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Comment by lelandfe | Hacker News Reader

Aerosmith (e: Van Halen) banned brown M&Ms from their dressing room for shows and wouldn’t play if they were present. It was a sign that the venue hadn’t read the rider thoroughly and thus possibly an unsafe one (what else had they missed?)

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Was it actually Van Halen?

> As lead singer David Lee Roth explained in a 2012 interview, the bowl of M&Ms was an indicator of whether the concert promoter had actually read the band's complicated contract. [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contrac...

I wonder if they had to change that as the word leaked out. I can just see the promoter pointing out the bowl of M&Ms and then Roth saying "great, thank you, but the contract didn't say anything about M&Ms, now where is the bowl of tangerenes we asked for?"

By that point they may have had a good idea of which venues and crew they could trust and focus energy on those that hadn’t made the whitelist.

To add to this, sometimes people would approach Van and ask about the brown M&Ms thing as soon as they received the contract. He would respond that the color wasn’t important, and he was glad they read the contract.

Who is "Van" ?

Eddie, you mean? Or Alex. They're Dutch; "Van" is the first part of their surname "Van Halen."

(As opposed to "Van Morrison;" his middle name was Ivan and he actually went by Van)

Huh, I didn’t know “Van” Morrison was short for Ivan.

Also found out recently “Gram” Parsons was short for Ingram.

Van Halen. I think there are multiple videos of David Lee Roth telling the story. Entertaining in the details.

Van Halen ;)

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