Rock and roll concerts in the 1980’s were known for excess, egos and extremes. KISS shot fire out of its guitars. Tommy Lee drummed in a rotating cage above the crowd. Guns N’ Roses had an album and tour called “Appetite for Destruction.” Subtlety was in low demand.

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Perhaps no group so epitomized all of this more than Van Halen. Simply to be backstage with David Lee Roth, Eddie, Michael Anthony and company would have been a spectacle. And you, a modest morsel of chocolate with a brown candy shell, could have been there amidst the catering trays, the booze, the illicit substances, the groupies—not to mention the tan, green, orange, and yellow M&Ms—if only you hadn’t been contractually banned from the arenas. As it happens, this was an important, if odd, safety measure. 

Van Halen’s early 80’s shows were the first to be supported by a convoy of some 18 semi trucks—6x the typical rock show’s caravan then (though about 1/5th of the Eras Tour fleet). Along with a production of unprecedented scale came thousands of important details for the protection of the band and the fans, not to mention the quality of the performance itself. 

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This came with a contract Roth described as the size of “the Chinese phone book.” The clause calling for backstage M&Ms with the brown ones removed was deliberately buried deep among technical requirements about amperage, voltage, load bearing structures and pyrotechnics.

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The rationale was this: If a concert promoter saw to it that someone removed all the brown M&Ms from the bowls on the catering tables, one-by-one, by hand, it was a sign they took the contract’s other details seriously. Your presence in a bowl alongside your multicolored colleagues indicated the opposite. 

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If Roth found one of you backstage, he’d destroy the dressing room to convey his dissatisfaction. (And probably also because rock and roll!!!) 

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This would prompt a line-by-line review of every aspect of the production, helping ensure that no one would get shocked by a microphone or crushed by a girder in the middle of Hot for Teacher.

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The story of your exclusion became a part of Van Halen’s brand. It was a pure example of rock and roll excess. “Band trashes dressing room, causes $500k in damage over brown M&Ms” was a salacious headline, even if it left out the fact that the damage was caused by a stage not properly configured for the type of floor in an arena. (If only the promoter had seen to that detail...)

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But the thing it enabled—over-the-top rock concerts that gave fans their money’s worth—was the real hallmark of the band’s brand. The illusion of unbridled chaos was made possible by those details being seen to. The rock show-as-party could continue because everyone was safe, because the lighting worked as it should, and the amplifiers could draw the amps required to melt faces (metaphorically).

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So, yes, the Van Halen brand was built on musicianship, charisma, showmanship, theatrics, substance abuse, debauchery, irreverence, and on barring you from backstage catering. But it was attention to detail that made it possible for its brand to scale. Had those early tours failed because the sound was bad or too many people were dying under collapsing stages, the band’s legacy might have turned out even worse than Hagar. (Let alone Cherone.)

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Even the loosest and most off-kilter of brands should keep this in mind. Bring the chaos. Bring the noise. Bring the unpredictability. But don’t skimp on the details that make it all work and allow it to scale.

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Indelibly yours,

Mike, Matt, Thom & Jeff

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