"Absolutely no Brown M&M's": Van Halen's quest to ensure people followed process.

It is part of rock and roll legend. Eddie Van Halen and his band used to have a bizarre request in their contracts with venues during their tours in the 1980's: "We want M&M's in the backstage (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES)".?

The request was buried in p. 40 of their contract, under a section called "Munchies". This is true, see below a copy of the band's 1982 contract (food requirements). The legend spread and "No Brown M&M's" became an example of typical rock star excess and "diva requests". The truth is, however, much more interesting.?

Source: The Smoking Gun

As Van Halen's singer David Lee Roth explains in a 2012 interview (see video below), in the 1980's Van Halen took rock & roll productions to a level and size never seen until then. It was the largest production ever, with a new level of requirements in terms of lighting, sound, and stage props.

Source: Guitar World

Van Halen's mega-production created important new challenges for venue crews. For, instance, it was much more compelx to ensure appropriate power balance on stage to accomodate all lights and sound materials. And of course, given the band wanted to deliver an unforgetable experience to concertgoers, technical mistakes and failures were not an option.

To give us an idea of the magnitude of Van Halen's leap in terms of musical production, David Lee Roth recollects, in the interview below, that while the average band, at that time, toured around the US with three trucks of technical material, Van Halen toured with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, all full of gear. For instance, they used 850 power lamp lights (huge lights), which made it a huge challenge to properly get all the gear in and out old venues and properly set it up for perfection.

Technical errors and accidents were almost unavoidable, so the band decided to write a meticulous step-by-step manual with instructions and requirements to venue organizers. They would send such manual to venues several months before a concert to ensure adequate preparation. The contract covered everything from the power requirements, proper spacing of power sockets, load bearing stress required, etc. According to Roth, while most rock bands used, at that time, a contract that looked like a "pamphlet", Van Halen's contract and manual looked like "the chinese phonebook".

Such a detailed, step-by-step process manual would ensure it was nearly impossible to err, right?

Wrong! The problem is that too many venue crews did not bother to read the manual carefully enough. So Van Halen started noticing that the "people" factor (the venue crew), was getting in the way of their goal: an error-free setup and an unforgettable experience to concertgoers. In other words, a great process and detailed manual was not sufficient to ensure a seamless concert experience to concertgoers and errors kept occurring. This had to stop. The band decided that they had to monitor - before the start of each show - whether they could trust that the venue's crew had read the manual and followed it to the dot.

This is the reason for Van Halen's infamous "No Brown M&M's" policy. David Lee Roth would typically come to the backstage several hours before the show and if he found brown M&M's, he knew he could not trust the venue and crew to have read the manual carefully or followed its instructions, so the band's crew had to do their own careful sound check and venue revision to ensure a proper show.?

And it worked... :). As David Lee Roth explains below: "after seeing brown M&M's and ceremoniously and very theatrically destroying the dressing room to try to get the message across, the word got across that venues needed to take our contract seriously".?

Sources:

• https://www.safetydimensions.com.au/van-halen/
• https://www.thewrap.com/van-halen-brown-mms-remove-concert-rider/