Eddie, I owe you an apology.

One thing I have learned in advertising is that, along with death and taxes, there’s one other thing you can always count on. Whether you are shooting tabletop food footage at 4AM; or doing person-on-the-street interviews; or filming 747’s at a closed Air Force base in the high desert of California; no matter where you are, when the production breaks and everyone goes to get a snack, there will be a bowl of M&M’s on the table.

And there’s a reason for this, which is another thing I learned while working on the actual M&M’s account. Those little candies are unique in that we are all comfortable sharing them. Like a box of pizza, a bowl of M&M’s is an informal social hub that we all happily stick our grubby hands into without any qualms. (You can even eat them off the floor, as long as you playfully say, “five second rule!”) For this reason, they are everywhere; you’ll commonly find a bowl of M&M’s in focus-group facilities, on corporate boardroom tables, and in the green rooms of talk shows.

Which leads to a third thing I’ve learned: celebrities are a pain. Beyond being generally arrogant and difficult, celebrities always have weirdly specific requirements, which they detail in the “rider” of their legal contracts. I once shot a commercial with a famous singer who demanded that she would get to keep all her outfits. Some celebrities request specific brands of sparkling water. I’ve heard about a famous folksinger who insists that no one make eye contact with him. Long story short, I learned you don’t have to review the whole agreement, but definitely READ THE RIDER.

All of which leads me to my apology. Folks in my industry always talked about the rumor that, wherever the band Van Halen performed, they demanded that their bowl of M&M’s must never contain any brown ones. (It turns out that’s true, you can see it right here.) We would ask ourselves, what’s up with that? Were any band-members psychotic brown-o-phobes? Did they think that the brown ones would interact with their pharmaceuticals? (We all know what the green ones do.) Or most likely, we concluded, it was just obnoxious rock star excess. Those guys must suck.

Turns out there was a logical reason behind it. As one of the first bands to tour with a huge sound and light show, Van Halen had extensive technical requirements that had to be met. And, to ensure that those specific details would be put in place by the venue, they threw the no-brown M&M requirement into the contract as a test. As singer David Lee Roth explained, “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.”

And so, Eddie, I owe you an apology for any trash talking I may have made towards you. Yes, you were a manic musical genius like your namesake Ludwig. Yes, you had a technique so unique you had to turn your back to the audience so they wouldn’t steal your licks. Yes, you were in a troubled celebrity marriage. And I’m sure you may have been hard to deal with from time to time.

But you were amazing, even if you made some poor PA pick out all the brown ones.

Godspeed Edward Lodewijk van Halen. Thanks for the tunes. May your bowl be ever brightly colored.