‘This Is Spinal Tap’: the movie that reduces Sting to tears
Stage malfunctions, flagging record sales, and clashing egos – envision one band or solo artist experiencing all this together, and you might think of a certain comedic mockumentary, but taking each of these catastrophes in isolation, many would find that they’re not all that far removed from the real-world music business.
“There’s so many truths in it. It’s profound truths about all bands. We all recognise ourselves in the parody. It’s good for us,” Sting commented on Rob Reiner’s 1984 cult classic This Is Spinal Tap. The film sees Christopher Guest play Spinal Tap’s lead guitarist, Nigel Tufnel, Michael McKean as frontman David St Hubbins, and Harry Shearer as bassist Derek Smalls.
Reiner’s directorial debut – he has since gone on to produce Academy Award-nominated work A Few Good Men, in addition to cult classics like The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally and Misery – gains new fans to this day, 40 years on from its release and placed high in the ranks in our ten greatest rock and roll movies of all time. In 2017, Guns N’ Roses referenced the film after their guitar technician exclaimed “Hello Sydney!” to a Melbourne crowd.
Slash later tweeted, “Melbourne, thank you for an awesome fucking evening! Apologies for the Spinal Tap intro!”
For artists worldwide, young and old, emerging and established, the film is close to the bone on many counts – Sting is far from the only rocker to see life as a professional artist reflected in the parody. As Vanity Fair detailed, cinematographer Peter Smokler – who had worked previously on rock documentaries with Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones repeatedly commented on set, “I don’t understand, what’s funny about this? This is exactly what they do!”
“Sting saw it many times – he told me, ‘I see it now, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!’ It’s real, it’s very real,” Reiner told Vanity Fair. Marking its 35th anniversary in 2019, New York’s Beacon Theatre hosted a sold-out screening and concert as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Later in the evening, Guest, McKean and Shearer jokingly beat-boxed and rapped their way through their song ‘Sex Farm’, while Sting could be seen sitting with wife Trudie Styler, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.
But there have been many parallel occasions where tears aren’t drawn by laughter. Both Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus and Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch have gotten lost backstage; U2 once got stuck inside stage equipment – a giant lemon, to be precise; while the film made the idea of “going up to 11” part of the English language, Christopher Guest validly pointing out that “almost every amp company now sells knobs that go up to 11”. In This Is Spinal Tap, Nigel Tufnel complains about tiny bread in the band’s rider – a gag that was borrowed from a famous Rolling Stone profile of Van Halen that claimed the band had ordered all brown M&Ms to be removed from the candy stores backstage.
During 2019’s event at the Beacon, Reiner recalled how Black Sabbath had accused the filmmakers of ripping Spinal Tap’s ill-fated Stonehenge set from their 1983 Born Again Tour, which had a Stonehenge theme. The film “had all kinds of life imitating art back and forth,” but that was his favourite incident.
Production on the movie’s sequel began earlier this year, and while a release date is not yet confirmed, cameos from the likes of Elton John, Paul McCartney, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers have been reported.
