This Is Spinal Tap: A Rockumentary by Martin Di Bergi is a mockumentary film co-written and directed by Rob Reiner (who plays Di Bergi), his feature directorial debut. It stars him, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, with Tony Hendra, RJ Parnell, David Kaff, June Chadwick, and a host of celebrities playing small parts throughout the film. Most of the film is improvised by all of the actors, though only Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer are credited with ‘writing the script.’
As a satire on rock musicians and the industry, This Is Spinal Tap was released to critical acclaim, but initially found only moderate commercial success. After being released on VHS, though, it found greater success and a cult following. Many media sources now place it among the best and funniest films ever made.
Here is a link to quotes from the film, and here is a link to the whole film.
While the foibles of confused, often stoned musicians, as well as incompetent management, are obviously major sources of humour throughout the film, perhaps the most important satirical target is the tension between artistic integrity and creativity on the one hand, and the mechanics of the profit-driven music business on the other. Put another way, capitalism kills art.
A hint at the contradiction is given away right at the beginning of the film, when Di Bergi introduces himself as a filmmaker who makes “a lot of commercials,” then he gives a brief description of an inane ad he filmed, hoping you’ll know which one he’s talking about. This comment in a sense parallels what’s to come, for the fictional hard rock band Spinal Tap would like to be regarded as legitimate artists, in spite of the often vulgar subject matter of their songs, which seem merely to copy whatever the musical clichés of the time happen to be. They’d even like a substantial amount of the American audience simply to know who they are, yet they’re “currently residing in the ‘Where are they now?’ file.”
Speaking of clichés, we get an example of one in humour a few times during these beginning minutes of the film. I’m referring to the Rule of Three in comedy: list three items, the last of which is the surprising, absurd punchline. Di Bergi was impressed with Spinal Tap’s “exuberance, their raw power, and their punctuality.” Then he says he “wanted to capture the sights, the sounds, the smells” of a touring rock band, After that, we hear from some fans why they like Spinal Tap: their music gives a female fan “a lot of energy”; a male fan says, “The metal’s deep”; and a potential groupie, it’s safe to assume, says she likes “the way they dress, the leather.”
It’s noteworthy that Di Bergi says that the US tour we see Spinal Tap on in this rockumentary is their first in almost six years to promote their new album, Smell the Glove, for that long gap in touring is surely among the main reasons, if not the main reason, for waning American interest in the band’s music. Consistent touring and playing of concerts is crucial for promoting a band and maintaining interest in them.
In direct contrast, the success of Rush in the late 1970s and early 80s has been attributed to diligent touring, in spite of the limited radio airplay their long songs got (George-Warren, Romanowski, Pareles, p. 847).
An omen of what’s to come during Spinal Tap’s disastrous American tour is when their limo driver (played by Bruno Kirby) is to pick them up from the airport, and he’s holding a sign saying, “Spinal Pap.” Later, when driving the band around, he tells Di Bergi that the band’s success is “a fad” and “a passing thing.”
The first song we see them play onstage is “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight.” The second verse, after the refrain, deals with wanting to have sex with an underage girl. The references to her being “just four feet” tall, and still having her “baby teeth” I prefer not to take literally for obvious reasons; I assume it’s just comic hyperbole.
Apart from the outrageousness of this naughty humor, I see the blatant sexual references in this song, in “Big Bottom,” and in “Sex Farm” as, apart from the obvious groupie adoration, a comment on how pandering to rock fans’ lewd desires cheapens one’s art in an attempt at increasing the band’s popularity and boosting sales. (I wonder, incidentally, if the singer wanting to get his hands on the underage girl is an oblique reference to stars like Jimmy Page having baby groupies like Lori Maddox, or the singer of the Knack‘s having his teen Sharona.) The irony in all of this pandering is how the business end of Spinal Tap is failing…as, perhaps, it should be.
A satirical crack at how rock performers all too often copy others, in a cheap attempt at a quick leap to success, is when singer/rhythm guitarist David St. Hubbins (McKean) formed a band with lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Guest) back in the mid-1960s called The Originals, but who had to change their name–upon learning of another local band with the same name–to “The New Originals.” A Canadian band, back in 1965, released a cover of “Shakin’ All Over” with the band’s name given as “Guess Who?” in the hopes that they’d be associated with the British Invasion (one might think of The Who, whose popularity blossomed the year before), and therefore boost the band’s career.
Eventually, David’s and Nigel’s band would be called The Thamesmen, which sounds derivative of The Merseybeats. One song from this period seems to sum up the whole tension between making music and needing to sell a product: “Gimme Some Money,” or GSM for short. The song is an obvious parody of the 12-bar blues-based rock ‘n’ roll songs of the mid-60s (à la Yardbirds, etc.).
The Thamesmen’s drummer at the time was “Stumpy” Pepys (played by Ed Begley Jr.), who died in a bizarre gardening accident that the police deemed “best left unsolved,” as Nigel says. This death introduces an, indeed, bizarre series of drummers’ deaths that makes one wonder if the other members of the band are guilty of foul play.
Their next drummer, “Stumpy Joe,” died from choking on vomit (someone else’s?). This joke seems to be inspired by John Bonham’s death by choking on vomit (Jimi Hendrix died similarly). Drummer Peter “James” Bond died, apparently, by spontaneous combustion onstage during a festival at the Isle of Lucy (Was Desi Arnaz there, by chance?). Their current drummer, Mick Shrimpton (Parnell), will explode onstage, too.
My speculation that Tap are secret suspects in these deaths is satirically based on how certain bands, like the Beatles and Genesis, had to go through a number of drummers to find the right one, then the band could go on and succeed. It could be argued that bands like the Beatles and Genesis were great bands right from the start, only they needed better drummers. Genesis went through three drummers (Chris Stewart, John Silver, and John Mayhew, these first and third drummers being fired) before settling on Phil Collins, who of course was crucial in building the band’s cult following during its prog rock phase, then–when he later replaced Peter Gabriel as lead singer–first hired Bill Bruford as touring drummer before settling on Chester Thompson, and the band switched to simple pop and became superstars.
Pete Best, surely the most unlucky man in rock music history, may have gotten a raw deal when he was fired just before the Beatles’ meteoric rise to superstardom, but Ringo Starr was clearly a far better drummer. The killing off of Spinal Tap drummers, while the band is struggling to cement their success, seems to symbolize this revolving door of drummers prior to a band’s striking it big commercially. Best must have felt ‘killed’ by the Beatles when he was fired.
Though Tap is soldiering on in their American tour, playing songs like “Big Bottom” (musically represented by a lot of bottom–David, Nigel, and regular bassist Derek Smalls [Shearer] all playing bass, keyboardist Viv Savage [Kaff] playing synth bass, and Shrimpton hitting a preponderance of tom-toms), the business end is having difficulties. Gigs are being cancelled, and Smell the Glove‘s release is being delayed over its controversial cover.
Bobbi Flekman (played by Fran Drescher), artist relations for Polymer Records, complains to Tap’s manager, Ian Faith (Hendra), about the cover, which shows the sexual degradation of a naked woman on all fours, with a dog collar on her neck and a glove shoved in her face to smell. Neither Ian nor the band can understand what is so offensive about the cover, since they–addled by their sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll hedonistic lifestyle–cannot fathom the idea that women are actually autonomous human beings with hearts and feelings.
Flekman argues that the Beatles were able to release a top-selling album with a cover that was nothing but white. (What’s ignored here, of course, is that The White Album, like any Beatles album, is guaranteed good music, unlike the sleazy nonsense that Tap produces, something trashed by the music critics.)
Next, Flekman discusses the cover with Ian and the band from a business angle. Both Sears and Kmart won’t sell the album because of the cover. Now, the issue isn’t so much the sexism of the cover, but rather how hard it will be to sell the album when so many conservative stores won’t sell one with a “sexy” cover. She argues that they could have pressed the stores to take the album if Tap’s previous work had been more successful. Sexism wouldn’t matter so much if sales were better, apparently. (Of course, the herpes sores on the lips of David, Nigel, and Derek suggest that the three lads have been made to smell the ‘glove,’ as it were, of a certain female.)
In any case, Smell the Glove ends up being The Black Album, though without an interesting cover, be it a sleazy one or not, it is doomed to poor sales. Apparently, a sexist/sexy album cover would have resulted in better sales after all, and that’s part of the satirical point of the movie. Good sales are valued more than good art. “Death sells,” as Ian says in his defence of the ridiculously nondescript death-black cover, but sex sells far better.
Attempts by Spinal Tap to incorporate high art into their music are vitiated by their tasteless expression of lust and their pandering to the lowest common denominator. Examples of this incompatible merging of high and low include Nigel’s pretty piano trilogy in D-minor called “Lick My Love-Pump,” the inexplicable quotation, on Nigel’s lead guitar, from the minuet in Luigi Boccherini‘s String Quintet in E Major in the otherwise meat-and-potatoes hard rock song, “Heavy Duty,” and the pompous way “Rock and Roll Creation” and “Stonehenge” incorporate elements bordering on, if not lapsing into, prog rock (e.g., changes in time signature, guitar leads with an arpeggiated diminished 7th chord…for that ‘classical’ effect, etc.).
As far as the lyrics of Tap’s songs are concerned, Derek’s ludicrous characterization of David and Nigel as “poets,” like Byron or Shelley, would be more accurately described, in the comic achievement of Guest, McKean, Shearer, and Reiner, as brilliantly cretinous. In a similar vein, Derek absurdly praises “Sex Farm” as taking “a sophisticated view of the idea of sex…on a farm.” All of this, on the musical and lyrical level, satirizes the contradictions between aspiring to higher forms of art and pandering to vulgar tastes for the sake of making more money.
Connected with this satire of the incompatibility of higher art with vulgar tastes–the incongruity of artistic freedom with churning out a product that sells–is the contradiction between musicians who have an obvious spark of talent and drug users’ dimwittedness. Note Nigel wanting to demonstrate a guitar’s sustain without even plucking a note; or his belief that the number eleven is what makes an amp louder than ten; and–upon realizing that making a woman the sexual submissive, rather than doing so with the boys in the band, is what was so offensive about the original Smell the Glove cover–Nigel’s and David’s musing of the “fine line between stupid and clever.” In spite of Bill Hicks‘s insistence that great music was made by people really high on drugs, I don’t think I’m being controversial in saying that drugs’ overuse doesn’t help with normal mental functioning–remember what happened to Syd.
David’s girlfriend, Jeanine Pettibone (Chadwick), comes to see him, and Nigel’s nose is out of joint. Ian won’t be happy with what he sees as her meddling, either. Her arrival, which coincides with that of Smell the Glove, or The Black Album, is significant, for her involvement is a parody of Yoko Ono’s involvement with the Beatles, right around the time when The White Album came out, from which John Lennon said, “the break-up of the Beatles can be heard on that album.” The unfair blame put on Ono for the break-up of the Beatles is parodied and paralleled by the sexist animosity Nigel and Ian shower on Jeanine, since Tap comes dangerously close to breaking up themselves.
Tap’s cheap pandering to whatever the musical trends of the time happen to be is reflected in the chameleonic changes in their style over the years with both the Thamesmen and Tap. After their mid-60s blues-rock pastiche, “Gimme Some Money,” the Thamesmen switched to psychedelic rock with “Cups and Cakes,” reminiscent of songs like Strawberry Alarm Clock‘s “Incense and Peppermints” and the Beatles’ “Penny Lane.”
When Nigel and David changed the band’s name to Spinal Tap, the pandering to current trends continued with “(Listen to the) Flower People,” just in time for the Summer of Love. And just as Black Sabbath shifted away from the peace-and-love hippie scene, preferring dark, Satanic themes, so did Tap replace its hippie audience with a heavy metal fanbase, as can be heard in the Tony Iommi style of the evil tritone chord progression opening “Rock and Roll Creation,” over which Nigel adds Iommi-style blues licks.
Though the fictional discography of Tap would date the album, The Gospel According to Spinal Tap (or Rock ‘n’ Roll Creation, with its cover design parodying Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti), in 1977, when punk rock’s and new wave’s return to simple, three-to-four minute songs made the more pompous arrangements of the early 70s anachronistic, I for that reason would date the album back about five years earlier.
Similarly, I’d date “Big Bottom” about ten years after the given release date of 1970, and “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” at least five to seven years later than the given 1974 date (after all, a song with similarly controversial subject matter, by the musically talented but despicable Ted Nugent, came out–“Jailbait“–in 1981). The release of “Sex Farm” in 1980 sounds about right, since its lyrics’ lewd subject matter sounds like a parody of AC/DC’s cock rock lyrics.
All of this pandering to the popular tastes of the time, a dumbing-down intensified with the tasteless lewdness of the lyrics, reinforces the film’s satirical targeting of music for money, a sacrificing of art on the gold altar of capitalism.
The cheap appealing to sexuality continues with our understanding that there are “armadillos” in the tight trousers of David, Nigel, and Derek…though in the embarrassing airport metal detector scene, we seem to know why Derek’s surname is what it is. Just as Tap’s artistic aspirations and pretensions are phony, so is their swaggering sex appeal.
Indeed, the band’s career is less about art than it is about partying, as we can see on the face of Viv Savage during Tap’s performance of “Heavy Duty.” (Seriously, moviegoers must be wondering how to get in contact with the wasted keyboardist’s drug dealer–Viv’s obviously on really good shit! Is his dealer still alive? Hope springs eternal!)
Problems at the business end continue when a planned album signing of Smell the Glove in a record store results in no fans showing up. Ineffectual Polymer Records promoter Artie Fufkin (played by Paul Shaffer) blames himself, but the problem goes far beyond him and even Tap’s similarly incompetent manager. The satirical point behind the film is that a band so dedicated to pandering, instead of to music as art, doesn’t deserve to be successful.
The comedy of This Is Spinal Tap hits so close to home–“It’s funny ’cause it’s true!”–that a number of rock stars (e.g., Steven Tyler) who saw the film failed to see the humour in it. Being lost backstage at a gig, and being unable to find the stage, is a common problem for rockers, which should be easy to understand when one considers how a band goes to so many different gigs, all for such brief times, that they can’t be expected to know the–I can imagine–often labyrinthine structure of the halls in these buildings.
Just as John Lennon allowed Yoko Ono to give her input during the Beatles’ recording sessions, thus angering the other three through Lennon’s breaking of the rule of not allowing girlfriends or wives in, so does David allow Jeanine to interfere, thus annoying Nigel and Ian. Her absurd idea of putting makeup on the band members’ faces, to represent their astrological signs, is an obvious sendup of Kiss.
The very song, “Stonehenge,” is a great poking of fun at the growing “Englishness” of pop and rock since the British Invasion, as is the American comedy trio of Guest, McKean, and Shearer doing British accents (just as, on the other side of the coin, it was common for British rockers to be “fake Americans”. That would explain Nigel’s pronunciation of “semi” and Derek’s “zipper”. Jeanine says “airplane” and not “aeroplane”, and pronounces exit ‘egg-sit’ instead of the British ‘ex-it’).
This mocking of British pomposity is augmented not only through the inclusion of a Stonehenge monument onstage, but its careless measurement of 18 inches instead of the correct 18 feet. Nigel’s playing of a mandolin towards the end of the disastrous performance–with the miniature monument in danger of being trampled by a nearby dancing dwarf–adds to the pomposity in its implied parody of folk rock moments by bands like Jethro Tull.
Another example of Spinal Tap aiming for high artistry, but failing hilariously, is in Nigel’s guitar solos. The example given shows him ‘shredding‘ with his left and right hands so badly out of sync, it’s as if the distance between them were as wide as that of the Grand Canyon. Even more absurd is the self-indulgent noise he makes, a parody of Jimmy Page’s bowed guitar (see here, starting at about 11:30, for an example), not with a bow, but with a violin!
Ian’s quitting Tap can be compared with the death of Brian Epstein, since with these managers out of the picture, the bands they were holding together would then begin to fall apart, as we see when Nigel suddenly quits out of frustration at the Air Force base gig.
Ian’s and Nigel’s misogynistic attitude towards Jeanine’s growing involvement in the band’s affairs is topped by David’s saying that her help won’t be compensated for with any remuneration, an interesting irony considering how henpecked he is by his girlfriend.
More satiric examples of rock’s pretentious attempts at high art come with Tap’s performance of “Jazz Odyssey” in front of a festival crowd, who have no patience to hear a tedious and poorly-planned improvisational jam. Later, when it really seems as though Tap is soon to end, David and Derek discuss a few ‘high art’ projects they haven’t had time to do because of their full-time commitment to the band: a musical based on Jack the Ripper (Saucy Jack), and David’s acoustic guitar pieces played with the London Philharmonic. It’s easy to see how they “envy” themselves with such absurd ideas that will never get off the ground.
With the band’s future seeming moribund, Nigel reappears before the next gig with news from Ian that “Sex Farm” is on the charts in Japan. When no one else will have Tap, Japan will save them. So Nigel is back in the band, and they all fly to the Far East.
During a resulting concert there, we see a few examples of racist and sexist humour, the kind one wouldn’t think filmmakers would be able to get away with today. First, Japanese fans in the audience are all seen moving their arms, with pointed fingers, in the air to the beat, suggesting the Asian stereotype of mass conformity. After this, we see at the show that Ian has returned as manager, and Jeanine is sitting with a book and keeping her mouth shut as he stands by her, watching with his cricket bat, as if ready to whack her with it if she dares open her mouth.
I’m guessing that–apart from there being plenty of shots of the Japanese fans enjoying the show most individualistically after the stereotyped shot, and apart from our understanding that Ian is no less incompetent a manager than Jeanine (though as a professional, he shouldn’t be, while her inexperience makes her mistakes perfectly understandable)–the racism and sexism are deflated elsewhere in the film through its acknowledgement of these issues as serious problems (i.e., the original cover design for Smell the Glove, and Di Bergi asking if Tap’s music, with its mostly white audience, is racist…not so if Tap is now big in Japan!).
Another example of the film’s satirizing of capitalism’s degenerative effect on art is David’s purchasing of a set of tapes called The Namesake Series, on which famous people with the same surnames as those of famous authors read their books. The reciters get increasingly absurd in their incongruity with the writers they’re reading (i.e., McLean Stevenson reading Robert Louis Stevenson, and Julius Erving reading Washington Irving).
As the end credits are rolling, Di Bergi asks each member of Tap what he’d do if he wasn’t in rock-and-roll. Derek says he’d work with children (Doesn’t he already?). David says he’d be “a full-time dreamer.” Shrimpton is fine without rock-and-roll, as long as there are still sex and drugs in his life. Viv Savage says he’d “get stupid” and make a fool of himself in public. Nigel says he’d sell hats.
Note how none of them say they’d take their creative instincts into other avenues of expression. (In contrast, when Captain Beefheart and Grace Slick retired from music, they focused on the visual arts.) Without rock-and-roll, and their attempts to pander to vulgar tastes to make money off of it, these five guys would either have a regular, mundane job selling a product or service (I assume Derek would become a grade school teacher), or just be a wasted slacker or a rake.
These seem to be the options that a capitalist society offers the working class: as an artist, be a panderer; otherwise, do a dull nine-to-five job (if you like the hours), or be a ‘loser.’
The market is so free, isn’t it?
Infinite Ocean 