The story is true and the contract went on to say, if the brown M&Ms weren’t removed, the show would be cancelled, with full compensation to the band. And at least once, Van Halen followed through, cancelling a show in Colorado when Roth found some brown M&Ms in his dressing room.

On the face of it this sounds like just another ‘prima donna’ rockstar being stroppy and acting out his oversized ego, but there was actually an extremely good reason for including this clause in all of their contracts.

Roth explained in his memoir, Crazy from the Heat:

“Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into small towns […] We’d pull up with nine 18-wheeler trucks full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors – whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function.”

So, as a little test, buried somewhere in the middle of the rider would be article 126, the “no brown M&Ms” clause.


“When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl, well, we’d line-check the entire production,” added Roth. “Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. These weren’t trifles, the mistakes could be life-threatening. In Colorado, the band found local promoters had failed to read the weight requirements and the staging would have fallen through the arena floor.”

It’s best to think of the rider as a form of checklist. As the number of items needed in order to complete the job multiplies, the chance that you’ll overlook an item increases. Sometimes that overlooked item might not make much of a difference, but, as Van Halen almost found out in Colorado, it could also be catastrophic.

For those of you that do all-day weddings, there can be numerous activities to take care of, many of which involve additional equipment or coordination with other suppliers. Even if you have a perfect memory (which none of us do) it can be easy to get things wrong, even just slightly. This is where your checklist can help.
What makes a good checklist?

A good checklist is precise, efficient and to the point. It's important that it's easy to use in even the most difficult situations. It will not need to spell out everything – a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, it will provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps, the ones that even the most skilled professional could miss. Above all, good checklists are practical.

A rule of thumb is to limit the list to between five and nine items. You want to keep the list short by focusing on what are called “the killer items” – the steps that are most dangerous to skip. The wording should be succinct, exact and ideally able to fit on one page.

The problem, though, is that we don’t like checklists. I don’t mean we as DJs, I mean we as people. They can be painstaking and they’re not much fun. The issue isn’t one of laziness but embarrassment; it somehow feels beneath us to use one. After all, the truly great are daring, aren’t they? They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists.

Maybe, then, our idea of heroism needs updating? Expertise is the mantra of modern medicine. By the end of the 20th century, all doctors had to have a degree, a four-year medical degree, and an additional three to seven years of residency training in an individual field of practice.

In recent years, though, even this level of preparation has not been enough. At one point, the number of mistakes made by highly skilled surgeons escalated and resulted in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Eventually, they admitted fault and recognised the simplicity and power of using a checklist. As a result, accidental death rates tumbled.

Discipline is hard. As humans, we are flawed and changeable by nature – we can’t even keep from snacking between meals. So, discipline and attention to detail are things we really have to work at – including in our professional lives.

I asked a few DJ friends about their experiences with and without checklists:

Jim Cerone – Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

“Many years ago, I was hastily loading my van and forgot the bride and groom's first dance CD on the kitchen counter. Their song choice was very unique and required me driving to five different record stores the week before to find a copy. Thankfully, my wife came to the rescue, driving 30 minutes to the venue and delivering the CD to me just in time. From that moment, I made two immediate changes. I structured event days so that I arrived much earlier, alleviating the need to rush, and I began using paper checklists of the equipment and music needed for each event.

“Now, before reversing out of the garage, I spend 30 seconds ticking boxes on the checklist.”

Jim Henderson – Edinburgh, Scotland

“I don’t use a check list per se, but I should. Three weeks ago, working as a toastmaster, I forgot my shirt, so had to borrow one from the groom’s mum. And, whilst heading to do an island all-day wedding, I forgot my laptop. I borrowed an old one from the hotel to use as a dummy and got by using Spotify on my mobile phone to play music, including for the bridal entry. No one noticed!

“My checklist is usually in my head from years of experience but as you get older, you do slip sometimes.”

Chris Cooper (DFC) – Preston, Lancashire