Van Halen's Legendary M&M's Rider

The folks at the Smoking Gun website have provided me with a hilarious '80's flashback. They have published Van Halen's infamous 1982 concert contract rider that stipulates that no brown M&M's should ever be included in their backstage servings. Here it is:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/1211081vanhalen1.html

Here is what the Smoking Gun site says about the rider:

While the underlined rider entry has often been described as an example of rock excess, the outlandish demand of multimillionaires, the group has said the M&M provision was included to make sure that promoters had actually read its lengthy rider. If brown M&M's were in the backstage candy bowl, Van Halen surmised that more important aspects of a performance--lighting, staging, security, ticketing--may have been botched by an inattentive promoter.

While the concert riders of famous musicians are now old news, it is revealing to thumb through the 53-page VH rider to see examples of the detailed demands that such artists make. Personally, I would find it hard to blame some promoters from missing certain details of these riders. Reading the lengthy VH rider becomes mind-numbing after a while.

If you want to cut to the chase, the stipulation about the brown M&M's is found on page 9 of the rider. Farther down on the same page, it stipulates that the band was entitled to "One (1) large tube KY Jelly". Well, that killed my M&M craving.