Inside Bruce Springsteen’s tour rider, from ‘tall, potted plants’ to ‘quality beer – not Budweiser’

The tour rider of stage legend Bruce Springsteen features some strange specifics on backstage design – and a blanket rule on Budweiser.

The Boss is currently on his Land of Hope and Dreams tour, with dates in Manchester, England, to be followed by performances in France, Italy, and Spain. A tour rider obtained through an open records request from the News Gazette has confirmed the strange and stylish details of Springsteen and The E Street Band’s requests. Within the tour rider are requests for “tall, potted plants” as well as a number of couches for bandmates, with “quality beer” also noted as an important part of the rider. Regular requests like transport to and from the venue can be found on the rider, though with the added detail of having SiriusXM radio installed in the “American-style SUVs”.

Springsteen’s post-COVID tour rider has been updated to ensure those working on the request log are vaccinated, particularly the drivers. Proof of “recent negative COVID test” was deemed as a “may be required” item. Outside of the modern adaptations made to the rider, Springsteen appears to have requested plenty to keep his band and entourage well fed and watered during their time at the venue. Springsteen, who has played two of three scheduled nights at the Co-Op Live Arena in Manchester, performs with more than ten other musicians on stage. That does not include the guitar tech, engineers, sound and lighting team.

With such a large team, it makes sense to see some at first out-there requests. A total of twenty-one couches, including a neutral colour for Springsteen and two in white or light colour for Patti Scialfa, are among the list requested. Eight love seats, ten coffee tables, twenty-seven for lamps, seven full-length mirrors, three larger fridges, forty-seven padded chairs and thirteen end tables are just a few of the extra requests.

Beyond furniture for the large touring group is a request for over four hundred towels. One hundred and eighty of those are for the staging driver showers, another one hundred and eighty for the production truck drivers and forty-eight for the dressing rooms. The rest, thirty-eight more, are generalised as stage rags.

For food, Springsteen and Scialfa eat in their dressing rooms, soup for The Boss and either a skinless grilled chicken breast or seafood for Scialfa. Presentation is everything for the rider, too, which notes the plates and cups should not only be “of top quality” but also “served and presented in the most appetising manner possible”. Speaking of quality, six bottles of “quality beer” were requested, with a note reading: “Not Budweiser.”

On top of that is a request for “tall, non-flowering potted floor plants,” sixteen in total. Six alone are for Springsteen’s dressing room. Despite these admittedly wild choices for the rider, many fans have said they understand why The Boss and his team are requesting such massive quantities of furniture and food.

One user sharing the rider to the r/BruceSpringsteen subreddit wrote: “I think it’s partially (1) they’re on the road most of the year and that kind of sucks after a while, and you want what you like and feels like ‘home,’ and (2) making sure people are paying attention (the Van Halen M&M thing).”

The “Van Halen M&M thing” is a detail which was left in the legendary rock group’s own rider, which they would use to see if the venue were paying attention to their specific lighting arrangements. If their dressing room had no brown M&Ms in the bowl requested, they knew those working the venue had attended to the specifics of the lighting.

Another user has defended Springsteen’s tour rider, suggesting it is what makes it a “work environment” for the team. They wrote: “Why? These guys are professionals who have been doing this for a while.

“They know what they like and want, and it all seems pretty obtainable. It’s all about creating a ‘normal’ work environment, and I guarantee that every detail that’s overly specific comes with a story of a venue that tried to cheap out or was missing something. Honestly, this is just how well-written contracts are supposed to look.”

A third added: “I love travelling, and I still can’t imagine being on the road this long. I’d probably have some pretty specific requests too.”