The 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap didn’t just break the fourth wall; it practically smashed it to rubble, leaving rock stars to lick their wounds from being satirized in such a painfully and hilariously accurate way. To the average audience member, the movie was a comical amalgamation of previous (real) documentaries, like The Last Waltz and The Song Remains the Same. Additionally, the film, which followed around the fictional heavy metal band, Spinal Tap, played off the 1978 satirical film All You Need Is Cash, which centers around a Beatles-esque group called The Rutles.
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The efficacy of Spinal Tap’s dry, self-effacing humor was an instant success, developing a cult following in the years that followed. But to musicians, the mockumentary was so close to the real thing that it didn’t feel like satire. It just felt like too-close-to-home teasing.
These Rock Stars Weren’t Fans of ‘This Is Spinal Tap’
Rob Reiner’s 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap follows a fake British heavy metal band called Spinal Tap while they’re on an American tour. In true mockumentary fashion, the beauty of the humor in This Is Spinal Tap is in its understatedness. The dry delivery of objectively ridiculous lines is what makes the film so funny to so many people. But for some rock stars, it hit a little too close to home.
“Funny thing about Spinal Tap,” Ozzy Osbourne said in an interview with Conan O’Brien. “When I went to see it, I was the only person in the audience that wasn’t laughing because it really was like a documentary to me. Those things actually happen. Everybody would go, ‘Oh! Ha, ha, number eleven.’ That happened. When they got lost going to the stage, that happened.’”
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler had a similar take. In an interview with Joe Smith digitized by the Library of Congress in 2012 (via Rolling Stone), Tyler recalled making lavish food requests during the height of his rock ‘n’ roll excess. He said the band would request things like a whole turkey, adding, “No gravy, no stuffing, just real meat. I would come in after coming offstage, and I’d have 12 ounces of Jack in me and half a gram, sweating profusely, and I would see that tray, and I would go, ‘Yeeow!’ and just turn the thing right over. That would feel good to me. That felt real good.”
“That movie [This Is Spinal Tap] bummed me out,” Tyler continued, “because I thought, ‘How dare they? That’s all real, and they’re mocking it.’” (To be fair, the backstage mini-bread scene is definitely mocking stories like Tyler’s. “It does disturb me, but I’ll rise above it. I’m a professional.”)
The Bands That Inspired a Reboot 41 Years Later
This Is Spinal Tap has remained a cult classic since its 1984 release. Four decades later, Rob Reiner and the heavy metal trio of Christopher Guest (David St. Hubbins), Michael McKean (Nigel Tufnel), and Harry Shearer (Derek Smalls) reprised their role for a sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. One week after Spinal Tap’s second mockumentary was released, director Reiner (who plays Marty DiBergi in the films) visited Late Night with Seth Meyers to discuss the reboot. In an ironic twist, the same kinds of rock stars who bristled at This is Spinal Tap were, once again, the very artists that inspired the film’s sequel.
“We weren’t going to do this unless the movie would stand alone,” Reiner said. “If you’ve seen the first [movie], it helps a little bit. You’ll get some of the references. But if you haven’t, the movie works because it’s about four guys. Rock ‘n’ rollers who are aging, and that seems to be going on like crazy. Rolling Stones, The Who, and Roger Daltrey. Oasis got back together. They’re all doing it. So, we thought, ‘What premise could we work out that could work, actually, from a very real standpoint?’”
In the cult classic sequel, Spinal Tap reunites for one final obligatory performance. Rock ‘n’ roll hilarity ensues. And although rock stars like Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne are sadly not around to see the follow-up to the 1984 mockumentary, we’d imagine there will still be some veterans of the 1970s and 80s rock scene who feel a bit miffed at being the butt of the joke again, four decades later.
Photo by Debra Trebitz/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
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