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  • 2001-01-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Van Halen's Concert Contract Require the Removal of Brown M&Ms? (en)
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  • Rock concerts have come a long ways since the days when the Beatles performed in boxing rings and hockey rinks, and made no greater demand of promoters than they be provided with clean towels and a few bottles of soft drinks. As the audiences grew larger, promoters stood to make more and more money from staging concerts, which meant that not only could rock stars command higher prices for their performances, but they were able to demand other perks as well, such as luxurious accommodations, lavish backstage buffets, and chauffeured transportation. It was inevitable that some high-demand acts, all their financial and pampering whims satisfied, would exercise their power and start making frivolous demands of promoters, simply because they could. By far the most notorious of these whimsical requests is the legend that Van Halen's standard concert contract called for them to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms backstage, but with provision that all the brown candies must be removed: Indeed, a copy of a contract rider from Van Halen's 1982 world tour, under the Munchies section, does document that the band specified they be provided with M&M's (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES): The presence of even a single brown M&M in that bowl, rumor had it, was sufficient legal cause for Van Halen to peremptorily cancel a scheduled appearance without advance notice (and usually an excuse for them to go on a destructive rampage as well). The legendary no brown M&Ms contract clause was indeed real, but the purported motivation for it was not. The M&Ms provision was included in Van Halen's contracts not as an act of caprice, but because it served a practical purpose: to provide a simple way of determining whether the technical specifications of the contract had been thoroughly read and complied with. As Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography: Nonetheless, the media ran exaggerated and inaccurate accounts of Van Halen's using violations of the no brown M&Ms clause as justification for engaging in childish, destructive behavior (as described in the newspaper article quoted above). David Lee Roth's version of such events was decidedly different: (en)
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