Van Halen & the Brown M&Ms
That M&M story: Truth or fiction?
With the recent passing of Eddie Van Halen, the story about his band and the brown M&Ms surfaced again. When the heavy metal band Van Halen was touring in the 1980s, they put a clause in every contract that there would be a bowl of M&Ms in the dressing room with all the brown M&Ms removed. If any brown M&Ms were in the bowl the promoter would forfeit all profits from the show.
This has always sounded like something a rock band would do because someone didn’t like the color brown—and egos did play a large part in a band’s public image. The story goes on—at one venue, there were brown M&Ms in a dressing room and the profits were forfeited.
So. Is this a true story or a publicist’s concoction?
Actually, it’s true—and it has nothing to do with a distaste for the brown M&Ms. (Who can tell the difference, anyway?) The seemingly ridiculous request was inserted in the contract for a serious business purpose.
Van Halen shows were on the forefront of sophisticated electronic displays and were complicated to set up. The contracts held all the specifics for making sure that everything was exactly as it needed to be done. Exactly. The safety of both the band and the audience was at stake. The stipulation for the removal of the brown M&Ms came halfway through the contract. So if any band member went to the dressing room and found brown M&Ms, they could be fairly certain that no one had carefully read through the contract and there would, no doubt, be electrical and pyrotechnical problems as well.
Paying attention to the details
So creating the perfect mixture of M&Ms was about contracts, not egos. In this entertaining video [5:42], lead singer David Lee Roth describes the backstory—an insightful look into the life of a rock band, even if you weren’t a Van Halen fan!