Outrageous Rock Star Requests – Part One

Pop stars and rock stars are famous for their outrageous backstage demands…but how did this all start?

"Oh I guess cause they’ve heard that the other stars had this so…outdo them,” producer Tom Moffatt said.

In his more than 50 years as a concert promoter, Tom Moffatt has welcomed well over a thousand performers from across the world to Hawaii.

"You have a contract and then there’s a rider to the contract for backstage and sometimes it can be several pages."

Turn back the pages of time to the 50′s, 60′s and 70′s and performers didn’t really ask for anything.

“Like Elvis there wasn’t anything in the dressing room. This was before the dressing room…there probably was some cold drinks and sort of but there wasn’t much."

But that all changed when a musical legend asked for a bite to eat.

"It all started with Dionne Warwick she was hot this was like around 1970 – 71 I think it was and she had a whole bunch of hits going so we did two nights at the Blaisdell Arena and both were sold out and one of the nights she came up and said Tom suppose I can have a hot dog and a Pepsi? And that was the beginning of backstage catering."

Since then these rock star requests appear to get bigger and bigger.

“The Rolling Stones wanted a game room and we got all sorts of pinball machines and so forth and about a month after the Stones concert in came this bill for a pool table, I said what the heck is this?"

"Rod Stewart he wanted a dozen soccer balls in his dressing room."

" Julio Iglesias the first time he ever came in he had to have several bottles of Cristal and Beluga caviar which was not easy to find at the time in Hawaii."

But some requests aren’t just limited to the backstage area. Led Zepplin wanted a home away from home.

“And then they came back and wanted to stay I had a house that I rented for them in Kahala."

"So its just part of putting on a show, its only rock and roll ha, ha."

Tune in the KHON2 News at 10pm Thursday for another look at current pop and rock artist requests and how this affects your pocketbook.