One of the great stories of rock'n'roll lore is how Van Halen famously demanded there be no brown M&M's in the backstage food.
A widely circulated tour rider became the stuff of legend and has been written about countless times over the course of the past 40 years, however, drummer Alex Van Halen has now revealed that it wasn't a serious request, more an attempt to make sure people were paying attention to them.
In his new memoir, Brothers, Van Halen explains they had no hang ups over the colour, despite playing up the rumours over the years when they were asked about it in interviews.
“I know. We sound like jerks,” he writes. “Like rock star primadonnas looking to make some poor kid sit around picking through candies till he goes blind. But it wasn’t about a power trip, and it wasn’t about some strange aversion to the color brown.”
He adds that while they made their tour riders “very specific and carefully constructed” for safety reasons, the M&M's demand was more of a test to ensure they're requests were taken seriously.
“If we see brown M&M’s, we know: we are not in the hands of professionals,” he writes. “If they didn’t bother with this, what else didn’t they bother with, what other corners are being cut?”
In the book, Van Halen discusses how rock stars such as Ozzy Osbourne, Chris Cornell and Joe Satriani almost joined the band at one point.
Brothers hits stores today (October 22).