Another Sniff of the Glove: This is Spinal Trap Retrospective
The lead guitarist is really in the flow, feeding off the energy of the crowd. His long hair flies wildly in all directions as he cavorts around the stage in tight black lycra pants, a leather bondage harness, and a studded collar. It is time for his showpiece: Wielding his cherry red ‘67 Gibson like a weapon, he whips out a dildo and starts playing a manic solo, stroking the sex toy frantically across the strings as he suggestively thrusts his hips, whipping his fans into a deeper frenzy.
This lurid picture of heavy metal excess may sound like a cut scene from Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap, but no. The dildo-guitar playing thing was the gimmick of Steve “Lips” Kudlow, flamboyant front-man for the band of real-life hard rockers who became the subject of Sacha Gervasi’s excellent documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil.
When I first watched it, I automatically assumed that it was another “mockumentary” like Reiner’s film. The similarities are all there: Like their more famous fictional counterparts, we see Anvil playing small gigs and heading out on a hapless tour before getting a chance to open a rock festival in Japan. It is a poignant moment for the Kudlow and the boys because it was a return to their greatest moment, playing alongside the likes of Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, and the Scorpions at the Super Rock Festival in 1984 – the year that Spinal Tap hit theatres. By another strange coincidence, Anvil’s drummer is even called Robb Reiner.
As a band, Anvil almost manages to out-Tap Spinal Tap, and this may be why Reiner’s film is so enduring. Not only is it frequently hilarious and one of the most quotable movies of all time, it pokes fun at the ridiculous antics of rock stars while being almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Indeed, legendary rockers like Ozzy Osbourne, Joe Perry of Aerosmith, and the Edge of U2 have all praised its authenticity. Despite the more outlandish moments like spontaneously combusting drummers and the deathless “Stonehenge” set piece, Spinal Tap manages to capture the sights, sounds and smells of life on the road for a hard-working band better than any movie before or since.
For those who haven’t had the pleasure, This is Spinal Tap is the pet project of filmmaker Marty Di Bergi (Reiner), a Tap enthusiast who has chosen to make a documentary – or a “rockumentary,” if you will - about the band as they head to the United States to promote their new album, Smell the Glove.
The band’s best days are behind them but they are in good form when we first meet them at a New York gig, thrashing out “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight,” a driving number with lusty lyrics that sounds like something from a KISS playlist. We have lead guitarist and vocalist David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), fellow axman Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and bass guitarist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) wearing a very Anvil-esque bondage harness. Supporting the main trio, we have Mick Shrimpton (Ric Parnell) on drums and Viv Savage (David Kaff) on keyboards, while behind the scenes is Tap’s cricket bat-wielding manager Ian Faith (Tony Hendra), the man who has masterminded the tour.
The film intersperses interviews, talking heads soundbites, and behind-the-scenes material with concert footage of the boys doing their stuff. During sit-downs with Di Bergi, the band recall their shape-shifting early years going from the Originals to the New Originals to the clean-cut Thamesmen with their hit “Gimme Some Money,” before aping Beatles-style mid-’60s psychedelia with another smash called “Listen to the Flower People.” The details are all spot-on right down to the set design, costumes, and grain of the footage used on these flashback clips.
Things look positive at their New York opening party. We meet the slick PR agent for Polymer Records, Bobbi Flekman (Fran Drescher), and the label’s head, Sir Denis Eton-Hogg (Patrick Macnee), who announces the Smell the Glove tour. We also get cameos from Dana Carvey and Billy Crystal as two mime waiters (“Mime is money, let’s go!”) and Bruno Kirby as a Frank Sinatra-obsessed limo driver.
The tour gets off to a good start in Philadelphia with a packed out audience – Here we see Smalls rocking an awesome double-headed bass as they launch into “Big Bottom” (“My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo/I’d like to sink her with my pink torpedo”) – surely a nod to Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls.”
But things quickly go south for Tap. Polymer are spooked by the sexist imagery on the album’s cover (“What’s wrong with being sexy?”) and threaten to pull the release unless it is changed. The band aren’t receiving the airplay that was initially promised and a string of gigs are cancelled, including Boston (Faith’s dubious words of comfort: “It’s not a big college town”). To make matters worse, David’s pushy New Age girlfriend Jeanine (June Chadwick) flies in to join the tour just as the new all-black cover for Smell the Glove is revealed (“none more black”).
Playing to increasingly sparse audiences, they attempt to reinvigorate the tour by wheeling out a lavish standard from their more illustrious past, “Stonehenge.” But the gig ends in humiliation when a measurement mix-up results in a rather less than formidable Stonehenge prop in danger of getting trampled by some little people extras dressed as leprechauns.
Jeanine’s arrival drives a wedge between David and Nigel and also forces Faith to quit. After a dismal performance at a US Air Force base, Nigel also walks out. With few songs left without Tufnel involved, the remaining members dust off a navel-gazing experimental piece called “Jazz Odyssey” at a gig where they are billed second to a puppet show.
It looks like the end for Spinal Tap, but the bond between David and Nigel is too strong and “Sex Farm” becomes an unexpected hit in Japan. The film closes on a happy and triumphant note as the band are all reunited, rocking out in front of a stadium packed with delirious Japanese fans.
This is Spinal Tap is where it all began for Rob Reiner as a director, paving the way for classics like Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Misery, and A Few Good Men. Back then, however, he was better known for playing Mike “Meathead” Sivic, the son-in-law and staunchly progressive jousting partner of Archie Bunker in the classic ‘70s sitcom All in the Family.
Later in the decade, Reiner produced a pilot for ABC Network called The TV Show, satirising telly fads at the time. Reiner himself played Wolfman Jack, a late night DJ who had the pleasure of introducing England’s loudest band, Spinal Tap.
They were more glam back in those days, but the lineup performing “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare” was basically the same – Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer. Guest and McKean had written songs and played music together during their college days in the 1960s, and Shearer had previously worked with McKean on a spoof radio show called The Credibility Gap.
In truth, the skit isn’t particularly funny, but it was the start of something great. A technical mishap during filming resulted in the boys improvising dialogue while they were waiting for it to be fixed. They further developed the characters into the characters of Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls that we all know today. Three years later, Reiner pitched the idea of making a film about the band and received $60,000 to write a screenplay with the principal cast.
Realising that a script wouldn’t do justice to what they were trying to achieve, they shot a 20-minute demo called Spinal Tap: The Final Tour. Bursting with raucous energy, the short features many of the gags and songs that would make the final film including the band’s ill-fated drummers, “Lick My Love Pump,” the sexist cover art of “Smell the Glove,” “Big Bottom,” and the “Stonehenge” feet-to-inches mishap.
It’s a little harder edged than the full movie with the boys swearing up a storm and it is so realistic that it was probably easy for studios to miss the joke. The mockumentary format was still novel (although not unique) and shooting a film with only a loose outline for a script was a tough sell. Luckily, Reiner’s old pal Norman Lear (the creator of All in the Family) saw the potential and stumped up $2 million to make the film.
This is Spinal Tap was shot on handheld 16mm cameras entirely in and around Los Angeles – even the boys’ detour to the grave of Elvis Presley in Memphis (“Too much f**king perspective”) was mocked up in an L.A. cemetery. The seat-of-the-pants cinéma vérité style provided much of the film’s realism, as did the improvised dialogue.
Although some set pieces involving pre-made props (like the amp that goes to 11) had a rough outline, all of the dialogue in the movie was improv between the actors – with the exception of Patrick MacNee, who had scripted lines because he was unable to make things up on the spot. Ultimately, Reiner and the cast riffed so much that they ended up with around 100 hours of footage that was eventually edited down to a brisk 82-minute movie.
Authenticity is probably the one word used most to describe the film and Spinal Tap has embedded itself in rock music lore. Many of the details (no matter how silly) reflect incidents in real life.
The script took inspiration from various real bands and other sources, such as both Bob Dylan and Tom Petty getting lost backstage and Van Halen’s bizarre demand to have a plentiful supply of brown M&Ms on hand while performing. The bit about a former drummer choking to death on someone else’s puke referenced a similar fate (albeit on his own vomit) suffered by John Bonham of Led Zeppelin. With all the drugs and booze involved, it’s one of the less-glamorous rock ‘n’ roll ways to die, but one that also claimed Jimi Hendrix, Mama Cass of the Mamas and Papas, and Bon Scott of AC/DC.
David St. Hubbins’ controlling girlfriend Jeanine (June Chadwick) was an obvious reference to Yoko Ono and her effect on the Beatles and the running gag about short-lived drummers was a nod to real-life bands, too. Reiner saw Judas Priest (also the inspiration for Tap’s loudness) play while researching the film, the Brummie outfit who got through eight drummers during their career. Marillion and Pearl Jam also chalked up five each.
As for Reiner’s character, Marty DiBergi, the director had seen how Martin Scorsese inserted himself into his 1978 concert film The Last Waltz. It’s common practice now that we have documentary filmmakers like Michael Moore, Werner Herzog, and Nick Broomfield becoming an onscreen presence, but it was lesser known back then. Reiner thought “That’ll be the way I do it” and pitched DiBergi somewhere between Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, wearing a baseball cap as a wink to the latter’s regular choice of headwear on set.
Life also imitated art. Although it is commonly believed that Spinal Tap took the Stonehenge idea from Black Sabbath, The Final Tour was shot at least a year before the incident in question. On Sabbath’s 1983 Born Again tour, a mix up between feet and meters meant that Ozzy and the guys found themselves playing with a vast 50-foot-tall Stonehenge prop that was so big it barely fit inside some of the venues. A little person was also involved, dressed as a “devil baby” crawling on top of one of the stones before jumping off onto mattresses hidden below. However, the performer was injured during one gig when someone removed the soft landing.
Elsewhere in the movie, the kerfuffle about the Smell the Glove artwork taps into a long history of controversial album covers in rock music. The Beatles’ compilation album Yesterday and Today featured the Fab Four posing with queasily dismembered doll parts and 50,000 copies were recalled. Not to be outdone, their rivals The Rolling Stones depicted a seedy graffiti-covered toilet stall on Beggars Banquet before it was pulled for a more tasteful white sleeve displaying just the band name and album title.
Post-Spinal Tap, Guns ‘n’ Roses caused outrage with some very dicey artwork for Appetite for Destruction, which showed a robot rapist and its victim with her knickers around her ankles – something that might even make Tap’s “greased naked woman on all fours” seem tame. While it didn’t court controversy, Metallica emulated Tap with their self-titled fifth album – also known as the Black Album, the cover was indeed none more black.
This is Spinal Tap was released in March 1984 and, despite positive notices from critics, didn’t exactly set the box office alight. It didn’t lose money, but it pulled in less than $5 million against a $2 million budget, lagging well behind some of the year’s lesser lights like C.H.U.D., Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, and The Ice Pirates. The main problem was that audiences just didn’t get what they were looking at. The mockumentary format was so fresh that people had no real point of comparison, apart from things like Albert Brooks’ Real Life, which had vanished without trace on its release in 1979. Rob Reiner later told Howard Stern that many viewers were fooled into thinking they were watching a documentary about a real band and simply didn’t get that it was supposed to be funny.
Like many misunderstood movies of the 1980s such as John Carpenter’s The Thing, Spinal Tap found a natural home on VHS and built a strong cult following. It has proven incredibly influential over the years – much like Anvil! The Story of Anvil, it is impossible to watch later rock docs like The Decline of Western Civilization Part II and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster without detecting echoes of Spinal Tap. Furthermore, the band and the movie’s most famous lines have entered the popular lexicon – music critics often find themselves comparing bands to David, Nigel and the boys, and saying something “goes to 11” has become a standard phrase for describing something that is cranked up to the max.
The principal players have also done pretty well out of it. Rob Reiner has gone on to have a long and successful career in Hollywood and Christopher Guest has regularly returned to the mockumentary format directing the likes of Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, For Your Consideration, and A Mighty Wind. Michael McKean has collaborated with Guest on a number of films, even receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song (“A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow”) from the latter. More recently, McKean made a big impression playing Saul Goodman’s strange brother in Better Call Saul. As for Harry Shearer, he has become a familiar face in movies and TV shows, but is perhaps better known for his brilliant work in The Simpsons, providing voices for a huge range of characters including Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, and Kent Brockman.
Now over 40 years later, Rob Reiner has got the band back together for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. True to form, it has performed dismally at the box office so far – but will it become another cult classic like the original?
So there you have it, an affectionate look back at This is Spinal Tap. What are your favourite moments from the movie? Is it one of your top cult picks? Let us know!
