Van Halen legends Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, and Led Zeppelin reunion shows drummer Jason Bonham were interviewed by SiriusXM host Eddie Trunk this week. During the interview, the trio discussed some very bizarre concert demands, with Bonham making an odd one based on an infamous Van Halen story. Alternative Nation transcribed their comments below:
Bonham: I mean, obviously legendary I’ve heard is the brown M&Ms. Nobody ever did it for us because we weren’t big enough in my early days of touring when I used to come in here and be carried out every by Mario, God bless him. We actually requested brown M&Ms because we said ‘there must be a lot of these lying around’.
(Crowd laughs)
Bonham: But nobody ever paid any attention to our rider so that would be (inaudible) but it all started through Van Halen.
Trunk: The story about the brown M&Ms is actually because it wasn’t really enforced, it was more to prove that the promoters actually read the (inaudible) right?
Anthony: Yeah, just to see if they read it.
Trunk: It was a test.
Anthony: And we would hear stories about other people’s riders, like ridiculous stories such as ‘well I won’t go on stage unless it’s seventy-four degrees or I won’t do this or that’. So I said, let’s see if the promoters are paying attention and let’s come up with something wacky. That’s what we did. In fact, our tour manager and some other people came up with something else for the rider after the brown M&M thing.
Trunk: You’re talking about Van Halen years?
Anthony: Yeah this is Van Halen years.
Trunk: Well how does Jason (Bonham) know about it then? Jason shut it down.
Bonham: You whisper a lot when you’re sleeping on that plane.
(Crowd laughs)
Trunk: What is it?! You can’t leave us hanging.
Bonham: What did you used to do if the brown M&Ms were found?
Hagar: Oh if one brown M&M was found, oh there would be a mess backstage. There would be a total trashing. I felt bad for every little girl that I’d go to sound check I passed by the catering and see this little girl knowing that if she missed one (brown M&M) it was all over for her job. Anyway, one other thing on the rider that was never really publicized or whatever but one of our tour managers, we came up with this thing that at every backstage we wanted a tube of KY Jelly and some Coney Island whitefish. They would wait and see what everyone’s interpretation of that would be.
