Marty DiBergi: (quoting a review) "This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry." Nigel Tufnel: That's just nitpicking, innit?
Marty DiBergi's This is Spinal Tap (1984) is one of the greatest rockumentaries of all time. It may not be about one of the legendary bands, but it's a more intimate portrait than would have been allowed if it were about a more well-known band. It really gets inside the head of these rockers, and has more heart than any of those other rock films which consist mostly of filler between the concert scenes.Not even Tennessee Williams could have written a better character study.For those of you who don't know Spinal Tap, they're a hard rock band that's been making some of the loudest heavy metal music around for years. David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel, Derek Smalls and a long line of drummers are musical geniuses. Even if you don't know the band, you know their hits, like "Big Bottom" and "Stonehenge".The movie chronicles what may have been their darkest time; their infamous US tour in the early 1980s. They nearly broke up, but they proved that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and they came back strong, despite all the mishaps and mismanagement.For those of you who truly believe in The Power of Rock, this will affirm it like nothing else.note Alright, so it's actually a Mockumentary spoofing the egos and mishaps of other rock stars, starring Michael Mc Kean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Rob Reiner who also directed. It's become a cult classic, with the actors even making appearances elsewhere in character.
This film contains examples of:
Achilles in His Tent: Due to worsening circumstances on the tour, and increasing personality conflict with David's girlfriend Jeanine, Nigel leaves the band in the middle of the show; only to return during the band's final performance to reunite them for a tour of Japan.
Affectionate Parody: As ridiculous as the movie makes rock music in general and heavy metal in particular look, Guest, McKean and Shearer do themselves enjoy the music, which is reflected in the obvious effort they put into writing the soundtrack.
Arson Murder And Jay Walking: Marty DiBergi, at the introduction of the movie: "I remember being knocked out by their, their exuberance, their raw power... and their punctuality."
Batter Up: Ian keeps a cricket bat around for use during "management disputes".
In a deleted scene, Ian uses the cricket bat to strangle a geeky, irritating concert promoter - which is shown briefly in the final film's "cricket bat" montage.
Brick Joke: Early in the film, it's revealed that Spinal Tap's drummers die in mysterious ways, including once by spontaneous human combustion. In the epilogue, the drummer explodes.
British Rockstar — The band is made up of lads from England, with various accents, questionable fashion sense, and a love of fun.
Cheap Heat: Parodied - as the band gets lost behind the stage in Chicago, one of the band members yells "Hello, Cleveland!"
Concept Album: Parodied multiple times, once with an album of "religious rock songs" inspired by the Book of Genesis, and again with the band's ongoing work on a "rock opera inspired by the life of Jack the Ripper".
Contemptible Cover: Though never actually shown (although easily found online), the original cover of Smell the Glove is described on no uncertain terms as representative of this.
Dead Man Walking: Given the band's unfortunate history with drummers, Mick Shrimpton realizes he's likely one of these. Late in the movie he explodes on stage during a performance.
Defictionalization: In spades. The actors perform in character in live shows. They've recorded three albums, made music videos, and appeared on countless radio and TV shows. They even have a feud with Marty DiBergi about their portrayal in the film, going so far as to take offense that people find the film humorous. DiBergi has at times responded to these claims. Their audio commentary on the Special Edition DVD is also fully in character, arguably constituting a movie in its own right. The song "Gimme Some Money" was even covered for a Citi Bank commercial!
The venues they play in the movie are fictitious. However, in 1989 an actual Shank Hall opened in Milwaukee. Their logo includes a miniature Stonehenge and there's a shrine to Spinal Tap in the club.
Also, amps that actually go up to eleven are now available.
On the "Back From The Dead" DVD, David explains that another band had done a song titled "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You," hence the necessity of an extra "Tonight".
DVD Commentary: The original commentary for the film was played straight. In a second recording, Guest, McKean and Shearer do the DVD commentary in character, and spend most of it ripping DiBergi for the "hatchet job" he produced.
Fake Band: Spinal Tap was not an actual band at the time of the film's creation, though it has been Defictionalized.
Fake Brit: The three main band members. Supposedly, their accents were so credible that English viewers initially thought the film to be a genuine documentary.
Follow the Leader: invokedThroughout their history, Spinal Tap seem to be in the habit of jumping on the bandwagon for whatever the latest musical trends are, such as the British Invasion, psychedelic folk-rock and, most recently, glam metal.
Gag Penis: Subverted with Derek Smalls. In the MGM commentary, David is amused at the fact that Derek wrapped the zucchini in aluminum foil.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: An In-Universe example, as Spinal Tap's latest album unexpectedly proves to be very successful in Japan, leading to a much more successful tour in that country. This is not completely unexpected; Metal was popular in Japan from the very beginning.
Heavy Meta: Parodied with the song "Heavy Duty (Rock And Roll)".
Heavy Metal: The band's current phase in the movie is a parody of then popular "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" bands like Iron Maiden.
Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut: Parodied: the umlaut goes over the N, producing a letter than is only used in Jacaltec (a Mayan dialect), Malagasy, and Cape Verdean Creole.
High Turnover Rate: The band has gone through quite a number of drummers.
David:37 people have been in this band over the years!
Hit Me Dammit: After a poor showing at a record signing, Artie Fufkin demands this of the band. ("I'm not asking you, I'm telling you! Kick my ass!")
Hypocritical Humor: A montage example, at the beginning when teenaged fans at a Spinal Tap concert are being interviewed. An Ambiguously Brown male fan tells the interviewer that "Heavy metal's deep; you get stuff out of it." He is followed a few seconds later by a blonde girl who remarks that she likes "the way they dress, the leather."
Improv: The vast majority of the dialogue in the movie was improvised. Basically, the cast were given extensive back-stories and character sketches, and turned loose in front of the camera. Reiner shot several hours of footage, and distilled the best parts down into the movie. A couple hours of additional footage were included on the DVD releases, while quite a bit more circulates on a bootleg three-VHS set. This basic set-up was used by Christopher Guest to make a his own improvised mockumentaries, including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration and used many of the original cast members.
After the release of the film, Black Sabbath's 1983 tour featured a Stonehenge set that was also marked up with the wrong measurements on the schematics (meters instead of feet, resulting in a 50' tall stone instead of a 15' tall stone).
Boy George got stuck inside a ridiculous huge prop onstage during a number.
Metallica released a black album, which might have been a deliberate Shout Out.
One of Spinal Tap's drummers died in a "bizarre gardening accident"; Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro was reported to have died after inhaling insecticide that he had been spraying in his garden. However, coroners later put his death down to a heart attack due to cocaine abuse.
Between 1983 and 1984, Marillion burned through three drummers in rapid succession after firing Mick Pointer before finally settling on Ian Mosley. Notably, they did this in between two albums.
In the film the band's album Shark Sandwich is given a two-word review in Rolling Stone: "Shit Sandwich." Years later, Quiet Riot's fourth album Condition Critical was given a similar two-word review in Rolling Stone: "Condition Terminal."
In 1992, the German heavy metal band Headhunter released an album titled A Bizarre Gardening Accident.
There are now guitar amplifiers that actually go to 11... and beyond. Marshall released models in the 90s with '11's on the faceplates specifically to replicate the ones in the film.
Authentic metal legend Ozzy Osbourne is on record as saying that This Is Spinal Tap is a worryingly accurate portrayal of what it was like being a rock star in the 1980's. Specifically, although it hadn't happened to him, he describes the scene where the band get lost backstage and claims that he "could all too easily imagine that the same thing had actually happened" in real life, among other examples.
Re. the commment —>David:37 people have been in this band over the years!
Coincidentally, this is about the same number of personnel who have been with space rockers Hawkwind over the life of the band. And a cursory look at the Hawkwind personnel list shows a disproportionate number of these were drummers. Hawkwind's stage sets and lasers were also so ambitious they blew the fuses at many venues.
Lyrical Dissonance: All over the place, but the most prominent example is a delicate piano piece entitled "Lick My Love Pump."
Metal Detector Checkpoint: A hilarious example when Derek Smalls sets of an airport metal detector because he has a foil-wrapped zucchini tucked in his pants.
Noodle Incident: One former drummer is said to have perished in "a bizarre gardening accident".
Nigel Tufnel: Authorities said... best leave it... unsolved.
The band members are shown with cold sores at some point, without any explanation. A deleted scene reveals that Spinal Tap's opening band for the tour has a female singer with a cold sore.
Oblivious to Love: Nigel obviously has a bit of an obsession with David - whether it's just a case of serious bromance or an actual romantic crush - and is rather devastated when David's girlfriend comes to join the tour. However, David simply doesn't see it, and is mistified as to why Nigel is constantly giving her hate-filled glares and trying to make fun of her at every opportunity (although Jeanine does seem to have an inkling)..
Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: To a British ear, Harry Shearer's most of the time. McKean's strays into Australian on occasions. Listen to how he says "purpose" in particular! Chris Guest's accent is pretty flawless — he's British-American of course, and is actually a hereditary peer (The 5th Baron Haden-Guest) on his father's side.
Product Displacement: Marty's cap in the film says "USS OORAL SEA". This is because the Navy would not allow the film to feature the USS Coral Sea's name. A quick adjustment to the cap and it was fixed. The MGM commentary makes fun of it, pondering where the USS Ooral Sea was located.
Production Posse: This film originated Christopher Guest's production posse for his own mockumentary films.
The Quiet One/The Stoic: Compared to Nigel and David's egotistical flouncing, Derek is incredibly humble, quiet and unflappable.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: David and Nigel. Derek describes their complementary but conflicting personalities and musical instincts as "fire and ice", with him being somewhere in the middle, "sort of like lukewarm water".
The Red Stapler: Lots of real-life amps now go to 11, as well as the volume on BBC's iPlayer.
The Rock Star: Three of them, in fact, though more in their own heads than in reality.
Rule of Funny: Why would a British band be confused by the 24 hour clock? Well, this is Spinal Tap we're talking about.
Running Gag: The band playing before ever smaller crowds in ever lamer venues as the tour goes along. By the time they reach California, they're performing before only a couple dozen people at what looks like either Disneyland or Magic Mountain (now Six Flags Magic Mountain).
Mick Shrimpton says he literally lives for the three things and that if he gets kicked out of the band, sex and drugs will be enough for him to scrape by on.
Viv Savage (on his epitaph): Have a good time all the time.
The Sixties: Parodied with one of the band's previous hits, "(Listen To The) Flower People".
The Stonehenge monolith is 1/12 its intended size and in serious danger of being knocked over by a dwarf.invoked
The embryonic pod that froze shut trapping Derek Smalls during the band's performance of "Rock and Roll Creation".
Spontaneous Human Combustion: The fate of three of the band's drummers—one whom is said to have gone up in "a flash of green light," leaving "a little green globule" on his drum seat, and two more who explode on the band's tour of Japan.
David St. Hubbins: You know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.
Stealth Parody: Perhaps partially due to the fact that the Mockumentary was a little-known genre at the time, many people assumed that the film is a real documentary, apparently missing all the talk about spontaneous human combustion.
Stylistic Suck: The song lyrics are deliberately silly, though the songs themselves can be quite catchy.
Team Mom: Jeanine believes herself to be this. In reality she isn't terribly good at it, and tends to create as many (if not more) problems as she solves.
Technology Marches On: Dear God, those wireless amps are huge. Also, playing Missile Command on the Atari 800. With a keyboard.
Too Awesome to Use: Nigel tells DiBergi that the most treasured guitar in his collection "can never be played" (or touched, or pointed to, or looked at). Truth in Television: that particular instrument is Fender Bass VI, a six-string bass guitar, of which only some 300 were produced - and which indeed are Too Awesome to Use even in real life. Tufnel's bass guitar is one of only two instruments which exist in the Sea Foam Green colour in the Real Life. Also Tufnel's '59 Gibson Les Paul, which are approximately as expensive as Amati violins today.
Too Dumb to Live: Granted, Tap's drummers tend to die at an incredible pace, but Mick is shown in one scene in a filled bathtub with a plugged in toaster on the side of the tub.
Tragic Hero: A depressing undertone of the movie is that Hubbins and Tufnel are genuinely talented composers and musicians, but squander their talents due to their immaturity and infatuation with the "rock star" life. One scene in particular has Nigel showing the director his latest piece, a beautiful piano instrumental, citing influence from a range of classical composers. He calls it "Lick My Love Pump."
Trope Codifier: This film was shot in 1982, one year before Quiet Riot released Metal Health, the first best-selling album to be universally referred to as "metal." As a result, This Is Spinal Tap can be credited with popularizing a number of metal tropes, particularly Heavy Mithril and Rock Me, Asmodeus!
True Art Is Incomprehensible: The released cover of "Smell The Glove" gets played up as this in a scene. David doesn't buy it.invoked
By the time of the 2000 DVD commentary, David had brought himself to agree that Ian's argument for the black cover 'looking like death' ("Death sells") was accurate.
Unbuilt Trope: Some of the most memorable scenes have Spinal Tap performing songs that aren’t strictly heavy metal but that owe their existence to subgenres of rock music that strongly influenced metal, including rockabilly (“Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight”) and rhythm-and-blues (“Big Bottom”).
Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma: One band member's inability to remember how to write measurements in the imperial system results in a stage prop of Stonehenge smaller than the dwarfs they've hired to dance around it. (Specifically, he confuses the abbreviations for feet — an apostrophe — and inches — two apostrophes.)
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