After Dinner Speakers: Spinal Tap, Bjork, Lou Reed

Spinal Tap was an ambitious dead-on parody of heavy metalÆs clichés and excesses, put on by skilled comic actors who wrote and played their own songs and were big enough fans of the music to satirize it -- however brutally -- with knowing affection. Indeed, the butts of the joke embraced Spinal Tap, who were invited to take part in such all-star hard-rock projects as the 1986 Hear-N-Aid benefit single, and the 1992 London tribute concert to QueenÆs Freddie Mercury. Spinal TapÆs principals were old friends and veteran satirists. Harry Shearer and Michael McKean had been in the early Seventies comedy troupe the Credibility Gap; McKean starred as Lenny in the TV show Laverne and Shirley and Shearer was in the 1984-85 cast of TVÆs Saturday Night Live. Also in that cast, Christopher Guest (a schoolmate of McKeanÆs at New York University) had written for the humor magazine National Lampoon and won an Emmy for his writing on a Lily Tomlin TV special. Spinal Tap, performing "Rock and Roll Nightmare," debuted in a 1978 ABC-TV comedy special, The TV Show, on which Guest, McKean, and Shearer worked with director Rob Reiner. They all began seeking funds for a full-length Spinal Tap film, which took some six years to make. This Is Spinal Tap was directed in semi-improvised form by Reiner (who appeared in the film as director Marty DiBergi, an obvious takeoff on Martin Scorsese, director of The Last Waltz) as a mock-rockumentary on a disastrous Tap tour of the U.S. Guest, McKean, and Shearer skewered all aspects of the rock biz and fomented a long and detailed history of "the loudest band in England," all of whose drummers were cursed to die bizarre, mysterious deaths. Their repertoire featured the near-Kiss of "Tonight IÆm Gonna Rock You Tonight," the virtual Jethro Tull of "Stonehenge" (complete with dancing dwarf Druids), and "Big Bottom," an ode to the female derriere on which Tufnel and St. Hubbins played bass while Smalls played a double-necked bass. Along the way, Tap also spoofed the sounds of the British Invasion ("Gimme Some Money") and psychedelic pop ("[Listen to the] Flower People"), as well as such rock & roll "institutions" as the meddling girlfriend, the sociopathic manager, and the obsequious PR man (played by bandleader Paul Shaffer). Indeed, the film was so sharply understated that some naive moviegoers actually believed they were watching a real film about a real group. Despite universally glowing reviews and an instant, diehard cult, neither This Is Spinal Tap nor its soundtrack album (#121, 1984) was a commercial smash. Still, the movie inspired a book (1984Æs Inside Spinal Tap by Peter Occhiogrosso) and -- after Guest and Shearer did stints in the cast of Saturday Night Live -- an eventual sequels of sorts. Break Like the Wind (#61, 1992) -- with guests Cher, Jeff Beck, Joe Satriani, and Slash of Guns nÆ Roses, and such tracks as "Rainy Day Sun," "The Majesty of Rock," and "Bitch School" (its video got MTV airplay) -- was followed by the TV special "A Spinal Tap Reunion," which mixed concert footage (shot before an adoring London audience) and testimonials by such guest stars as Martin Short, Kenny Rogers, Mel Torme, and GuestÆs wife, Jamie Lee Curtis.