For any still interested, this article sums up some crazy, mundane, and interesting rider requests, and points out that some people just get told “no.”
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What? You mean rock stars aren’t gods who get to just dictate whatever they want? The venues have agency too!!! /s
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FWIW, Michael Anthony was Van Halen’s bassist during this time. He’s also on Cameo, so I asked him about the brown M&M’s clause and the recording of some of my favorite VH songs, after reading this article. (If the purpose of money isn’t this, I don’t know what is.)
I don’t think I can post the Cameo here, but Mikey indicates the reason for the clause is that other bands at the time were asking for crazy things too.
I’m taking this as the truth.
Why are the (possibly faulty, cause they’re human and we all have faulty memory) memories of these guys more factual than other possible sources here? There is a reason why historians don’t take information from an oral history at face value without figuring out corroboration in one form or another - because our memories aren’t just recordings or snapshots of what happened, but can be shaped and changed as we live our lives and other events we experience can reshape our understanding of what happened to us in the past… Oral histories matter, but so do other sources that can confirm or complicate those experiences.
We got to keep in mind, that he (like Roth) are very invested in keeping up the myths that underpin the “rock star” image that are a key part of the music industry. Their social position within the industry, depend on part in replicating the rock star image. That might be the way he (and Roth) remembers it, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only aspect of it that matters, though. They did not make create these riders in a vacuum, and the legend of the brown M&Ms is so deeply embedded in our cultural history (as well as the legend of rock stars as rebels and/or difficult individuals to deal with), that it’s hard to know where their memories intersect with their own myth-making.
So, it could be true, but I doubt it’s the whole truth, because that’s just not how history works. Taking them as the sole, authoritative source is probably going to lead us into some mistakes on what actually happened, vs. what people would like to be true. I’d take anything with a grain of salt that reinforces rock star myths, because there was probably something more complicated happening behind the scenes. 
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OK. Memories can be faulty and people have their own motivations.
Who else do you think could be referenced here in order to draw a more definitive conclusion?
Just as a start someone studdying this history might look at the riders of other bands of that era - how they did it, and what they included, etc… The POV of venues that negotiated the contracts (someone upthread noted that). Are there are legal cases involving contract riders? How does the industry as a whole think about these documents. Are the labels involved, or is this all on the end of the artists and their own legal teams. Hell, riders as a phenomenon started somewhere, so looking at how that evolved over time, and looking at how that differs by genre of music - like what does Yo-Yo Ma’s rider look like when he plays somewhere… etc, etc…
Rock star rider contracts are not my area of interest, so maybe looking into the history of rock music would tell you more. I know John McMillian did a book on the supposed rivalry between the Beatles and the Stones, and how that was shaped for public consumption, so a work like that might have discussions on how artists shape contracts in various ways and what kind of push back they get.
Perhaps the band really remembers it that way, but someone else is likely gonna remember things differently, and for a historical understanding that’s actually closer to the truth, it should be taken into account as much as the memory of the band members…
TLDR: I’m not sure that there is a definitive conclusion on something like this, which depends so much on subjective memory… more likely to be something to help deepen our understanding of how contracts work in the music industries, and how rock stars shape their public personas via stories like this.
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I found points 3 and 4 pretty persuasive, actually, I suspect VH may have initially put that provision in their rider as a test, but left it in and fed off the publicity it generated for their reputation long after it stopped being effective as a test. They liked being “bad boy rock stars” and the stories about the brown m&m’s helped sustain that reputation.
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Thank you for your answer.
I’m willing to ask historians of rock music, as you suggest. Before I do that, however, let me ask one more question: We both agree that we can’t take the word of the bands at face value because of the passing of time and everyone has their own individual motivations. Likewise, the band’s magagers, lawyers, fans, etc., can’t be trusted for the same reasons.
In that case, from where are these rock historians getting their information for the books?
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I don’t mean we don’t take their views into account at all - just that we don’t take them as the “truth” and stop there. We all have biases based on our own experiences which colors our perceptions of the past. I’m not saying they are “wrong”, but merely their accounts make up one data point in understanding what happened in the past. It’s a qualification, not a full on rejection.
But I did give a list of the types of sources a historian might consult above, so that’s your answer. Of course, that’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s where many historians might start on such a question.
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Wut?
Did you even read @anon61221983 ’s (very thoughtful and academically accurate) response?
It’s not about finding one source and “taking them at face value.” It’s about corroborating different sources of information to piece together the most accurate version of history that we can. Or recognizing when we have shortcomings, and drawing the best conclusions about the information we have and how it shapes our understanding of the time or culture we’re trying to learn about. 
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I see it as the difference between the whole rock biography hagiography genre vs. historical writing. Most people get their rock history from the hagiographies, and not from more historically grounded work on this particular field. It’s hard to break away from… but that’s likely because of the role mass mediated culture plays in the “society of the spectacle” in modern society. The myth is more real than the reality, because it normalizes capitalist narratives of the role creativity plays in our world. The narrative depends on creative endeavors being tangential to the “real” economy (which is what “matters”), rather than critical to human society. But few things make us more human than being creative, I’d argue. There is a direct line between creativity and any form of positive human progress, I’d argue, and that’s always a collective endeavor. But capitalism needs to promote the lone (mostly male, mostly white) genius as moving our collective story forward, rather than creativity being just a natural part of being a human…
Okay… I think I’m just rambling now… 
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Awesome. Thank you. I’m going to leave it at this. Mainly because I love the idea that the source of Van Halen’s brown M&M’s rider clause is an unknowable mystery.
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Yep. I got that. My confusion is that these alternate sources often interview the band to ask what happened. And that seems to be the thing that we’re saying can’t be trusted by itself.
Likewise, I understand the intutive appeal of looking at alternate sources of information, such as other bands’ riders and the view of “the industry” towards riders. But it seems like those other sources face the same problems: (1) they have their own fallible memory; and (2) their own motivations for saying whatever they said.
Like I said, I’m willing to agree that the true source of the rider is one of life’s unknowable mysteries.
Not really what I hoped my take away would be… It’s less “a mystery” and more that reality is more complex than some incontrovertible truth we can determine.
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The space between “this thing can be trusted by itself” and “we can’t figure out anything based on this” is kind of where all of recorded history comes from.
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In addition to that, our memories are a lot more fungible than most of us would like to admit. It is entirely possible that Roth is accurately recounting what he remembers. But that doesn’t mean that what he remembers is entirely accurate. Or even accurate at all. I know that there are stories I tell a lot from my early childhood that feel like memories to me because I’ve told the stories so many times. But they aren’t memories. I’m just retelling the stories of my early childhood my parents told me. And hell, maybe they didn’t tell them accurately. They probably didn’t. So I could be retelling a falsehood over and over and over again even though it feels like a memory to me.
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Maybe not, but my goodness your responses here suggest that there’s at least an MA thesis out there that examines Rock n Roll Bands’ Concert Riders and CUltural Mythos or something like that. Wow.
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I mean, it seems like a rich vein to tap for rock history, right?
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