When I was young, not yet a teenager, I inherited from my elder sisters a number of vinyl LPs, among them David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Cat Stevens’ Teaser and the Firecat, the Moody Blues’ In Search Of The Lost Chord, and an album that apparently didn’t need much of a title: Led Zeppelin II. Although I loved all of these records, it was the latter album that informed my immediate direction in music; riffing guitar, crashing drums, shrieking vocals: what was not to like?
Soon I would encounter Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, UFO, AC/DC and Black Sabbath, and by my mid-teens, a (largely young male) cross-section of the country would be in the grip of the so-called “New Wave of British Heavy Metal”. Seemingly all of a sudden, there was a superabundance of bands comprising long-haired, leather-, denim- or lycra-clad rockers: Judas Priest, Saxon, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Angelwitch, Praying Mantis, the list went on and on. And oh, the gigs! I attended many of those. You would find your senses assaulted by very loud music, bright lights, dry ice, a seething crowd of headbanging fans, the smell of sweat and patchouli oil – it was certainly a thrilling experience. However, the idiosyncrasies of the genre, along with some of the bands’ increasingly theatrical stage shows and themes, would make them ripe for satire.
Enter Christopher Guest, a British-American screenwriter, actor, and comedian who would become known for his series of comedy films shot in mock-documentary (mockumentary) style, and beginning in 1984 with his hilarious take on the heavy metal movement, This Is Spinal Tap. Directed by Rob Reiner, it stars Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer as members of fictional British heavy metal band, Spinal Tap, and we follow them on their American tour. The film satirizes the behaviour and musical pretensions of rock bands, and to those with an inside view of the British heavy rock scene, the result is a painfully accurate and utterly hilarious pastiche.
Let’s start with the band members’ names, all great choices: David St. Hubbins (McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Guest) on vocals and guitar, bassist Derek Smalls (Shearer), keyboardist Viv Savage, and drummer Mick Shrimpton. Most of the film’s dialogue was improvised and dozens of hours were filmed, and given that the principal actors were American, the fidelity to the Britishness is outstanding.
The film is packed with great scenes of on and offstage antics and drama, but to keep it down I have selected three classics for your amusement: the scene wherein Nigel Tufnel takes us on a backstage tour of this guitars and amps (including the ones that “go up to eleven”); the scene wherein the band get lost trying to find the stage door; and the hilarious Stonehenge scene, in which the band, playing its set-piece epic, is flabbergasted to see the expected 18-foot-tall stage props of “Stone’enge” descend to the stage at the crucial moment in dimensions constructed erroneously and underwhelmingly in inches. Priceless.
