Spinal Tap

Widely acclaimed as England's loudest and most punctual band, Spinal Tap are a hard rock group who revel in the bombast of heavy metal with a sweaty exuberance that's made them global rock heroes. This accomplishment is all the more remarkable for the fact Spinal Tap is fictional – the group is the creation of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, three actors and comedy writers who are also talented musicians, and turned the tale of the non-existent band's 1982 American tour into the movie This Is Spinal Tap, which was immediately hailed as a comic triumph. Guest, McKean, and Shearer composed and performed the movie's funny-but-accurate songs, and as the film became a cult favorite, the trio occasionally performed live as Spinal Tap and recorded a pair of albums, 1992's Break Like the Wind and 2009's Back From the Dead. In 2025, This Is Spinal Tap spawned a sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, with an accompanying album featuring guest spots from Paul McCartney and Elton John. Spinal Tap's story, as fashioned by its creators, has it that lead singer and guitarist David St. Hubbins and lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel were childhood friends from London's Squatney district who, after playing in separate skiffle combos, joined forces in the beat group the Originals in 1962. When they discovered there was another local band known as the Originals, they re-branded themselves as the New Originals, until the other originals broke up, when they went back to calling themselves the Originals. In the midst of the confusion, the band broke up, and after touring with a second-rate showband, they met drummer John "Stumpy" Pepys, and with the addition of bassist Ronnie Pudding, they became the Thamesmen, who released a single, "Gimme Some Money," in 1965. The single flopped, and they undertook an extensive tour of Belgium, only to discover the song had charted while they were gone. After a dizzying number of name and personnel changes, the lineup of Tufnel, St. Hubbins, Pudding, Pepys, and keyboard player Denny Upham adopted the handle Spinal Tap, and in 1967, they scored a minor hit with a psychedelic number, "Listen To The Flower People," which charted in the U.S. and the U.K. Pudding, who wrote the hit, split to form his own band, and was soon replaced by bassist Derek Smalls, previously with an all-white Jamaican showband titled Skaface. The core triumvirate of Spinal Tap's classic lineup was now complete. Smalls joined the band in the studio as they cut their first album, Spinal Tap Sings Listen To The Flower People and Other Favorites, which went gold on the strength of the titular hit, but the follow-up, We Are All Flower People, went nowhere fast, and they focused on honing their skills as a live act, as documented on their third LP, the live set Silent But Deadly. After its release, drummer Pepys died in a bizarre gardening accident, becoming the first of many Spinal Tap drummers who would die under strange circumstances. In 1975, Viv Savage replaced Denny Upham on keyboards, and as they went through a remarkable number of doomed drummers, they continued to slog it out on the live circuit. In 1977, the single "Nice 'n' Stinky" unexpectedly began picking up airplay in the United States, and they staged their first American tour since the late 1960s. With Mick Shrimpton on drums, the band soon cut a follow-up, Shark Sandwich, and continued their slow-motion conquest of America. In 1982, as Spinal Tap prepared for another round of live dates in the United States, filmmaker Marty DiBergi – a longtime fan who had seen them at a New York club, the Electric Banana, in the 1960s – tagged along to make a "rockumentary" film about the group, which proved to be tumultuous. As for the real life story of Spinal Tap, the non-existent band's history dates back to 1979, when Rob Reiner was hoisting a sketch comedy special called The T.V. Show. In a sketch that parodied the popular rock music series The Midnight Special, Reiner and McKean hatched the idea of a British hard rock group to o would appear on the show. McKean brought in Shearer (who had worked with McKean in the comedy group the Credibility Gap, who wrote and recorded several songs for their 1974 album A Great Gift Idea) and Guest (who had been part of the band for McKean's album with David L. Lander, Lenny & the Squigtones, with Guest already adopting the moniker Nigel Tufnel), with singer and songwriter Loudon Wainwright III and drummer Russ Kunkel filling out the lineup. McKean, Guest, and Shearer all had solid chops in both music and comedy, and with help from Reiner, they revived Spinal Tap for a film project, with Reiner directing and the other three improvising the dialogue and writing and performing the music. Released in 1984, This Is Spinal Tap was well reviewed and soon developed a cult following, especially after it began appearing in cable TV and was issued on home video. (It also became a staple on the tour busses of many rock bands, who understood the misadventures they parodied all too well.) Polydor Records issued a soundtrack album for the film, which allowed fans to hear songs like "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight," "Big Bottom," and "Sex Farm" on their stereos, showing the comics could fashion fake heavy metal songs that could pass for the real thing. Before 1984 was out, Spinal Tap issued a holiday single, "Christmas With The Devil," and as the film's reputation grew, in 1992 Guest, McKean, and Shearer returned to the studio to cut a second Spinal Tap album, Break Like the Wind, which included guest spots from Cher, Joe Satriani, and Jeff Beck (noted for his resemblance to Nigel Tufnel). Guest, McKean, and Shearer took Spinal Tap on the road in support of the album, and on many dates they opened for themselves as a 1960s folk trio, the Folksmen. (The Folksmen would later appear in Guest's 2003 mockumentary A Mighty Wind, with the trio once again writing and performing their own songs.) Their London appearance at the Royal Albert Hall was the basis of a made-for-cable feature The Return of Spinal Tap, which included new comedy material along with the band's performance. They launched another tour in 2001, and in 2007, they reunited to perform as part of the Live Earth concert series, staged to raise awareness of global warming. The core trio next undertook an "Unplugged and Unwigged" tour, where they played acoustic versions of Spinal Tap's "hits" out of costume. The "Unplugged and Unwigged" tour prompted another Spinal Tap album, 2009's Back From the Dead, which included several new songs along with the acoustic re-makes. 2018 saw Shearer (who has released several solo albums of his satiric songs) record a solo LP as Derek Smalls, 2018's Smalls Change (Meditations on Ageing), which included songwriting contributions from David St. Hubbins. Guest, McKean, Shearer and Reiner appeared at a screening of This Is Spinal Tap at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, honoring the movie's 35th anniversary. In 2022, the original film's creative team revealed that they had began work on a sequel to the original movie; the movie Spinal Tap II: The End Continues and its soundtrack album were both issued on September 11, 2025. Both featured contributions from several rock stars far above Spinal Tap's pay grade, including Paul McCartney and Elton John. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi