“How much blacker could it be? None, none more black.”
Documentary maker Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) goes on the road with ageing British heavy metal band Spinal Tap and sees them lose drummers, purpose and all sense of self-respect.
The nucleus of Spinal Tap is David St Hubbins (Michael McKean, who played Lenny on the ’70s sitcom Laverne & Shirley) on vocals and guitar, Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) on guitar, Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) on bass and Viv Savage (David Kaff) on keyboards.
Amongst the drummers who perished while in the band were; John ‘Stumpy’ Pepys (Ed Begley Jr.), who died in a bizarre gardening accident; Eric ‘Stumpy Joe’ Childs (Russ Kunkel), who choked to death on vomit – but not his own!; Joe ‘Mama’ Besser (Fred Asparagus), who disappeared under mysterious circumstances and is presumed dead; and Peter ‘James’ Bond (who spontaneously combusted on stage).
Originally formed in 1964 as The Thamesmen (after rejecting the names The Originals and The New Originals), the group had recorded the single Gimme Some Money, before rejecting the names The Doppel Gang, The Ravebreakers, The Silver Service, The Bisquits, The Love Bisquits, and The Tufnel-St Hubbins Group, to become Spinal Tap.
Since their 1967 psychedelic UK hit Listen to the Flower People, the band slowly “evolved” into a heavy-metal combo.
The film starts as Spinal Tap begin their American tour to promote their new album, Smell The Glove. It’s the 17-year-old group’s seventh LP – following such others as Intravenus de Milo, and their concept album, The Sun Never Sweats. But there’s a problem – Polymer Records president Sir Dennis Eton-Hogg doesn’t like the cover and won’t release it.
According to Polymer publicist Bobbi Flekman, the cover – which depicts “a greased woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck and a leash and a man’s arm extended out holding on to the leash and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it” – is “offensive”.
Four years in the making, Reiner’s cripplingly, unerringly funny classic has become the benchmark for spoof cinema. The movie was made for less than $3 million, shot with hand-held cameras in 16mm (and later blown up to 35mm), and improvised as it went along.
As a result, the film has the look, feel and spontaneity of a real rock documentary, mixing concert footage, “candid” interviews and behind-the-scenes action.
Spinal Tap fans treasure favourite routines and lines: Derek Smalls trapped in a stage pod or setting off an airport metal detector with the foil-wrapped pickle in his underpants; the band getting lost backstage as they try to reach an eager audience (“Hello, Cleveland!”); the undersized Stonehenge triptych descending to be “in danger of being crushed by a dwarf”; the blank looks of the band when confronted with their backlist of bad reviews or a radio DJ’s classification of Spinal Tap as “currently residing in the ‘Where Are They Now?’ file”; Nigel taking us on a guided tour of his guitar and amp collection (“These go to eleven”); “It’s called Lick My Love Pump” . . .
And the film features a fine collection of masterly cameos, from Fran Drescher as publicist Bobbi Flekman (her clones are still working in the business) to Bruno Kirby as the Sinatra-loving limo driver, with microbits from Billy Crystal and Dana Carvey as mime waiters (“Mime is money!”).
Copping the Yoko thread from the 1970 film Let It Be, Spinal Tap delivers a genuine plot as childhood friends St Hubbins and Tufnel fall out when David’s girlfriend Jeanine Pettibone (June Chadwick) worms her way into the band as manager, displacing the long-suffering Ian Faith (Tony Hendra), who memorably characterises the dim girl as dressing “like an Australian’s nightmare”.
Her career strategies – worked out with the help of astrological charts – lead to a poorly attended booking at an Air Force dance and a concert at an amusement park where the band is billed below a puppet show.
By the end of the tour (and the film), it seems Spinal Tap has had it. It’s an achievement that after an hour of jokes at the expense of the crassness and stupidity of the group – with hideously accurate parodies of the strutting pretensions of the dinosaurs of rock (Big Bottom, Sex Farm) – the film can manage to wring some emotion out of the threat that the band will break up.
McKean (whose London accent is letter-perfect) has a great acting moment as he becomes so angry and hurt at his friend’s betrayal that he can hardly speak.
Harry Shearer has said, “Some musicians have said they couldn’t watch it, that it was too painful, too realistic . . . that’s the greatest compliment the movie could be paid”.
The band “reunited” in 1992 for the album Break Like The Wind, an accurate depiction of a classic band’s reunion.
David Kaff died on 11 July 2025, at the age of 79.
“I’d be a lot more upset if I wasn’t so heavily sedated”
David St Hubbins (Lead vocals, guitar) Michael McKean
Nigel Tufnel (Guitar, vocals)
Christopher Guest
Derek Smalls (Bass)
Harry Shearer
Viv Savage (Keyboards)
David Kaff Mick Shrimpton R J Parnell
Marty DiBergi
Rob Reiner Ian Faith
Tony Hendra Tommy Pischedda
Bruno Kirby John ‘Stumpy’ Pepys
Ed Begley Jr. Ronnie Pudding
Danny Kortchmar Bobbi Flekman
Fran Drescher Sir Denis Eton-Hogg
Patrick Macnee Jeanine Pettibone
June Chadwick Angelo DiMentibelio
Sandy Helberg Eric ‘Stumpy Joe’ Childs
Russ Kunkel Artie Fufkin
Paul Shaffer Polly Deutsch
Anjelica Huston Joe ‘Mama’ Besser
Fred Asparagus
Director
Rob Reiner
Video
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The nucleus of Spinal Tap is David St Hubbins (Michael McKean, who played Lenny on the ’70s sitcom Laverne & Shirley) on vocals and guitar, Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) on guitar, Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) on bass and Viv Savage (David Kaff) on keyboards.
The film starts as Spinal Tap begin their American tour to promote their new album, Smell The Glove. It’s the 17-year-old group’s seventh LP – following such others as Intravenus de Milo, and their concept album, The Sun Never Sweats. But there’s a problem – Polymer Records president Sir Dennis Eton-Hogg doesn’t like the cover and won’t release it.
Spinal Tap fans treasure favourite routines and lines: Derek Smalls trapped in a stage pod or setting off an airport metal detector with the foil-wrapped pickle in his underpants; the band getting lost backstage as they try to reach an eager audience (“Hello, Cleveland!”); the undersized Stonehenge triptych descending to be “in danger of being crushed by a dwarf”; the blank looks of the band when confronted with their backlist of bad reviews or a radio DJ’s classification of Spinal Tap as “currently residing in the ‘Where Are They Now?’ file”; Nigel taking us on a guided tour of his guitar and amp collection (“These go to eleven”); “It’s called Lick My Love Pump” . . .
Her career strategies – worked out with the help of astrological charts – lead to a poorly attended booking at an Air Force dance and a concert at an amusement park where the band is billed below a puppet show.
