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From The Smoking Gun, an update on the infamous Van Halen M&M myth here (good news, it’s not a myth; bad news: it is, apparently, explicable):
“While the underlined rider entry (“M & M’s (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES”) has often been described as an example of rock excess, the outlandish demand of multimillionaires, the group has said the M&M provision was included to make sure that promoters had actually read its lengthy rider. If brown M&M’s were in the backstage candy bowl, Van Halen surmised that more important aspects of a performance—lighting, staging, security, ticketing—may have been botched by an inattentive promoter.”
So, one of the most notorious instances of pop star prima donna antics is debunked, and for what turns out to be (ostensibly) legitimate reasons? That is almost enough to make one…respect Van Halen. And, well, I’m sorry but that is simply unacceptable.
Actually, even if this turns out to be the case (the band was as anal about their onstage performances as they were about their back-stage performances), it’s more difficult to dismiss them as the biggest buffoons in rock. Wait, no it isn’t. This is, after all, the band with David Lee Roth in it. This is the band that, once David Lee Roth left, never made any good music (man, that has to kill Eddie Van Halen). It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Eddie, knowing he had to work with David Lee Roth all those years. Then you realize: wait, Eddie might be even more insufferable than David Lee Roth! (Exhibit A: “Hey Michael Anthony, we’re finally doing that reunion tour thing; all the shows are sold out in advance…by the way, you’re not invited!”) But hey, I’m sure fans were delighted to see those stellar backing vocals provided by Eddie’s cherubic son Wolfgang (and by cherubic I mean chubby).
But more importantly, if we start acknowledging that some of these Spinal-Tap-inspiring anecdotes are not based in reality, we may be obliged to begin questioning how debased our rock gods actually were, back in the day. What’s next? Jimmy Page was actually just eating tuna fish on that boat? Gene Simmons did not bed 4,000 women? (Well, considering that Simmons, like David Lee Roth, is so obviously gay, this one is not such a stretch to disbelieve). Mick Jagger and David Bowie were just making sweet music together, literally? Ozzy Osbourne did not actually urinate on the Alamo in the early ’80s? (That would be the unkindest cut of all; I need Ozzy to have urinated on the Alamo.)
All this on the heels of the news that guitar guru Brian May just completed his PhD (!), in Astronomy (!!). More revelations like this and we may well be approaching DEFCON 1 status in terms of authentic rock and roll debauchery. James Hetfield? Clean and sober. Nikki Sixx? Same. Courtney Love? (Who cares). Practically all the others have now become the designated drivers that Keith Moon, John Bonham and Janis Joplin (to name a handful of favorite hard-cases) could have used, back in the day. At least we can still count on Keith Richards, right? Well, except for the fact that it’s pretty apparent even he doesn’t know who he is these days. Too many brown M&Ms will do that to you, apparently.
