We've all spent hours poring over the backstage riders posted on The Smoking Gun (or maybe that's just us). For the uninitiated, riders are the performers' specifications and demands required for each venue during a tour. We've heard the one about Van Halen's no-brown credo when it came to their dressing room M&Ms and Iggy Pop's rambling 18-page manifesto that reads more like a Hunter S. Thompson novel.
Recently, we've come across two wine-focused blogs (Jamie Goode's Wine Blog and Dr. Vino) that have found the inner wine snob lurking in select musicians' riders -- some surprising (who would have thought tequila hawker and self-proclaimed "wine conoisseur" Sammy Hagar had such an opinion on his backstage swill?), some not so (we already knew Bono took himself seriously).
By far our favorite discoveries have been Elton John's requirements, which smack of wine novice pretentiousness (apparently only Pouilly-Fuisse and Chateauneuf du Pape will do for the Rocket Man) and Diana Krall, who makes more needy demands than Meg Ryan in "When Harry Met Sally." Aah, rock stars, ya gotta love their restraint.
