Rock stars may be known for leading a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to weird quirks. The list below proves this, as everyone from Van Halen to Alice Cooper has their specific backstage needs that range from ironing to shepherd’s pie. Check out some of the bizarre backstage rituals of your favorite rock stars.
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1. Van Halen and the Brown M&Ms
Arguably the most famous bizarre backstage ritual in rock and roll history is how Van Halen would always request a bowl of M&Ms, but assert that there should only be brown M&M’s in a bowl. While it may sound like a petty request, there was a specific reason the band insisted upon it, acting as a test for the crew handling their monstrous production.
“Van Halen was the first to take 850 par lamp lights – huge lights – around the country. At the time, it was the biggest production ever. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors – whether 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,” Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth explained in his autobiography, Crazy from the Heat.
“When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl, well, line-check the entire production,” he continued. “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.”
2. Paul McCartney’s face steam, sandwich, and a margarita
Paul McCartney may be one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever seen, but even he’s prone to backstage quirks. McCartney’s rituals lean more into cleansing than bizarre, as he’s known to face steam one hour before showtime, a ritual he learned from Little Richard.
“I do like – over a bowl of hot water – a steam. I do like a steaming before I go on, which I was told was probably the best thing to clear your larynx,” McCartney explained in a Q&A on his website. “I was taught that by watching Little Richard do it when we were kids in Hamburg. He used to do it before he went on. He’d get a kettle full of hot water in the sink, put a towel over his head, and [inhales] breathe in, get the vapours. So, I do that. It’s become part of my ritual and then I have a salt-water gargle.”
But that’s not his only backstage ritual. The music legend is also known to wind down after a show with a very specific meal. “My dad has this sandwich and a Margarita, because he doesn’t eat before he goes on. He waits until after,” his daughter Mary McCartney told Paul Weller in an interview with GQ.
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3. Keith Richards’ shepherd’s pie
The Rolling Stones have toured all around the world, but they take a piece of home with them wherever they go. It’s long been rock and roll folklore that the iconic English rock band requests that they have shepherd’s pie backstage, which Keith Richards confirmed in his autobiography Life. “It’s now famous, my rule on the road,” he said. “Nobody touches the shepherd’s pie till I’ve been in there. Don’t bust my crust, baby.”
“Once a member of the crew ate his shepherd’s pie and Keith threatened to cut him up and put his legs in a shepherd’s pie,” Richards’ former wife Anita Pallenberg claimed in Keith Richards: The Biography. “So he gets his shepherd’s pie, miles of shepherd’s pie everywhere. He’s always got shepherd’s pie and he doesn’t have to worry about it.”
4. Robert Plant likes to iron
Robert Plant may be one of the biggest rock stars on the planet as a member of Led Zeppelin, but even he has a soft side. He proved this when he shared that before shows, he likes to iron as a way to stay calm. “I’ve never really been one for diva demands. We were always too busy having a good time to get hung up about anything,” Plant told BBC Radio (quote via Ultimate Guitar). “It’s not very rock ‘n’ roll, but I like to look my best going on stage. I find ironing helps get me in the mood before I perform.”
5. Alice Cooper’s kung-fu movies
Don’t let Alice Cooper’s hardcore onstage persona fool you—his backstage rituals prove that he’s gentle at heart. To get in the right headspace before a show, Cooper has adopted the habit of watching a particular genre of movies.
“I used to sit and drink before a show, anxiously walking around to get ready. After I stopped drinking, I needed to kill an hour and a half…So instead, I began watching Chinese kung fu movies from the sixties, seventies, and eighties,” he explained in the book, Alice Cooper: Golf Monster. “They’re like bad westerns-there are thousands of these films with guys who were every bit as good as Bruce Lee. They all have terrible storylines. I’m so addicted to them that watching them before a show has now become a ritual…give me a stupid kung fu movie, some Diet Coke, and a concept that people can relate to, and I’ll give you a great show.”
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