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Ace Your Query Letter
Your submission, after all, is a test.
We’re gonna start with a rock ’n’ roll story.
If you’ve been living and breathing long enough, you’ve probably heard at least a rumor about Van Halen’s legendary rider.
On the surface, it sounds like your stereotypical rockstar bullshit.
A rider is basically the contract between the performers and the venue. It covers a whole range of details. The more famous you are, the more nitpicky you can be. Glee did a great take on this — an episode where Mercedes acted like a diva, demanding fluffy puppies backstage before she would perform, to be carried in to the venue. Sounds silly, right?
And then you hear that Van Halen had a provision in their rider:
“There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”
And you think “what a bunch of dickheads!”, right?
Except, no. As David Lee Roth wrote in his autobiography, Crazy from the Heat:
Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many…
