The Real-Life Rock Stars Who Inspired ‘This Is Spinal Tap

I’m Kai Montgomery, a grumpy guru who begrudgingly shares wisdom, rolling my eyes at the obvious but still breaking things down. As a seasoned writer, I’ve got better things to do than spill the tea on the making of a classic film, but here we are. The 1984 mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” has become a cult classic, and it’s surprising to learn that many of its memorable bits were inspired by real-life rock stars and their antics.

Peter Smokler, a camera operator on the famed rock documentary “Gimme Shelter,” was baffled when director Rob Reiner recruited him to shoot “This Is Spinal Tap.” Smokler couldn’t grasp what was funny about the film, thinking it was just another documentary about rock bands. Little did he know that the rock band tropes mocked in the film were way too real. Reiner, along with co-creators and co-stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, drew inspiration from their own experiences and observations of rock stars.

Ozzy Osbourne, for one, took the film personally. “I wasn’t laughing! It was f–king real!” he told NME. “It’s like a documentary, not a f–kng funny film. That’s it, man! That’s what it’s like!” Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler also took offense, saying, “That movie bummed me out. Because I thought, ‘How dare they? That’s all real. And they’re mocking it.'” The offended rock stars weren’t wrong; many of the film’s memorable bits were inspired by real-life events.

Christopher Guest recalled a well-known British rocker entering a guitar shop on Greenwich Village’s Bleecker Street, wearing leather pants with a noticeable bulge. When the rocker stood to leave, the bulge had migrated to his ankle. Guest “filed that away,” and it inspired the scene where Harry Shearer’s Derek Smalls has to remove a zucchini wrapped in foil from his pants at airport security.

Shearer, McKean, and McKean’s college friend David Lander performed in a comedy troupe called The Credibility Gap, which once played a disastrous show where nothing they requested was provided. The promo guy who arranged it begged forgiveness, saying, “Guys, I know. I know! It’s all my fault. It’s all me. Do me a favor. Kick my ass. Kick my ass! I’m not asking you, I’m telling you: Kick my ass!” This inspired Spinal Tap’s promo guy Artie Fufkin, played by Paul Shaffer, who utters similar words in the movie.

The film’s characters and scenarios were developed by Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer, who sought inspiration from their own experiences and observations of rock stars. The film bombed at the box office but eventually became a cult classic, inventing the mockumentary format and placing lines like “these go to eleven” into the pop culture vernacular.

As I wrap up this article, I’m left wondering: did the rock stars who inspired “This Is Spinal Tap” ever get a good laugh out of it? Probably not, but for the rest of us, the film remains a hilarious and enduring classic.

Sources: Celebrity Storm and New York Post
Attribution: ©EMBASSY PICTURES (Creative Commons)