David Bowie Requested This Cheap Coffee Machine In His Dressing Room

Backstage riders provide a peek behind the curtain for us regular folks who want to see how performers get ready for their shows. While plenty of celebrities have made out-there requests over the years, most riders just include the basics that the performer expects the venue to provide. Take music icon David Bowie, for instance. His requests were pretty straightforward: mirrors, hot water with honey and lemon for his voice, orange juice, water, and a 12-cup Mr. Coffee machine. Presumably, he was drinking multiple cups of coffee in his dressing room, maybe to keep his energy up during his live shows. His rider also included six coffee mugs (specifically made of china) so his entourage could also caffeinate pre-show.

A Mr. Coffee machine may be cheap now, but when it first appeared in the early 1970s, many considered it cutting-edge equipment for true coffee aficionados. Its big innovation was brewing coffee at what is often considered the correct temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit (though plenty of people brew their coffee at lower temperatures to bring out brighter flavors).

In the 1980s, the National Coffee Association tried to make coffee cool again after soda started gaining popularity. The association released a commercial extolling people to "Join the coffee achievers" (via YouTube) and featuring multiple clips of David Bowie concert footage. Requesting a then-advanced Mr. Coffee machine ensured the musician had a fresh pot whenever he wanted, as opposed to drinking stale coffee brewed long before he arrived at the venue. Whether or not this was during his phase of living on milk, peppers, coffee, and cocaine is hard to say, but in the years preceding his death, he often drank double macchiatos at La Colombe in New York City's NoHo neighborhood.

Aside from coffee, tea, and orange juice, the only other provision his rider requested was a fruit bowl for three people. Whether this was because he wanted a healthy sugar rush to keep him going during the show or because that was just his typical diet, he liked to keep it simple — no color-specific bowls of M&Ms for him (as Van Halen's rider used to request in order to ensure that the stagehands paid attention to their requests). Bowie didn't even ask for any alcoholic drinks; those only appeared on the rider for his backing band's dressing room. There they planned to party with four bottles of French wine and four six-packs of beer.