Tour riders of the 1970s and what they reveal about rock star egos

Tour riders were backstage rulebooks bands handed to promoters before every gig, and the wildest came out of the 1970s. They listed specific brands of crisps, exact beer temperatures, fresh flowers, even the colour of the carpet in the dressing room. To fans they read like absurdity, but to insiders they were a working document mixing logistics, ego and the realities of life on the road.

Decades later those yellowed pages still tell the story of a rock scene that genuinely believed it could do whatever it wanted. Reading them back feels like eavesdropping on a decade that had the money, the jet lag and the gall to ask.

The birth of the backstage rider

The rider started as a practical list, the kind a jazz musician might hand over asking for clean towels and a quiet room. Rock bands inherited the habit and stretched it well past logic. By the early 1970s, riders ran for pages, covering everything from allergy lists to the exact brand of lozenge required in the monitors.

The document grew because touring grew. Bands played 200 shows a year, crossed continents on private jets and expected the world to bend. A rider was a contract, a comfort blanket and a status symbol stitched together.

What the pages actually demanded

Most 1970s riders balanced the sensible with the surreal. Hot meals for fifteen roadies, three cokes, two beers, one bottle of sparkling water still. Then came the clauses that made headlines: Van Halen's insistence that there be no brown M&Ms in the bowl, a rule that doubled as a stress test for the production crew. If a venue missed the M&Ms, they had almost certainly missed something more dangerous on the load-in.

Other artists wanted particular books in the dressing room, specific shampoo brands, even the preferred weight of toilet paper. Each demand was tiny on its own. Together they painted a portrait of a band operating at full gallop, certain they were the most important people in the building.

How Australia handled the chaos

Local crews learned fast that Australian venues did not always have what the rider asked for. When Led Zeppelin rolled into Melbourne's Festival Hall in 1972, the backstage team scrambled for hours chasing groceries around South Melbourne. The larrikin spirit kicked in and the show went ahead anyway, as it usually did around these parts.

AC/DC, who formed down the road in Sydney, kept their early rider famously lean. Angus and Malcolm Young generally asked for cold beer, sangas on white bread and not much else, a fair dinkum Aussie approach that earned goodwill from every bouncer and stagehand. INXS and Midnight Oil followed the same playbook, keeping demands modest while the music did the heavy lifting.

The psychology behind the pages

Reading a rider carefully says more about the artist than any interview. Some lists are anxious and meticulous, the work of bands micromanaging exhaustion on a five-month run. Others are playful, items slipped in to test whether anyone actually read the document. A few are openly bratty, a flex written in capital letters and underlined twice.

Aussie audiences tend to be quick with tall poppy syndrome. When a rider runs too long or too absurd, locals will grumble about it at the local servo, then quietly skip the merch table on the way out. Bands who toured here regularly learned to keep riders honest, knowing that disrespecting the crew meant disrespecting the country.

Famous Australian rider moments

Plenty of stories survive in the roadie grapevine. Michael Hutchence reportedly requested a specific vintage of French champagne whenever INXS headlined, but covered the cost himself out of politeness. Jimmy Barnes was said to ask for a particular hot sauce that no Sydney servo stocked, and a roadie once drove across town to find it on George Street before soundcheck. Midnight Oil's rider was once submitted on the back of a beer coaster, which the promoter framed and hung behind the bar.

Some riders have aged into legend, and our guide to what makes a great rock festival walks through how the right backstage setup shapes the night. The Australian chapters of that story are written in stubby holders and patient roadies who knew how to improvise.

Then vs now: how riders have evolved

Modern riders look different in shape if not always in tone. Vegan catering replaces the steak and chips. Allergy disclosure boxes sit where brand snobbery used to sit. ESG clauses and sustainability riders appear next to requests for oat milk on tap.

For readers wondering which bands were actually worth the fuss, our look at the most overrated rock bands digs into the acts whose rider demands outpaced their catalogue. Some names will sting, especially the ones who thought a brown-M&M clause was a personality.

Reasonable requests worth keeping

If you are mapping out a tour and want your rider respected rather than laughed at, start with the basics and demand what is needed, not what is vanity.

For readers building a wardrobe of tour relics, the official merchandise shop stocks classic reissues from the era when these riders were fresh off the printer. Grab a tee before the next reissue sells out.

If a rider document, a backstage rumour or a 1970s story has been sitting in your bottom drawer, send it through. Contact the editorial team and we will chase it down, from Sydney basements to Festival Hall loading docks.