 bottles of sparkling water
4 bottles of Gatorade or some similar sports drink
4 clean towels
No massages, no knickknacks. No food.
Also, unique among bands of their stature, their contract didn’t include a guarantee, which in turn allowed them to set the ticket price: no more than $6.
Another blues performer who played at my friend’s club was Son Seals. His contract specified twin beds, three feet apart from each other. I helped set that up. He had lost a leg to diabetes. When he went to bed, he removed his prosthesis and “tucked it in” to the other bed. When he woke up he was able to sit up, grab his prosthetic leg, and put it on.
Right, the brown M&Ms thing was a super smart thing to include in the rider. Snopes has the full explanation. Van Halen had an elaborate lighting and stage setup, that was super heavy, much heavier than other touring bands’ setups. It was something that needed to be setup up properly so that it worked right and so that it didn’t come crashing down on top of anyone. If the rider was followed and there were no brown M&Ms in the bowl, the band could feel reasonably confident that the rest of the contract was followed and all the lighting and such were setup up properly. But if there were brown M&Ms in the bowl, the whole setup would need to be carefully checked. One concert shows how it was justified:
A friend of mine who is an emergency room physician got a call from the management of the Rolling Stones on their first tour after the murder of John Lennon. Apparently, Jagger was freaked out by this, and demanded that a trauma doctor be sitting on side of the stage at every show on the tour. My friend asked what it paid, and was told that it paid nothing, that anyone should be honored to do this for free.
My friend replied that:
[ul]
[li]He didn’t spend all those years in medical school and residency so he could work for free.[/li][li]Mick Jagger has plenty of money to hire anyone he wanted.[/li][li]He didn’t give a shit about the Stones - he was a Beatles fan.[/li][/ul]
They finally called back, offering $2000, 8 front row tickets and backstage passes. He took it because he realized that plenty of his friends would enjoy the show.
I recall reading that there was a band whose touring schedule one year had them visiting many of the same venues that Van Halen had recently played, who stipulated that they receive all of the brown m&ms that went unused during the Van Halen shows.
Unfortunately Google is not being helpful this morning, so I’m not sure if the story is true…
That’s pretty extreme, but I have heard of those who specify that a new toilet seat be installed. I wonder if she demanded a Washlet bidet type of toilet?
Anyway, at the height of her fame, they could probably recover part of the expense by reselling the toilet on eBay.
(.jpg, can’t c&p any of it)
