After Lady Gaga’s slightly bizarre request to only have PG Tips in her dressing rooms for her upcoming tour, we decidied to have a look at some of the weirdest riders in music.
Jennifer Lopez
The Latina hitmaker has a notoriously specific, if not extreme rider. All her furniture must be white, all the flowers in the room must be white, there must be white candles and no food must be allowed in the dressing room itself. While that all sounds a little odd, there’s one little point that often gets overlooked. She only has her coffee stirred anticlockwise. Yep, that’s right, clockwise is just no good for her.
Iggy and The Stooges
It’s never a good idea to give someone with the sort of anarchic sense of humour as Iggy Pop the power to ask for whatever they want. Over the years, the puink rockers have asked for a Bob Hope impersonator, seven dwarves to dress up like they’re in Snow White and ‘something with testicles in’. Lovely.
Madonna
The queen of pop is still going strong on the road and if rumours are true, her rider’s as massive as ever. She notoriously has an entourage of around 200 people with her throughout the tour, featuring chefs, trainers and even an acupuncturist. As well as that, she’s also requested to only have Kabbbalah water (whatever that might be in particular), a strictly vegan menu (despite not being vegan) and all her furniture to be draped in ‘special’ fabric and decorated with pink and white roses with exactly six inch long stems. And a skipping rope, naturally.
Justin Timberlake
While most singers make grand designs of style, Justin’s are a little more OCD. He requires someone to go around every two hour and disinfect all of the door handles in the area he’s in. If you’ve seen Contagion, you might think he’s on to something then.
Marilyn Manson
The dark prince of metal not only requires a bottomless bucket of ice, but also needs all of his rooms to be air-conditioned to freezing point, a big old load of Haribo, a box of Kelloggs cornflakes and the small matter of a bald headed toothless hooker. We really don’t want to know why he was that specific about that point in particular.
Barbara Streisand
The queen of the big show tune number is also a stickler for towels. Not only does she need a whole bunch of them (120 in fact), they must be designer and peach coloured, just so they match her complexion. A feat which must also be matched by her toilet roll. She also demands flower petals in the loo itself, as well a police K-9 team to sweep all performance areas and, occasionally, for none of the staff to look directly at her.
With these sorts of demands going on, I think Lady Gaga’s desire for PG Tips is very much on the side of sanity. Which might just be the first time Gaga’s ever been saner than anyone when performing.
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith