No Brown M&Ms — The Hidden Genius in Van Halen’s Contract Clause

Rock and Roll bands and super-sized egos usually go hand in hand, and the newspapers are replete with stories of rock star excess. In 1982, the rock band Van Halen made headlines when they reportedly trashed their backstage area at a Pueblo, Colorado, concert when frontman David Lee Roth found brown M&M’s in a candy bowl.

The discovery of the prohibited candy directly violated the band’s contract rider, which explicitly stated that a bowl of M&M’s was to be provided, with all of the brown ones removed. If any brown M&M’s were found, the band could cancel the concert, with full payment to Van Halen. The media quickly seized this as evidence of childish, egomaniacal excess. Really? Destroying your dressing room because you found some wrong colour of candy. Obviously, this was the tantrum of indulged, rich, spoiled brats!

However, the truth is deeper than the surface reporting of what happened. The brown M&M’s clause, far from being a frivolous bauble of rock star excess, was a smart visible indicator deliberately engineered into the contract. At the time, Van Halen was pioneering bringing top-tier rock shows into small, tertiary markets. These smaller venues often did not have the experience working with massive stage productions, and there were often times major issues with even things as simple as the floor being able to support the set’s weight or the venue doors being too small to accommodate the band’s gear.

David Lee Roth, in his autobiography “Crazy from the Heat”, explained,

“The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say “Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes…” This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”

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.”

At one particular show in Pueblo, Colorado, it was quickly apparent that the university venue staff hadn’t read the contract. The arena had a new flex flooring installed that could have never supported the weight of the band’s gear and set, so disaster was looming. Roth continues,

“I came backstage. I found some brown M&M’s, I went into full Shakespearean “What is this before me?” … you know, with the skull in one hand … and promptly trashed the dressing room. Dumped the buffet, kicked a hole in the door, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of fun.”

“The staging sank through their floor. They didn’t bother to look at the weight requirements or anything, and this sank through their new flooring and did eighty thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the arena floor. The whole thing had to be replaced. It came out in the press that I discovered brown M&M’s and did eighty-five thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the backstage area.”

“Well, who am I to get in the way of a good rumor?”

Insight and Application:

By placing an unusual request in the middle of their rider, the band clearly communicated their expectations. They needed the venues to read every contract line and meet all their technical needs. Although seemingly trivial, the M&M bowl provided an immediate visual cue so Van Halen’s production staff could quickly assess whether everyone had paid proper attention to the full details of the contract. By incorporating signals like this, the band could confidently bring their show to smaller markets, greatly expanding their reach.

image credit: Brian Lynch

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