In Search of Van Halen's Brown M&Ms⁠↗

David Lee Roth, the band’s lead singer in those early years, published an autobiography in 1997, titled Crazy from the Heat, in which he claimed that, actually, the bowl of curated candy had an entirely functional purpose: it was a quick way to see if the venue had actually read the whole contract, line by line.

Van Halen was probably the first band to understand that their contract rider could be a form of publicity, a way to show off their message and attitude in a way that felt authentic and not posed. It was indeed clever of them to insist that venues remove brown M&Ms—but not because of any concerns about safety. It was marketing, pure and simple.