If I recall correctly, I remember first seeing “This is Spinal Tap” with my mother shortly after its 1984 release at a lavish movie theatre on West 57th, just down the road a piece from Carnegie Hall. As an avowed heavy metal acolyte, then as now, I was particularly impressed that Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean had gone the extra mile in their satire by actually writing, recording and performing all original music for the film and its accompanying soundtrack album (which, I believe, I went out and bought the same day). They cut no corners.
Clumsily marketed as some sort of slapstick endeavor (the original poster actually featured a guitar twisted into a pretzel mimicking the poster for Zucker-Abrams-Zucker’s “Airplane”), “This is Spinal Tap” was a thousand times more nuanced and clever than just a string of cheap gags. Written with a genuine reverence for the music it was parodying, the film hit a little too close to home for several musicians (I believe Gene Simmons says he can’t watch it to this day). It was also a watershed moment not only for Christopher Guest (who’d go onto write and release similarly studied parodies like “Best in Show” and “Waiting for Guffman”) but in popular culture writ large — whether tongue-in-cheek or not, it birthed the concept of (and officially coined the term)… “rockumentary.”
I remember unapologetically putting tracks from the `Tap album — notably “Hell Hole,” “Big Bottom” (an all-bass composition that predated my beloved Cop Shoot Cop by five or so years), “Tonight We’re Gonna Rock You Tonight,” “Stonehenge" and “Sex Farm,” to name my favorites — on several mix tapes, sandwiched between songs by bona fide metal bands singing no-less-ridiculous songs like “Looks That Kill,” “Number of the Beast, “All Men Play on Ten,” “Balls to the Wall" and “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast).” I was entirely onboard team Spinal Tap, and even snapped up their Christmas single, “Christmas with The Devil.”
Thirty-eight (!!!) years later, the film, for the most part, still holds up, its iconic lines like “Hello, Cleveland,” “Mime is money,” “These go to Eleven” and “Have a Good Time, All the Time!” having been fully baked into the pop cultural vernacular. Comedy, culture and music have all changed so much in the ensuing decades that it can’t help, in parts, seeming like a dated period piece, but I don’t believe its creators ever expected it to have the longevity it attained.
This all said … while I am a “Spinal Tap” fan for life, … it very assuredly does NOT need a sequel.
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