No brown M&Ms? The 9 most hilarious rock 'n' roll rider requests

14 July 2025, 13:11

We round up the funniest, silliest and strangest requests in artist riders for their live shows.

When you're travelling the world playing concerts in strange new places night after night after night you need to be in the right frame of mind to get up on stage and give the people what they want.

So we don't begrudge rock 'n' roll bands making a few special requests ahead of their live shows.

• When Rod Stewart made history with the biggest concert of all time
• The story of The Beatles' last ever concert: The full setlist, attendance and ticket prices revealed
• Listen to the Gold Radio Greats Live Playlist on Global Player, the home of Gold

But sometimes it does seem like things go a little far.

And we're not just talking about Mariah Carey's supposed request for 100 white doves and 20 kittens before she switched on the Christmas lights at Westfield.

Below, we round up just some of the weirdest and most wonderful rider requests we've heard about.

1. Van Halen - No Brown M&Ms

   

   Maybe the most famous rider request in the history of music (the Wayne's World 2 nod is always enjoyable).

   The 53-page document for the 1982 Van Halen World Tour was packed with the usual (wine, beer and the like), the less usual (1 tub of KY Jelly) was this immortal line under the Munchies section.

   M&M's (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES)

   The story goes that the band weren't all that bothered about having M&Ms (or not having brown ones), but were sick of their more reasonable requests, including electric safety concerns, being ignored.

   The "No brown M&Ms" request, buried in the middle, was supposedly there to check the venue had read the document in full and was taking it seriously. We don't have any actual proof that they weren't just being picky, though!

2. Mötley Crüe - Mustard. No not THAT mustard

   

   Not every item on this list will have a connection to Wayne's World, we promise...

   Posh men in the back of fancy cars love a bit of Grey Poupon on their sarnies, obviously. So does Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx.

   But not the band's frontman Vince Neil, who was so enraged by a jar of the stuff backstage at a live show in Rochester, NY in 1987 that he nearly lost a finger. Really.

   "I was all dressed. I was ready to go onstage. I was in my stage clothes," Neil said in 2010 memoir Tattoos & Tequila.

   

   Wayne's World - Grey Poupon

   "And I was like, 'I f**king told you I hate f**king Grey Poupon!' I threw it against the wall, but I threw it really close, or I don't know what happened, but it cut my finger bad — to this day I can't even stretch my finger. There was a lot of blood. It basically severed my finger."

   In 2007 book The Heroin Diaries Sixx had little sympathy, calling Neil a "spoiled brat".

   "Tonight he was making a sandwich and he reached for the mustard to put on it," he recalled.

   "There was only Grey Poupon (my fave), which he hates, so he threw the mustard jar against the wall. It exploded and flew back and cut his hand wide open. He's now at the hospital and we're still waiting to play the f**king show."

3. Ozzy Osbourne – Three oxygen tanks

   

   Nope, not bats, or seasoning for bats, or sauce to slather a bat in.

   In later years – such as Black Sabbath's 1999 tour with Pantera and Deftones – Ozzy's health issues meant he needed something a bit more medically sound to help him get through his live shows.

   So as well as a pro who could give him a Vitamin B12 injection, he asked for a "real ear, nose and throat doctor" (his insistence on a "real" doctor makes us worry about who he'd been palmed off with in the past), and also not one, not two but three oxygen tanks to keep his O2 levels up.

4. Elton John – An extra room just for his glasses

   

   Multiple dressing rooms isn't that weird a request, especially for artists of a certain size (in terms of membership or status).

   You might need to stay away from the bassist you despise, or to keep your boyfriends/girlfriends separate, or just want the extra space for yoga or a snooze.

   But when he played in Belo Horizonte in south east Brazil, Elton John is said to have insisted on an extra hotel room, kept at 16 degrees Celsius, just for his collection of glasses.

   Given how important they are to his look and how hot it can get in South America without air con, we actually don't think it's that mad a request.

5. Eric Clapton – a space just for his table football

   

   As well as the standard warm-up space, showers and the like, on when he was touring North America in 1995, Eric Clapton had a pretty simple but important request.

   There needed to be enough space for the venue to set up Clapton's own personal Table Football table, which his tea, would bring along themselves.

   Surely it would have been easier to roll up a Subbuteo pitch and shove it in a holdall?

6. Crosby Stills and Nash – One pair of nail clippers

   

   When they were touring in 2003. Crosby, Stills and Nash had a very specific request: nail clippers.

   Just the one pair, which suggests that maybe they took turns? I'm not sure if Neil Young would have stood for that.

7. Johnny Cash – An American flag on a pole

   

   Johnny Cash was an outlaw legend, but he was also an American patriot.

   Presentation is vital to a good live show, and as well making sure the spotlights were in order, The Man in Black insisted on having a "an American Flag on a pole stand" around three by five feet "on stage in full view of the audience throughout the show".

8. Bob Dylan – old-fashioned incandescent lighting

   

   While he was a groundbreaking and in some sense modernist artist, even as a young man who absorbed classic folk sensibilities, Bob Dylan has always had an old-timer sensibility.

   You can see that in his Sinatra-adjacent covers album Triplicate, his Theme Time Radio Hour show and much else besides. And you can also see it in his insistence on proper old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs when on the road.

   Given how much glare you can get off a fluorescent tube or even modern LEDs, we can see Dylan's point, despite the extra energy needed.

9. Iggy & The Stooges – Bob Hope impersonator, but really every single hilarious line

   

   Simply the best rider you're ever going to read.

   Written by roadie Jos Grain, this request list for the Iggy & The Stooges 2006 tour has got all the tedious but important backline requirements, some standard requests (French wine, sparkling water), but lots of gags, asides, and general tomfoolery.

   Our favourite bits? There's the request for broccoli and cauliflower cut into florets... and then thrown in the bin because who really likes broccoli and cauliflower?

   But the best takeaway is this:

   "Somebody dressed as Bob Hope Doing fantastic Bob Hope impersonations and telling all those hilarious Bob Hope jokes about golf and Hollywood and Bing Crosby. Oh God, I wish I'd been alive in those days, so Bob Hope could have come and entertained me before I went off and got shot. What joy they must have experienced..."

   Read the whole thing though.