Alex Van Halen explains brown M&M rider request in new memoir 'Brothers'

M & M's To Withdraw Cartoon Candies After "Woke" Criticism From The Right MIAMI, FLORIDA - JANUARY 24: In this photo illustration, M&M's are piled in a container on January 24, 2023 in Miami, Florida. M&M's announced that its multi-colored cast of candy cartoon spokespeople will be retiring effective immediately, and will be replaced by comedian and Saturday Night Live alum Maya Rudolph. (Photo Illustration by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

By Jill Lances

Alex Van Halen’s new memoir, Brothers, is out now, and in it he sets the record straight about the reports that Van Halen’s rider would demand M&M’s in their dressing rooms, minus the brown ones.

"I know. We sound like jerks," he writes in the book, according to People. "Like rock star prima donnas looking to make some poor kid sit around picking through candies till he goes blind. But it wasn't about a power trip, and it wasn't about some strange aversion to the color brown."

While Alex writes that over the years the band “played it up for yuks,” when asked why they put that in their rider, he now says there was a very good reason for doing so.
“If we see brown M&M’s, we know: we are not in the hands of professionals,” he writes, because it meant that they didn't read the rider carefully. “If they didn’t bother with this, what else didn’t they bother with, what other corners are being cut?”

Brothers, described as Alex's love letter to his late brother, Eddie Van Halen, was released Tuesday. Alex is currently on a book tour supporting the release and will be in Northvale, New Jersey, on Tuesday, and Culver City, California, on Thursday.

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