Spinal Tap Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- Note: In medicine, spinal tap is a synonym for lumbar puncture.
Spinal Tap is a semi-fictitious heavy metal rock band, from the 1984 Rob Reiner film, This Is Spinal Tap. The film was a make-believe documentary (a mockumentary or "rockumentary", a word Reiner coined in this film) that satirized the excesses of bands like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith, among others. The band exists both as a fictitious entity, whose members are the characters portrayed by the actors, and also as a real entity, in that the actors have performed and released recordings as a band under the name.
The band's name is officially spelled with an umlaut (two dots) over the letter "n" to satirize the use of heavy metal umlauts in the names of other heavy metal bands such as Motörhead;. (This "n" with an umlaut actually exists in the minor Jacaltec language of Guatemala, though it is questionable whether the writers of Spinal Tap knew this at the time.) It is possible to represent in Unicode (Spin̈al Tap), but not all browsers will render this properly.
The band was originally created by actors and comedians Michael McKean (as David St. Hubbins), Christopher Guest (as Nigel Tufnel) and Harry Shearer (as Derek Smalls) for a 1978 ABC comedy special, The TV Show. Soon after, the three comedians teamed up with Reiner to turn the idea into a full-length film. Much of the film was ad-libbed, and several dozen hours of footage were shot before Reiner edited it down to the released film. A 4.5 hour bootleg version of the film exists and has been traded around between fans and collectors for years. A ten hour version is also rumored. The most recent DVD editions of the film include one hour of deleted footage as an extra feature.
The film starred—in addition to the three members of Spinal Tap and Reiner,--who appeared as Marty DiBergi, the maker of the documentary—Paul Shaffer, Fred Willard, Fran Drescher, Bruno Kirby, Howard Hesseman, and Ed Begley Jr. Dana Carvey, Anjelica Huston, and Billy Crystal also had small roles in the film.
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2 Response 3 Renunions 4 Other rock parodies 5 See also 6 Discography |
This Is Spinal Tap chronicles the group's waning popularity during a tour of the United States while promoting their latest record, Smell The Glove. The sexist, mysoginist and overly-masculized elements of heavy metal music are parodied throughout.
Spinal Tap began their career as The Thamesmen before renaming themselves; they had an early hit with the flower power anthem "Listen to the Flower People" before turning to heavy metal.
The film notes early on that Spinal Tap--"The World's Loudest Band"--have had a succession of drummers, all of whom have died under odd circumstances: one died in a "bizarre gardening accident"; another "choked on vomit," though it may not have been his own (one Tap member noted that it's difficult to dust vomit for fingerprints); and one seems to have fallen prey to spontaneous human combustion. St. Hubbins reports that "Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported."
Their concert appearances are repeatedly cancelled due to low ticket sales, and tensions rise when several major retailers refuse to sell Smell the Glove due to its sexist cover art, and when St. Hubbins' girlfriend--a slightly spacy yoga and astrology devotee--joins the group on tour.
"Polymer Records" decides to release Smell the Glove with an entirely black cover without consulting the band (this was some seven years before Metallica's eponymous 1991 album, which featured a nearly-all black cover), prompting more distress from the band.
A memorable segment of the film occurs when a miniature replica of Stonehenge is lowered onto the stage behind the band and two dwarves come on stage to dance around it. The band members were expecting a full sized 18-foot replica, but were instead presented with an 18-inch model due to an error.
After the Stonehenge debacle, Spinal Tap's manager quits in disgust when St. Hubbins suggests his girlfriend co-manage the group. She takes over his duties, and begins plotting astrology charts for the entire group, even basing their concert appearances on the stars' alignments.
When the group performs at an Air Force base (managed by an hilarious Fred Willard, who calls the group "Spinal Tarp"), Tufnel's new wireless guitar-amplification system receives interference from an air traffic control broadcast, and he walks offstage.
After Tufnel leaves the group, DiBergi asks St. Hubbins feels about his longtime-collaborator's departure and St. Hubbins replies, "Well, I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation."
Spinal Tap regroup, and rearrange some of their songs to account for the absent guitar. Against St. Hubbins' initial reluctance, the group launches "Spinal Tap mark two" with Small's fusion-esque "Jazz Odessy," which is roundly rejected by their already-diminishing fan base.
St. Hubbins and Smalls reconsider "Saucy Jack," their long-abandoned idea for a musical play based on Jack the Ripper.
Tufnel returns to tell the group that one of their "Smell The Glove" songs is a big hit in Japan, and their former manager would like to arrange a tour. His entreaties are initially rebuffed, but St. Hubbins relents, and invites his friend back onstage.
The film ends with Spinal Tap performing in Japan, and with yet another drummer's sudden death-again from spontaneous human combustion.
This Is Spinal Tap was a modest success upon its initial release, but found greater success, and a cult following, after it was released on VHS.
Film critic Roger Ebert selected This is Spinal Tap as a Great Movie alongside Casablanca, Taxi Driver and others. [1]
Spinal Tap reunited in 1992 for an album of new material, partly produced by T-Bone Burnett, and a concert tour.
They later made a guest appearance on The Simpsons, a television show in which Harry Shearer is also one of the principal voiceover actors. In this animated appearance the band continued their disastrous track record, as a balloon "dark lord" prop failed to inflate properly over the heads of the crowd, and one of the band members was blinded by the laser light show.
In 1994, The Return of Spinal Tap was released on video; most of this was live material from a 1992 performance at the Royal Albert Hall, but it also included some interviews and follow-up on the band members.
In 2000 a new song, "Back from the Dead" was made available for download from the official Spinal Tap website.
The 2000 "Special Edition" release of This Is Spinal Tap on DVD is noteworthy for its innovative commentary track, which features the three principal band members commenting on the film entirely in their fictional alter-egos, and often disapproving of how the film presents them.
In 2002 the United States Library of Congress deemed the original film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
A similar, although less successful, British heavy metal satire, is The Comic Strip Presents Bad News Tour (Channel 4, 1983), followed by a sequel, More Bad News, in 1988. The band also guested on some TV music shows and released an album, but unfortunately the whole project was overshadowed by Spinal Tap.
In a similar vein, the British film Still Crazy (1998) starring Jimmy Nail, Timothy Spall, Billy Connolly and Bill Nighy depicts the chaotic comeback tour of a 1970s glam-rock band. This was more successful thanks to the script by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and some fine ensemble acting.
Other notable spoof rock bands include The Rutles (a Beatles parody band created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes); psychedelic parodists, The Dukes of Stratosphear (actually XTC in disguise); and The Hee Bee Gee Bees (largely the brainchild of Philip Pope, who also wrote satirical songs for the BBC's Radio Active and Not the Nine O'Clock News and ITV's Spitting Image).
This is an Article on Spinal Tap. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Spinal Tap Plot overview
Response
Renunions
Other rock parodies
See also
Discography
as well as their fictitious back catalog...
Several rare albums were mentioned in an article printed in Vinyl Hell, but their existence is in doubt.