About Van Halen & Those Brown M&M's
David Lee Roth explains in a video that yes, Van Halen had the clause in their rider that they wanted no brown M&M's. He says they did it for safety. You know, because in a dark room it is way tougher to spot brown M&M's then a bunch of green and blue ones rolling around. Actually he said it was because they wanted to make sure that promoters were reading every line of the rider because it has very important safety information. Naah. It is because they were big selfish pricks and they wanted to find a way to show they were big selfish pricks. Does not mean I didn't like their music, but they were being divas, and Dave does not exactly deny he trashed a dressing room when he found brown M&M's. So much for safety.
Brown M&Ms from Van Halen on Vimeo.
I had a friend who "met" him back in the 80's. She claims he made her sign a legal document before he would "speak" to her. Her quotes, not mine.
ReplyDeleteIn high school these guys were GODS to me. DLR had the most luscious chest hair any man could have.
ReplyDeleteAhh, those were the days.
David Lee Roth introduced me to the tingles. I was a junior high innocent and I couldn't take my eyes off him.
ReplyDeleteYou know what grosses me out? If you don't want brown M&M's, that means someone has to pick them all out. Which means that someone is touching every singe M&M in the bowl to get out all the brown ones. It gives me the willies.
ReplyDeleteAnd if DLR really did go work as an EMT during his years "retired" from singing in a band, I say major kudos to him.
ReplyDeleteLauren, I never thought of that. Although it must be really awesome to have someone that can go through your food and pick out what you don't like. I like the flavour onions give but I can't eat fried onions so I always pick them out and it's tedious. But if I had minions (that wore food handling gloves) ......
ReplyDeletehmmm - I think I would hire someone to pick tiny mushrooms from covered dishes at pot luck dinner parties. Why does EVERYONE have to use cream of mushroom soup? ;)
ReplyDeleteI STILL believe the green M&Ms make you horny
ReplyDeleteBlind Item, or already obvious?
ReplyDeleteOne of my twitter friends is a drummer, he plays for everyone from Nine Inch Nails to The Vandals and Paramore.
Anyway, he spent a few days at VH's rehearsals before their tour started. After he got back one night, he tweeted this:
@joshfreese
When DavidLeeRoth FINALLY comes OutOfTheCloset it'll be like when I found out ThereWasNoSanta. "OF COURSE! How'd I NotKnowThisTheWholeTime?"
I thought it was funny. I too, thought they were Gods when I was in High School, but there was always that little voice that said DLR is just a bit too flamboyant for me to ever drool over him.
@Big Mama: because Cream of Mushroom soup is the UBI: universal binding ingredient.
ReplyDeleteThomas Pynchon, anyone?
DH is seeing them on Friday night. I've always thought DLR was capital g-a-y gay too. :-)
ReplyDeleteI heard they did it to test the impresarios and promoters at various venues. If the M&M provision wasn't met there was no telling what other, more important, provisions had not been met (ie., structural requirements for the stage, etc.) Not stupid.
ReplyDeleteLove Van Halen. Tolerate Van Hagar. Not at all clear why it's so important to people to know whether other folks are gay. How much reassurance do you need? And do you really think Mr. Aint Talkin' Bout Love would be a great role model? He's had so much sex he probably doesn't even notice who he's f*cking anymore.
Ain't Talkin Bout Love is my all time fave VH song. I saw them at the Hampton Colisuem in like 1980-81 and they played it very last for the encore. Dunn dun da-dunnn, Hey! Hey! Hey! (standing-room up front general admission, fists in the air, and my cheerleading partner on my shoulders!)
ReplyDeleteThanks, now that's in my head. They have released some totally awesome, cheesy rock. We bought Guitar Hero just to have the Van Halen pack. It's so fun to get drunk and sing to.
ReplyDeleteI always preferred Sammy to DLR. Sammy was YUM and Dave, not so much.
ReplyDeleteAlan Cross--The Ongoing History of New Music, originally aired on CFNY (the Edge) in Toronto....this is actually 100% fact, and was explained by Cross in a show airing more than 5 years ago.
ReplyDelete@ Lauren --They could also use a tool that looks like a spatula and move them like your pharmacy does when it counts out your script. I doubt they did it that way but they could have. It's the way I count drugs out at work.
ReplyDeleteNot gay, I saw him speak to many people during the weekend I hung out with them in 1982 without a non-disclosure, and yes, he became an EMT
ReplyDeleteActually they weren't being divas. He went on to explain that the times there were brown M&Ms in the dish, something ended up going wrong with the show - speakers not being set up properly, amps falling down or not wired correctly, sound quality poor, etc. Which means that the the contract wasn't read correctly.
ReplyDeleteThis has been pretty well known for years now; it's even listed as a confirmed urban legend at snopes.com. At that time, VH had a HUGE stage set, so they needed the venues & promoters to read the whole rider very carefully to ensure that they could actually handle VH's set and gear, and the brown M&Ms bit was a quick-and-dirty way to see if the rider had been read properly. (IIRC, there was at least one incident where the rider was ignored, and the arena floor sank several inches as a result.)
ReplyDeleteDiamond Dave may be a dick sometimes, but he's not stupid, and hey, if he really was an EMT and helped save people's lives, then good for him--God knows, it's more than a lot of aging rockers ever do.
I loved DLR's sense of humor. He seemed way cooler than Eddie. Eddie seemed to take himself way too seriously. Brown M&Ms are minor in this day and age with Jblow having everything in white.
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