Hundreds of thousands of Lady Gaga fans enjoyed her Monster Ball Tour between 2009 and 2011. The same likely can’t be said for the performance organizers. Based the recently released concert rider, which is a list of demands from a musician to a venue, Gaga comes across as a certified diva.
In addition to the requests that have become commonplace among entitled performers, Gaga made some unique demands, such as a “manquin [sic] with puffy pink public [sic] hair” for her backstage suite. She also requested a variety of spa products, diet foods and more from the concert organizers.
With those backstage demands, you better believe she was even more detailed with requests for her hotel suite. Among those requests, she asked for an elliptical machine or cross trainer for her living room area (“not bedroom”), two rolling wardrobe racks with 40 hangers for each rail and a specific variety of health foods.
^Lady Gaga during the Monster Ball Tour in 2011.
These documents were released as part of the Lady Gaga’s deposition against her former assistant Jennifer O’Neill, who is suing the superstar for $400,000 in unpaid overtime. Recently, O’Neill testified that Gaga was excessively demanding of her employees, going so far as to require that O’Neill sleep in the same bed as her.
Lady Gaga certainly isn’t the first to make unusual demands in her concert rider. Back in the 1980s, the rock group Van Halen infamously included an unusual request in one clause of their lengthy concert rider: “M&M’s (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES).” To the public, this seemed like an over-the-top demand from power-hungry musicians. But, as the group later explained, it was an useless detail that was put in place to ensure the rest of the contract had been thoroughly read. If they came to the dressing room and found brown M&Ms, they could be sure that the rest of the concert wouldn’t meet their specifications.
In Lady Gaga’s case the requests definitely go beyond the M&M clause. Then again, would you expect anything less from the Mother Monster?
