Artist Tour Riders: Behind the History, Evolution — And Excess — Of Backstage Life on the Road

When Jaclyn Kinnon was seven, she lived more like a roadie than a second grader. Because her mother, Shelley Kinnon, headed the backstage catering for Southern California’s Irvine Meadows (now FivePoint Amphitheatre) from 1988 to 2010, she spent many evenings and weekends helping her mom pamper rock stars. One particular chore later became a rock ‘n’ roll fable.

“I remember my mom tossing me bags of M&Ms and having me pick out all the brown ones for Van Halen,” says Jaclyn. “But I didn’t throw them out — I kept them for myself.”

When it comes to hospitality riders — a list of requests in an artist’s contract fulfilled by promoters or venues — the most famous is Van Halen’s demand for no brown M&Ms in their dressing room. But whether technical, practical or outrageous, the rider is an industry staple. It is also an endless source of fascination, finding its way into pop culture, such as the This Is Spinal Tap character Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest, who complains that the bread provided backstage is a catastrophe because it’s too small for the deli meat. For those of us who live far from the galaxy of stardom, this is an inconceivable world of entitlement and excess. But for those who work in the live music industry, this is their reality.

Touring may seem like an endless bacchanalia, but it is nonetheless challenging. There are long hours spent on the road and on airplanes, late nights, early mornings, meet-and-greets, energy-zapping performances, sleeping (or not sleeping) in foreign beds, pre-parties, after parties, and unbridled access to all manner of intoxicants. Since ticket sales make up a large portion of an artist’s revenue, ranging from Taylor Swift‘s billion-dollar Eras Tour to throw-everything-in-the-van-and-go indie bands, the industry has developed a set of best practices for how musicians are treated while on the road, and creature comforts, especially for A-list artists, make a big impact on tour. Swift’s humble 2008 tour rider included simple indulgences such as one quart of 2% chocolate milk, one stick of butter, one small jar of dill pickles, and three boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. Her Eras Tour version would presumably go further.

Particular types of food and meal preparations are rider staples that offer a respite from drive-thrus, greasy spoons and gas station nachos. While some artists travel with a personal chef, others may expect the venue to provide a fine dining experience.

“For Van Halen and Sammy Hagar back in the ’90s,” says Shelley Kinnon, “they had to have a big, lavish, sit-down dinner in their dressing room. We supplied the dinner, and it was one of the most expensive riders I can remember. In fact, I even hired a chef from the Ritz Carlton to come in.”

Kinnon has seen it all. Her eponymous catering business has decades of experience at venues such as the aforementioned FivePoint Amphitheatre, L.A. Sports Arena and Orange County’s Segerstrom Center for the Arts. She roasted a whole pig for an Ozzfest end-of-tour party. She whipped up a juicy roasted pork loin from a special recipe provided by members of Rush. She supplied many bottles of Cristal. While some of her food requests were easy to fulfill, like Jimmy Buffett‘s three grapefruits, others were more daunting, like finding chicken feet for the Jamaica-based Reggae Sunsplash tour of the early ’90s. Now, most rare food items are more readily available, but 30 years ago when, for example, various British bands would require HP Sauce — a tomato and tamarind condiment as popular as ketchup in the U.K. — she was at a loss.

And then there were drugs — something that was oft requested but always unwritten. Since it was the ’80s, an era that was covered in white dust, it came as no surprise. (And no, Kinnon never provided it.) She also witnessed other high-maintenance requests of which rider lore is made.

“For Michael Jackson at his ’89 L.A. Sports Arena show, they were measuring the table cloths because they had to be a certain length,” she says.”Somebody had to taste all his food before he ate it. We even had to set up a separate dressing room for Bubbles, his [chimpanzee], who was wearing a frickin’ suit.” 

As the music industry evolved, so have riders. While artists are still making headlines with their demands — lest we forget Beyoncé‘s alleged 2013 request for over $900 worth of titanium straws, which she needed, according to E! News, for drinking alkaline water — at least some lean toward a more cause-driven purpose. 

“Florence and the Machine was a solidly expensive rider — a few thousand dollars,” says Tadia Taylor, who has worked in artist relations, tour and artist management, and event production. “Florence is focused on sustainability so it was important to her that there’s no paper plates, no paper cups, no plastic cutlery. I had to buy stuff like china, glassware and real silverware, but it didn’t bother me because it was coming from a good place. Even though it was expensive, it wasn’t frivolous.

“I actually kept all that stuff and reused it for other events,” she adds.

The rider comes from humble beginnings. In the early ’60s, they were utilitarian, consisting of performance essentials like payment preferences, sound equipment and lighting, which these days is categorized as a technical rider to differentiate it from the hospitality version. Chuck Berry, who traveled with his guitar in hand, asked to be paid in cash upfront or he would not play. (This was used against him when the IRS charged him with tax evasion in 1979.)

Alex Hodges, 82, CEO of Nederlander Concerts, who has represented artists such as The Allman Brothers and Stevie Ray Vaughan, says his first experience with the rider was in Macon, Ga. in the early ’60s when he worked with the now-defunct Walden Artists & Promotions. While still in college, he started managing local bands around 1961 and eventually landed his first big star: Otis Redding. 

“Regional bands would tell us stories of the bare dressing room or the lack of equipment or water on the floor,” says Hodges. “The first rider I ever did was probably no more than a page or two. For Otis, it became more essential and technical, just the minimum requirements. And around 1970, when The Allman Brothers came out with their first album, it became a little bit more interesting.”

That is due in large part to John Hartmann, 84, a Canadian-American author, educator and music industry legend who has worked with artists such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and the Eagles, and who helped reshape the rider into what it is today — which can now be upwards of 15 pages. And it all began with Perrier.

“We invented the rider,” Hartmann claimed in Michael Walker’s book Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood. “I remember the big thing I wanted was Perrier. I drank Perrier. So I got everybody around me into it, and we ended up putting Perrier on the riders and no one knew what it was and people were sending to France to get it. Those kinds of things crept in as the managers and the artists gained power.”

With Perrier, Hartmann was one of the first to request an indulgence on tour that was something other than technical equipment or a per diem, making venues and promoters scramble to either hunt down or import the bubbly beverage. His request was honored, and later, when the British duo Chad & Jeremy called him with a venue issue, these combined occurrences revealed an opportunity.

“I sent Chad & Jeremy to San Diego to play a concert,” says Hartmann. “When they got down there, they called and said, ‘There’s no PA.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? It’s a venue, they’ve got a PA,’ and they said, ‘This is the kind of PA a teacher uses to talk to a class. It won’t hold rock and roll.’ That’s when we started, as agents, analyzing this whole need for proper sound and really got into the technical aspects of it all for the first time.”

Eventually, riders began to help artists and managers gain more power. If a rider was fulfilled, it meant the contracts were read. If they weren’t, it meant the artist had the ability to cancel their show. Since promoters and venues needed performers in order to run their businesses, the dynamic shifted from offering the bare minimum to ingratiating artists and management. The demands to elevate the standards of sound and lighting quality quickly became the norm for most venues, allowing artists to fill their riders with other, more personalized, requests. Thus, the hospitality rider (versus the technical rider) was born — and it didn’t take long for artists and managers to catch on.

In essence, riders evolved into binding contractual terms. Hodges once demanded in Stevie Ray Vaughan’s rider — whose last name was frequently misspelled as “Vaughn” on marquees, tickets and posters — that if his last name was misspelled on any marketing materials, the promoter would have to pay the hotel bill for the entire band and crew. As a fond reminder of this, Hodges keeps a framed poster featuring Vaughan’s misprinted name in his office. 

“That’s in essence what the rider’s about: To be sure the promoters are given the information they need,” Hodges says. “Some of the funny stuff you put in isn’t necessarily intended to be funny or difficult, it’s to be sure that they read the rider and take it seriously. We’d check everything to see if they spelled the artist’s name right, whether it’s a marquee, dressing room, or on a cake — anything that might let us know they weren’t paying attention.”

“The rider evolved based on the specific interests, needs or whims of the acts, especially as they got bigger,” Hartmann adds. “Those requests became rigid, and eventually no artist performed without a rider. When I went to Europe with the Eagles, America and Crosby and Nash — before Stills — we had unwritten needs. It wasn’t on the rider, but you gotta give us pot or hashish when we crossed the border into your country.”

If there’s anyone who knows about riders based on specific interests and needs, it’s Darrius Washington, who is Steve Aoki‘s tour and production manager. Dubbed the “$30 million DJ” by Forbes in 2019, Aoki is not just known for rattling arenas with his high-energy big room house but also for lobbing cakes at eager audience members.

Known as “Cake Face,” these are not regular store-bought cakes picked up by a production assistant, but rather a particular recipe made by a local baker in each city of the tour. They are so specific that the cakes have their own rider, shared with Billboard, which offers a diagram, dimensions (12×16 inches), ingredients (plain white sponge cake, no chocolate or sprinkles), and the ratio of cake to frosting (25% white sponge cake and 75% whipped cream frosting). The rider also says, “A great test is to see how easily you can stick your finger in the top of the cake. If you have to use force, then the cake is not prepared correctly.” Even the foundation of the cake is explicit and must be made of expanded polystyrene foam board because it is soft and breaks upon impact, avoiding injuries that could be incurred by cardboard or plastic careening at one’s face.

“What most people don’t know about the cake,” Washington explains, “is that it’s all contractual. So if you fuck up our cake rider or your cakes in any way, it’s a $5,000 fee.

“We’re actually refining the rider even further because Steve has mentioned that they are on the lighter side,” Washington adds. “He’s been featured on Barstool Sports for how accurate he is with the cakes, but if you want to continue that accuracy, the cakes have to be a certain weight, a certain size, or else they don’t go as far. So all of these things have to come together to make this perfect cake for throwing.”

According to Washington, they go through about 800 cakes per summer.

Now, some venues go above and beyond the riders, not only fulfilling them in their entirety but organizing customized activations for artists and their entourage. Christy Castillo Butcher, senior vp of programming and booking for SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, believes in the broader definition of hospitality, which is welcoming people into your home.

“You wanna create a comfortable space for them, an inner sanctum to decompress before the show,” Butcher says. “Hospitality riders are key in creating some consistency from venue to venue so the performers know what to expect. From a venue side, it’s really trying to tap into some of the nuances around that. What are some of their favorite things? Is there a specialty coffee or food particular to the artist or crew? Are they fond of a certain tequila?”

From Butcher fabricating a personalized SoFi football helmet for Kenny Chesney to organizing a carne asada cookout during a press conference — complete with a local youth mariachi band — for the Mexican Norteño-banda act Grupo Firme, the rider continues to evolve via the venues and the artists themselves. 

“With the rider, the power went from the criminal conspiracy known as the record business to the artist and managers,” says Hartmann with a laugh. “The rider is now an institution. The ridiculousness is unlimited and it’s up to the artist — what are they not ashamed to ask for? Well, most of the time it doesn’t matter and they’ll just ask for it anyway.”

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