This Goes To 11: Spinal Tap Movie Trivia

The M&Ms Thing

Turns out that there’s a pretty good reason that Van Halen requested that all brown M&Ms be nixed from their backstage food spread. The group’s rider, or performance contract – a list of specific demands, included a line under the “provisions” category which stated “M&M’s (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES)”. The same document indicated that the band could refuse to play if they found a single brown M&M in their green room. There’s a reason behind this seemingly picky demand.

In David Lee Roth’s autobiography, he explained. Van Halen was a much larger band/production than most of the cities they toured were used to. And there was no risk for error in the technical department: “[W]hether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.” The M&M clause in the rider was an indication of how well the venue had handled Van Halen’s other requests. As Lee Roth outlined, “So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.”