During their heyday, Nirvana was forever snipping at cliched rockstar behavior and the egotistical demand of showbiz divas, so recent revelations that the punk trio once insisted upon having several bags of M&Ms on their rider with all the green ones taken out comes as something of a shock.
That is until you realize it’s standard industry practice to make sure all safety protocols at any given venue were being followed. The theory goes if the venue couldn’t follow simple instructions about what M&Ms the band liked, then they probably couldn’t follow any safety regulations either.
At least according to Van Halen’s David Lee Roth who knows a thing or two about excessive rock star behavior.
Alternative Nation reports that on November 5, 1993, Kim Greenfield, the Director of Buffalo University Union Activities Board, had an important job. She had to tell her staff to handpick hundreds of green M&Ms out of Nirvana’s candy supply ahead of the grunge superstars gig.
Greenfield explained, “Somebody had to sit and pull all the green ones out. It kind of plays to that piece of artists being spoiled or being kind of big for their britches as they get more famous.”
Was Nirvana really spoiled rock stars or health and safety enthusiasts? Perhaps they were just massive trolls before trolling was a thing.
Either way. Fresh puppies, a wig room, no green M&Ms! Musicians have made some pretty peculiar demands on promoters over the years, but who are the worst offenders and did it really happen?
Celebrities, in general, are very demanding types, and when they don’t get what they want, they tend to explode with the sort of temper tantrums that would make a 2-year-old blush with shame. In honor of Nirvana saying “NO!” to the green M&Ms, let’s take a trawl through some of the most peculiar demands made by stroppy divas, as reported by Business Insider.
Beyonce has made some peculiar demands over the years including a dressing room kept at 78 degrees, rose-scented candles, chicken legs doused liberally with cayenne pepper, and not a Coca-Cola bottle or can in sight. Beyonce likes her chicken finger-licking hot and Pepsi pays her big bucks to endorse their product, hence Queen Bey’s requirement to keep her dressing room Coke-free.
David Hasselhoff is a larger-than-life type of character but he once went to the extreme of ordering a life-sized cardboard cut-out of himself backstage. Perhaps if you were once known as the Knightrider and Mitch from Baywatch, wouldn’t you want a life-sized cut-out of yourself, too?
As a rule, celebrities don’t tend to enjoy getting their hands dirty. Justin Timberlake used to take this to the extreme by ordering a bi-hourly disinfection of doorknobs in every venue he appeared.
Madonna apparently has a habit of demanding a brand new toilet seat at every venue she plays. And most strangely of all, Iggy Pop once demanded seven dwarves to be brought backstage. Why? Perhaps, we’ll never know.