Report: SPINAL TAP Takes Off The Wigs; New Interview Available
April 17, 2009, 15 years ago
CNN's Todd Leopold reports:
"Twenty-five years ago, America discovered "one of England's loudest bands," courtesy of documentarian Marty DiBergi and his film, This Is Spinal Tap.It was all parody - DiBergi was director Rob Reiner, and cohorts Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer played the heavy-metal musicians in SPINAL TAP - but for a fictional band, Spinal Tap has had a long afterlife.
The film gave birth to several catchphrases, including one - "up to 11" - that's made it into the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
There are Web sites devoted to the Tap, including at least one, http://tap-albums.s5.com/, that offers a complete discography of the fictional band's nonexistent albums.
And Guest, McKean and Shearer have never left their spandexed alter egos behind. The band reunited for a 1992 album, Break Like The Wind, and again for a 2001 tour. For the latter, the opening act was another Guest-McKean-Shearer collaboration, the Folksmen from Guest's film A Mighty Wind.
Now Shearer, McKean and Guest are hitting the road again, but not as Spinal Tap or the Folksmen. They're playing... themselves.
"We're trying very hard to get across the idea that this is us, and only us," says Shearer in a phone interview discussing the trio's Unwigged & Unplugged 30-date acoustic tour, which kicks off Friday in Vancouver, British Columbia. "And because we don't often appear as ourselves - because we most often appear as characters - we're trying to dress it up as a treat, a rare treat, to see us as ourselves."The group will be performing both Spinal Tap and Folksmen songs, though, Shearer adds, "[we'll be] doing these songs kind of in a different way because we're approaching them as ourselves and not as these characters."
Have no fear, however, Tap fans: A new album, Back From The Dead, is due out in June.
Shearer took some time out from tour preparations to talk about Spinal Tap's origins, the similarities between Tap and METALLICA, and how 'Start Me Up' became more closely identified with the Folksmen than the ROLLING STONES. The following is an edited version of that interview."
Read more at CNN.com.
