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Your support makes all the difference.As Adele recovers from the vocal cord surgery that forced her to cancel her American tour, the phenomenally successful singer may yet find a frosty reception should she reinstate it, at least among that nation's proud brewers.
The 23-year-old's food and drink requirements for her dressing-room and tour bus emerged on the US website Smoking Gun yesterday, with the unequivocal condemnation: "North American beer is NOT acceptable".
Only European lager ("Stella, Peroni, Becks") will suffice, but given the notoriety generated by previous "riders" – the name given to such lists – Adele's demands, which include squeezy bottles of clear honey, are endearingly restrained (although fun-size Twix bars would not be easy to procure stateside).
Moreover, the singer's strictest rule concerns charity: guests must donate a minimum $20 to Sands, a UK still births charity, when they collect free tickets. "There will be no exception to this rule," the document reads. It says that Adele had raised $13,000 for the charity in this way.
Higher up in her rider, however, Adele's alcohol requirements continue, running from beer to wine. In her dressing-room she requests "1 bottle very best quality red wine (Italian, French or Spanish)" but for the party on the tour bus "Italian, French, Spanish or Australian" is acceptable.
Stars' demands: Not-so-easy riders
Mariah Carey
It's annoying enough when the person next to you needs to get up to go to the toilet, never mind the star of the show, though evidently no one told Mariah Carey, who demanded her dressing room for her Rainbow World Tour in 2000 come stocked with 36 cans of Coca-Cola, 24 bottles of water, two bottles of wine, and one of Cristal champagne, as well as "bendy straws" through which to drink them. Perhaps the renowned diva star preferred merely to pour them all over the floor, which may explain the "twelve (12) bath-size fluffy towels".
Janet Jackson
Mercifully for stadium staff, Janet Jackson's personal assistant was charged with "co-ordinating her meals" on her 2011 tour, leaving them to worry merely over the provision of "Votivo Red Currant scent candles and an arrangement of cut white tulips. If not available, the singer asks for white gardenias or roses. Any substitutions to be approved by production". But plug-offering chat- show bosses had the far harder challenge – that of guaranteeing the ban on the following topics: "Michael's relationship with boys; propofol; rhinoplasty; Janet's weight; wardrobe malfunctions; Blanket; and Jermajesty".
Boyz II Men
One bottle of white Zinfandel with four glasses and a box of oatmeal raisin cookies is as wild as it gets in the Boyz II Men dressing room these days, suggesting the transition after which the group named themselves in the mid-1980s was completed long ago. More intriguing are their capitalised, emboldened demands on what they WON'T have, rather than what they will, namely "NO PORK MEAT. NO FISH WITH WHISKERS".
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