Pop artists with excessive dressing room wishes, even the color of the M&Ms: pop journalists Atze de Vrieze and Timo Pisart find out whether the backstage clichés are true. They speak to programmers, managers, but also coffee shop owners and drug dealers. That makes for nice anecdotes. For example, programmer Sytse Wils (TivoliVredenburg) teaches us the dressing room instructions from shock rocker Marilyn Manson: exactly 17 degrees and completely black. Or that of rapper Snoop Dogg: he wanted the latest game console and a large screen. The punchline: Both wouldn’t set foot in their dressing room. “We were able to game with the crew for three days,” says Wils. A look at the patience and improvisation it takes to get artists on stage.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 14, 2022