“M & M’s with the brown ones taken out…”

The above is a famous quote from Van Halen’s tour rider. You can read here why he seemed to have an aversion to brown m & m’s, and it’s not for any gastronomic reasons!

Tour riders can make fascinating reading. The demands that some people feel entitled to make are quite astonishing, from Paul McCartney’s insistence that sniffer dogs check the venue for bombs before the gig, to Jennifer Lopez’s demands for an entirely white room filled with white flowers and candles. To my mind Jennifer would have been better off demanding singing lessons.

The Smoking Gun is the website to read about musician’s demands on tour. The best riders are the funny ones or the ones with unexpected items required by the band (or under no circumstances the items that confuse them). A friend of mine recently alerted me to the brilliant tour rider by the Foo Fighters which makes for very funny reading and I’m hoping the ever hilarious Mr. Grohl is responsible for it. But the ultimate Hall of Fame award goes to Iggy Pop. Pop’s Tour Manager wrote the rider and it makes for hysterical reading. Here’s the first page as a taster. Now go online and read the rest. I promise you’ll corpse laughing!