When U2 got stuck in a lemon: Spinal Tap and the ridiculous reality of rock

In 1984, the American actors Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer appeared on a popular late-night TV show, in New York, to promote their forthcoming film This Is Spinal Tap. Despite being interviewed by a veteran broadcaster (Joe Franklin), the trio were able to convince both the host and the evening’s fellow guests that the picture was in fact a genuine documentary about a hapless British heavy rock band on a borderline-disastrous tour of the United States. While the cameras rolled, no one doubted they were in the company of English-born musicians.

“I was duped,” Franklin would later report. “I was framed. They came on my show as a regular group and only later on did I find out the truth.”

On March 2, This Is Spinal Tap celebrates its 40th birthday. Despite having harvested only a modest return of $4.7million (on a $2 million budget) upon its limited release in just five US cinemas, the advent of various forms of home media has enshrined the 82-minute feature as one of the most – if not the most – widely adored cult movies of the 20th century. Re-watching it just last night, for perhaps the 20th time, I could only marvel at its ability to make me laugh and wince as much as it ever did. Its themes are timeless. It’s like War and Peace with Marshall stacks.

It’s certainly no surprise that the three actors had their parts down cold. In the roles of lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, vocalist and singer David St. Hubbins and bassist Derek Smalls, Guest, McKean and Shearer had created and memorised their characters’ personal histories as if they were criminals rehearsing a cover story. Remarkably, the film’s uncommonly svelte 59-page script contained just two instances of specific dialogue. The rest was outlines for scenes that were improvised by the players themselves. When director Rob Reiner, in the role of Marty DiBergi, asks the trio about the past, there is no room for error.

As well as being overwhelmingly sensational, the jokes are often surprisingly subtle. In their earlier incarnations, for example, Spinal Tap were called The New Originals and The Originals – in that order. Even the tiniest details are consistent with the world the film portrays. Arriving in the US for the start of their latest tour, the group has no idea whether they’ve landed at New York’s JFK or La Guardia airport. As someone who’s been interviewing rock musicians for more than half of my life, I can think of at least 25 bands who wouldn’t have a clue either. If you don’t book your own plane tickets, you don’t need to know.

There is plenty of evidence that real-life rock stars are, if anything, even more ridiculous than Spinal Tap. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins really did get stuck in a stage prop (in his case, a coffin), as did U2’s The Edge (a lemon); Black Sabbath actually had a Stonehenge set built, only theirs was too large rather than too small. As seen in The Last Waltz, The Band went through many name changes (The Crackers, The Honkies) before arriving at… The Band. Motley Crue and Yes have admitted to getting lost on the way to the stage, while Ted Nugent would sometimes find himself stuck in the bathroom as the lights went up. Both Brian May and Boston keyboardist Tom Scholz were almost killed by onstage hydraulics – Scholz while he was swinging from a rope. REO Speedwagon didn’t share the bill with a puppet show but they did share a dressing room with a ventriloquist’s dummy.

Spinal Tap gets the characters around a rock band right too. Fran Drescher is perfect as the kind of screechingly effusive American publicist (Bobbi Flekman) who will turn her back on any group cut loose by her paymasters at Polymer Records. Equally on point is Tony Hendra’s performance as manager Ian Faith. Attempting to be one of the boys while shielding his charges from worries about dwindling popularity and the ever-present threat of real life, his is a thankless task. As with so many ostensibly personable rock managers, psychopathy is only a “check one-two” away.

Despite its bounty of quotable lines, it is Hendra, I think, who reveals the underlying truth of This Is Spinal Tap. As the band attempt to seek out a scapegoat after being embarrassed onstage by a model of Stonehenge that is barely a tenth of the required size, their eyes turn to their manager. Cornered and affronted, he resigns in protest. “Whenever a single bump or ruffle comes into this adolescent fantasy-land you guys have built around yourself, you start screaming like a bunch of ponce-y hairdressers,” he declares, before charging out of the room.

I can think of no better description of rock and roll than “adolescent fantasy-land”. Because when it comes to the grim business of surviving a dip in popularity that might well be permanent, it is belief more than talent that will get you through the night. Blind faith, that’s the key. With handlers and other invested parties colluding in what is often a charade, from here it’s but a short hop to full-blown delusion. Ian Faith tells his charges the bald truth only once. Elsewhere, he too is a guilty party. “I frankly think this is the turning point,” he says as the band take receipt of an album with an entirely black cover on which their name cannot be found. “We’re on our way now. It’s time to kick arse.”

The point isn’t that you can’t keep a good band down – it’s that you can’t even keep the bad ones down. In the fictional world of This Is Spinal Tap, the viewer is able to take joy in the plight of these crestfallen rockers because, really, they’re just children riding a rollercoaster they hope will never stop. Despite selfish and narcissistic tendencies, they’re actually a pretty innocent bunch. As the New York arts paper, the Village Voice put it, “Rarely have pretentious people been portrayed so affectionately”.

In real life, it’s a bumpier ride. Released in 2008, the feature documentary Anvil! The Story Of Anvil is often spoken of as a 21st-century companion piece to This Is Spinal Tap. In a way, I kind of get that. I well recall attending an advance screening of the film, in Soho, at which I had to ask a fellow music journalist if what we were watching was a spoof. Honestly, I just couldn’t tell. As the final credits rolled, people around me were enthused at having been privy to such a heart-warming testament to the indefatigability of the human spirit. But after 81-minutes in the onscreen company of an epically hopeless Canadian metal band, I was left feeling queasy and low.

Interviewing Anvil’s two principal members in London, I was delighted to discover that singer Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner – yup, he really did have the same name as the director of This Is Spinal Tap – were everything I had imagined them to be. Wholly addicted to each other’s narcissistic misdirection, the pair somehow managed to marry monosyllabic huffiness, grandiose superiority and a grinding sense of pitiful persecution into one nauseating whole. As it relates to the evidently dismal music to which they put their name, I would honestly say they were out of their minds.

Anvil – and I know this because they told me so – believe they are better than Metallica. It’s merely a question of bad luck that they haven’t sold 125 million albums. Spinal Tap probably think they’re better than Van Halen, or whichever rock behemoth dominates the parallel universe in which they struggle to draw 1,200 people a night. That’s not a bad crowd, of course, or it wouldn’t be had the group’s previous US tour not seen them appearing in arenas that held more than 10-times this number. As Ian Faith famously explains, “their appeal is becoming more selective”.

For any band that managed to accrue a measure of success that has long since evaporated, the question is this: is it better to have loved and lost, or never to have loved at all? Staying the course is hard, but the habit is even harder to break. On the face of it, those who cut their losses in favour of a life on Civvy Street, or a back-of-house role in the rock biz, have it better than musicians who continue to pursue a dream that has long since died. Either way, the merest glimpse of the action will mark them for life. In my experience, even those who have called it quits long for the opportunity to ride again. And given half a chance, they’ll take it.

Sometimes they’re in a right old state as well. Seven years after signing a – quote-unquote – legally binding “cessation of touring” contract, Motley Crue returned to the road even though their guitarist, Mick Mars, was stricken with chronic arthritis. James Hetfield, from Metallica, completed one tour with back pain so severe he had to be hung by his ankles from a contraption hidden in the wings of the stage. Slayer frontman Tom Araya once showed me a picture on his phone of an x-ray of the vertebrae in his neck fused together with metal plates. After being bitten by a – yes, really – poisonous spider, bandmate Jeff Hanneman appeared onstage in California with the livid scars from the surgery that saved his life on proud display.

And that’s just the physical injuries. I remember applying for a marriage license at an office of Camden Council at which the registrar informed me that I’d once reviewed his group (favourably, thank goodness). Within five minutes, he’d also told me that while his ordeals in the music industry had resulted in a nervous breakdown, nonetheless, he had hopes of getting his band, Fearless Vampire Killers, back together. Ten months later, at a headline concert at the Dome in Tufnell Park, I watched this apparently dejected office worker stalk the stage like a rock god.

Strangely, Spinal Tap can’t give it up either. Over the past 40 years, they’ve played real gigs, including one at the Royal Albert Hall, in 1992, that was really awful. Reunited once more with Rob Reiner, last month filming began on a sequel to the movie that started it all. Given that today’s concert scene is dominated by pension-aged rockers – remarkably, almost all of the bands so affectionately lampooned in 1984 are still on the road – the comic possibilities seem endless. Let’s hope they’re not squandered.

But at least there exists the unimpeachable document that is This Is Spinal Tap. The graceful ease with which it deals with themes of co-dependency, arrested development, artlessness, delusions of adequacy and the inevitability of collective failure have for years hoodwinked viewers into believing they’re watching a comedy. Me, I think it’s a tragedy that just happens to contain a multitude of world-class jokes. Not for nothing that is it the only film on the Internet Database whose score goes up to 11.

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