Rock All Night(14)

“Christ, never on time, never on schedule,” Miles spat, pronouncing ‘schedule’ as ‘shed-yull.’ Then he stomped down to the stage and started yelling at some long-haired sound guys.


“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We go eat,” Derek said, and led the way.

We walked up onstage and passed through a bunch of scaffolding. Derek called out to and joked with almost everyone we passed. Ryan and Killian got a lot of enthusiastic hellos; Riley got a few shout-outs, but mostly everybody seemed scared of her.

We entered a cement hallway and turned left into a giant room filled with tables of food: bite-sized morsels of filet mignon, shrimp on skewers, all sorts of hors d’oeuvres, and a platter of Big Macs. Riley headed over and immediately started in on the hamburgers.

There was a guy already loading up a plate. He had on a sleeveless leather jacket, the better to show off the menagerie of tattoos curling across his arms. He was more of a stereotypical rocker: thin, slight build, wild hair.

“Hey, what’s up, guys,” he said, throwing the band a head nod.

Derek went over and clapped him on the back. They started chatting.

“Who’s that?” I asked Ryan.

“That’s Mike, our backup guitarist.”

I frowned. “What? There’s only four of you in the band.”

“On tour we have another guitarist. On the albums, Killian does all the guitar parts himself – except for bass, of course. But on tour, we need another guy for rhythm guitar. He’s cool, I’ll introduce you. Hey, Mike – I want you to meet somebody.”

We said our hellos. Ryan told him I was there from Rolling Stone.

“Whoa – you finally caved, huh?” Mike asked Derek.

Derek just shrugged.

“Not exactly,” Riley shouted from the food table, half a Big Mac crammed in her mouth. “He’s tryin’a bang her.”

Mike laughed as Derek and I scowled at Riley.

“You’ll have to forgive her,” Mike said to me. “Riley’s a little shy, but she’ll eventually come out of her shell.”

“Guess who else she is?” Riley piped up, but right then Derek picked up a Big Mac and smushed it into her face.

“The hair, dude, watch the hair!” she shouted as she and Derek got into a fist fight using hamburgers as boxing gloves.

“Who else are you?” Mike asked.

“Nobody special,” I lied.

I figured he’d hear about it later – but no need to hear it from me.

Killian was over in the corner staring intently into a punch bowl. He seemed very stoned and very interested in whatever was inside.

“They get the proportion right?” Ryan asked.

“It would appear so,” Killian answered.

I walked over a few feet and saw he was looking at a massive pile of red and orange M&M’s.

I groaned.

“What?” Ryan asked.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“I don’t know, what do you think it is?”

“It looks like a ton of red and orange M&M’s.”

“Then yes, that’s exactly what you think it is.”

I shook my head and gave him a sideways glance.

He laughed. “What’s that look for?”

“Do you really need to power trip so badly you made some poor guy sort M&M’s for an hour?”

Ryan smiled. “We got the idea from Van Halen. They used to write into all of their contracts that there had to be a bowl of green M&M’s in the dressing room.”

“Great.”

“But you don’t understand why it’s a good thing.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that.”

“What you don’t know is that the typical venue contract for an act as big as Van Halen runs 60 or 70 pages, maybe more. And in that contract was specified exactly how their equipment was supposed to be set up. All the rigging, all the lights, all the pyrotechnics. And inserted right in the middle of one of the most obscure passages was a sentence that said the venue had to supply a bowl of all-green M&M’s. When Van Halen got there to perform and the venue had set up the stage, the band would go and check the M&M’s. If they weren’t there – or if there were all sorts of colors, and not just green – they’d know that somebody hadn’t read the contract carefully or didn’t give a damn. What’s more, they probably hadn’t set up all the equipment to specification, so the band’s team would have to go through all the wiring and cabling to make sure nobody messed up. Otherwise they might get electrocuted or burn the place down. On the other hand, if there were green M&M’s, the band was reasonably sure that somebody had read the contract and done their jobs, and they didn’t need to go through everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

“Oh,” I said, chastened. “So it was like a warning sign.”

“Exactly.”

“So yours do the same thing?”

“Yes. Miles and Killian write 10 very obscure things into each contract. If they’re all followed to the letter, then we know we don’t have to worry. The punchbowl full of one-third red M&M’s, two thirds orange is just one of them.”

“Are the Big Macs part of that?”