Recently, the true reason as to why Van Halen requested to never find a brown M&M while feasting on the candies backstage has finally been revealed. During the height of the band’s fame, Van Halen would issue a written request for bowls of M&M’s to concert venues that read, “WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES.”
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Not too long ago, it was revealed that Van Halen placed this silly request within their concert rider in order to see if the venue would be able to keep up with their elaborate set-up. If the venue did not deliver any brown M&M’s to the band backstage, then they felt confident that the needs for their large-scale shows were going to be met. The band also issued other strange requests, such as “herring in sour cream” and “a large tube of KY jelly.”
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In his autobiography, Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth discusses just how intricate the band’s concerts really were, “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.”
Roth also revealed that if the band noticed a brown M&M in one of the bowls, they would know that the venue was not paying attention to their hefty concert rider. Roth stated, “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.”
While Van Halen has not been active much since 2020, Sammy Hagar recently revealed that Wolfgang Van Halen is now the heart and soul of Van Halen. While a guest on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation in November 2022, Hagar discussed a potential Eddie Van Halen tribute event that never happened and why he would rather not perform as Van Halen anymore.
Hagar said, “I said, ‘I’ll do anything with Al and Mike and play music with people, but it’s not gonna be Van Halen. There is no Van Halen… Wolfie is Van Halen, okay? And he doesn’t wanna be the Van Halen copy band. I don’t blame him; he’s doing a great job on his own stuff, and it’s very cool when he jams a little bit here and there. He’s Van Halen, and if he wanted to play guitar with Al and Mikey and myself, I would love to do that.”
(Photo Credit: Chris Walter/WireImage)
