11 Things You Never Knew About Spinal Tap

With the exception of the peerless ‘Airplane’, which came out four years earlier, no comedy movie from the 1980s has aged better, or seemed more ahead of its time than the Rob Reiner-directed slice of utter celluloid genius that is ‘This is Spinal Tap.’

Written by Reiner together with old college friends Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, the genre-defining mockumentary was the rock film that spawned not just a raft of catchphrases, but also a real-life band that went on to play Wembley Arena and Glastonbury.

Forty years after it was released it remains a constantly laugh-out-loud film, one that still somehow gets better with each watch; a masterful mix of exploding drummers, druids, mini Stonehenges, trying to appear well-endowed with a cucumber wrapped in tin foil and getting completely lost on the way to the stage.

But how well do you know your Spinal Tap? Can you spot a shark sandwich from a love pump?

Here are 11 things you never knew about one of the funniest films in history…

1) The band once opened for themselves and managed to get booed off

Shearer, McKean and Guest weren’t by any means done after Spinal Tap, going on to make a few of the finest comedy movies of all time done in much the same style. One of these was the brilliant 2003 ‘folkumentary’ A Mighty Wind, which saw the trio feature as The Folksmen - a gentle acoustic three-piece.

It was their alter egos The Folksmen that the members of Spinal Tap decided to have as a support band on their 1992 tour to promote their album “Break Like the Wind” - including a gig at the Royal Albert Hall. The heavy metal fans of New York City weren’t enamoured with the openers however, not realising they were watching their heroes out of costume, they proceeded to roundly boo them off stage.

2) Spinal Tap inspired the boy wizard himself, Mr Harry Potter

Strange as it may seem, the cupboard-dwelling, wand-waving pan-global phenomenon that is Harry Potter was indirectly influenced by the adventures of David St Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls.

Author JK Rowling took inspiration from the curse affecting numerous Spinal Tap drummers - two exploded, one died in a ‘self-inflicted gardening accident’, one choked on vomit (someone else’s) - and worked it into her schoolboy wizard world. Every year at Hogwarts, pupils find themselves faced with a new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, which Rowling told the BBCl show QI was a lift from the ill-fated tub thumpers in the metal movie.

3) It made at least one member of U2 cry

Although a lot of musicians have stated how much they love Spinal Tap (Seattle rockers Pearl Jam for instance have referenced the film when discussing the fact they had five different drummers in the 1990s) for some it just hits a little bit too close to home.

U2’s Bono had his own Tap-style moment of rock muppetry when he got stuck inside a giant lemon on stage several times during the PopMart tour, sometimes with the rest of the band. One on occasion they managed to climb out of the back of it, but at a gig in Japan got permanently sealed inside.

And the film affected guitarist The Edge in a more emotional way, with the behatted axeman saying: “if you've ever seen that movie Spinal Tap, you will know how easy it is to parody what we all do. The first time I ever saw it, I didn't laugh. I wept. I wept because I recognised so much and so many of those scenes.”

4) The film is the only title on IMDB to be rated out of 11

While every other film on the Internet Movie Database gets a score out of 10, Spinal Tap of course has a rating that goes up to 11 to celebrate Nigel Tufnell’s infamous amp.

The movie currently bags a 7.9/11 on the site (a low score in our opinion, it’s definitely better than Whiplash) and has in the past reached the dizzying heights of 8.

It fares better on Rotten Tomatoes though, with a solid 96%.

5) The film is heavily influenced by Bob Dylan

One of the major inspirations for the team behind Tap was the 1967 D.A. Pennebaker film Don’t Look Back, which followed Bob Dylan behind the scenes as he toured the world getting roundly booed for daring to use an electric guitar. Another was The Last Waltz, Martin Scorcese’s epic concert movie about Dylan’s backing band (The Band) as they bowed out among the biggest names in the business.

But one of the best moments in Spinal Tap came from an incident that happened to Tom Petty (later Dylan’s bandmate in the Travelling Wilburys.) Petty was about to play a gig in Germany in the late 1970s but got completely lost on his way to the stage, a camera following him going through wrong door after wrong door before finally arriving at a deserted outdoor tennis court.

6) Almost every line of the film is entirely improvised

Incredibly for a film in which almost every scene contains a line that is eminently quotable for one reason or another, nearly all of the dialogue was thought up by the actors off the cuff while filming.

Although the team behind Spinal Tap had the main idea and framework for the film for a number of years, it was decided that the best way to get the funniest material was simply to come up with situations for the band and see what happened. It resulted in over 100 hours of footage that then had to be painstakingly edited down.

Initially, Spinal Tap came from a sketch that Reiner, Guest, McKean and Shearer had come up with in 1978 for a comedy show. It was there that the characters David St Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel were born, the latter named after the ‘typically English’ Tufnell Park.

7) It landed one of the stars the world’s hottest woman

So sexually irresistible was guitarist Nigel Tufnel, who wouldn’t let people even look at his guitar and penned such incredibly emotional songs as the mournful D Minor masterpiece “Lick My Love Pump”, that he managed to pull a bonafide Hollywood superstar.

Ok, so not exactly the case, but in the early 1980s Jamie Lee Curtis was one of the most lusted-after women in movies thanks to a jaw-dropping turn in Trading Places. When she saw a photo of Christopher Guest in Rolling Stone dressed as Tufnell complete with mullet and skeleton vest, she demanded to know who he was and be put in touch with him.

Although Guest did receive her number, he didn’t call her and it wasn’t until later that they met and married.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984) Metal Detector - YouTube

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8) The actors voiced their own hidden easter eggs in the film

A genuine stand-out scene in Spinal Tap sees the band, who are on a tour of the States, arrive at an airport and make their way through security, only to be held up by bassist Derek Smalls, resplendent in a Shrewsbury Town FC shirt, constantly setting off the metal detector.

After being scanned several times and removing all his jewellery, he reluctantly reveals the cucumber wrapped in tinfoil that he has secreted down his trousers and is allowed to proceed. But one thing most viewers are unaware of is that the voices making tannoy announcements in the background belong to the main three actors - albeit without the English accents they put on for the rest of the film.

9) Spinal Tap were accused of bugging a tour bus

So close to the bone were many of the antics of Spinal Tap that many musicians believed it to be a documentary: the late, great Ozzy Osbourne for example was convinced the ‘Big Bottom’ trio were real until persuaded otherwise, admitting it “seemed quite tame compared to what we got up to!”

That’s nothing compared to the reaction from ‘70s London heavy rockers Foghat though, who saw themselves so thoroughly reflected in the movie that they directly accused the production team of planting bugs on their tour bus to find inspiration.

10) You can find the legendary ‘amp that goes to 11’ right here in the UK

Probably the most famous guitar amp in music history, Nigel Tufnel’s custom Marshall unit that goes to 11 (“Does that mean it’s louder?... Well, it’s one louder isn’t it”) is, fantastically, currently sitting in a lobby in Milton Keynes.

Marshall’s UK Headquarters and museum is home to the legendary ‘JMP’ head, where it resides alongside similar equipment from such rock luminaries as Motorhead’s Lemmy and Slash from Guns and Roses. Their ones only go to 10 though, obviously.

You’ll also find the first guitar amp that founder Jim Marshall ever made.

And finally for an encore…

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues - Official Trailer - Only In Cinemas September 12 - YouTube

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11) 2025 is the year we will finally see a sequel

After four decades, Rob Reiner is bringing a proper sequel back to cinemas. Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues hits cinemas on September 12th, with a host of cameos and plenty of the original faces back for more metal mayhem.

While there was a promotional film made in the early 90’s titled “The Return of Spinal Tap”, that was solely made for TV and was more of a concert film rather than another full-scale Mockumentary.

But the new one promises to be a proper throwback to the original, with Guest, McKean and Shearer all returning to get the band back together, alongside Reiner and Fran Drescher from the first film. Bring it on!

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