Wilder than The Stones? The real reason for the most famous Rock and Roll rider of all time
The Rolling Stones rider has apparently been leaked by TMZ, featuring a combination of real rock and roll, and subtle signs that these hell raisers aren't quite as sprightly as they once were. Rock and roll riders have become the stuff of legend, but one of the most famous of all time - for Van Halen - issued what appeared to be an outrageous demand, but was actually a blindingly clever safety measure.
The Rolling Stones' rider contains decent rock and roll requests, including plenty of alcohol and cigarettes. They also require extra butlers for exceptional room service, and after-hours dry cleaning, so there's never any need to appear in public looking anything less than a superstar.
However, one of their requests cannot help but show their age a little. The Stones require written instructions for all the gadgets in their rooms. It's fair enough, these are grandparents, and technology isn't necessarily second nature if you were first introduced to it after your state retirement age.
Outlandish rider
It has led to lots of talk of the great rock and roll riders of our time, and the bands who reportedly used them to ask for ever more outlandish things for their dressing room.
Van Halen were amongst the greatest rider writers of all time, with a complex list of demands, including - on Arena tours in the 1980s - that there should be no brown M&Ms anywhere backstage. If there were any to be found, there would be no show, but the band would demand their fee.
On the face of it, this seems like rock and roll excess, and exploiting their status for the sake of proving a point, which is how it was reported at the time. The band has since explained, however, that there was a clever reason for this demand.
Why?
At the time Van Halen's show was one of the most spectacular ever to have toured, and as a result had an incredibly complex set. This included 850 enormous lights suspended above the stage, so the contract rider was enormous, in order to spell out what was required from the venue to make the show work.
Many of the older buildings weren't designed to accommodate the set for an epic production like this, and because some of the promoters didn't read the contract riders properly, they didn't have the venues set up correctly, which could have put the band at risk.
To deal with this, right in the middle of the rider, the band added the M&Ms clause. It meant that if David Lee Roth went backstage, and found brown M&Ms, he knew the promoter hadn't read the rider, so the band would need to recheck every aspect of the set.
Lee Roth says he would also theatrically cause a bit of damage in the dressing room, in order to get the message across that Van Halen took the rider seriously - and presumably because he wanted to prove that even health and safety could be a little bit rock and roll.
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