Harry Shearer’s favourite Spinal Tap songs
Born in Los Angeles in 1943, Harry Shearer made his film debut alongside America’s most revered double-act in 1953’s Abbott and Costello Go To Mars. He went on to become a Saturday Night Live icon before being cast in Rob Reiner’s 1984 rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, in which he played jockstrap-wearing bassist Derek Smalls. The film was such an accurate portrayal of a stadium rock band that some believed Spinal Tap to be a real band. Here, Shearer names some of his favourite songs from the film.
Part of why Shearer and his co-stars spent the subsequent decade being mistaken for real-life rock musicians was that they had actually formed a band to create This is Spinal Tap. Alongside David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel, Shearer wrote and performed the songs in the movie, penning such hits as ‘Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight.’ and ‘Big Bottom.’
Those songs proved so popular that McKean Guest and Shearer later reprised their roles for the 1992 Spinal Tap album Break Like The Wind, performing at Glastonbury Festival in 2009, where they were followed by legitimate rock gods Metallica.
Describing his approach to songwriting, Shearer told Songfacts: “Having listened to all sorts of different kind of songwriters since I was a kid, from the classic American songbook writers, the Gershwins and Cole Porter and those guys and the classic rock and roll songwriters, from Lieber and Stoller all the way up to the guys in Fountains of Wayne, my ear goes much more to songs and songwriting than to, let’s say, instrumental brilliance. So that’s where I’ve always been listening as a listener. Hopefully, I’ve stolen stuff from anybody good that I’ve heard.”
When it came to writing the songs for Spinal Tap, Shearer, Hubbins and Tufnel developed a Beatlesesque approach to songwriting, sharing the load to develop songs of real comedic potency. “We all collaborated on writing the songs for Spinal Tap, the movie songs, and then the latter two bunches of songs for the last two records, we would individually come in with songs, and then the rest of the guys made suggestions and improvements and stuff. So it’s collaborative, but it’s less thoroughly collaborative from start to finish than the original movie songs were.”
When asked to name some of his favourites from the film, Shearer didn’t hesitate: “We’ve done two or three different arrangements of ‘Big Bottom.’ I always love playing ‘Big Bottom.‘ Otherwise, I love them all. ‘Stonehenge,’ probably just because it’s musically the silliest song. And the song I really, really love playing and singing is the song that Michael and I wrote for A Mighty Wind, ‘Never Did No Wandering.’ I just love that song. We went to exactly the right place to get that song. I’m very pleased with it. And it is fun to play and sing.
Harry Shearer’s favourite Spinal Tap songs:
- ‘Big Bottom’
- ‘Stonehenge’
- ‘Never Did No Wandering’
