This Is Spinal Tap/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Enough to merit its own page, really.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Not only are some of the songs (Stonehenge particularly) fairly awesome, but when you remember that they were written as parodies of real rock songs, they become all the more so.
  • Dude, Not Funny: Many prominent rock musicians of the time saw the film and were not amused, many because they thought that it was an actual documentary.
    • Iron Maiden thought the movie was directly parodying them.
    • Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler is reported by his fellow band members to have completely failed to see any humour in the movie the first time he saw it. Likewise, Eddie Van Halen also found the movie too close to home to be funny -- "Everything in that movie had happened to me".
    • Averted with Lemmy Kilminster of Motorhead who admits enjoying the film for being so close to reality. Then again, Lemmy would be the last man on Earth to take anything too seriously...
    • Similarly averted with Metallica, who chose the cover of The Black Album as a Shout-Out to the movie, and described their joint tour with Guns N' Roses as similar to the movie.
    • The Prince of Darkness himself - Ozzy Osbourne - has claimed that he 'doesn't get' the comedy element of the film -- because he thought it was so realistic, and so much of it had happened to him and his band over the years, that it was a GENUINE documentary!
      • The fact that the only people who don't find it funny seem to be rock stars themselves indicates that this may be more a case of Misaimed Fandom.
    • Mike Mills of REM said that their early tours were "very Spinal Tap", even including playing a gig at an Air Force base.[1]
    • This movie has iconic status among musicians who don't think that it's their biography.
    • Regardless of some artists' egocentrism, some incidents are based on specific events:
      • The miniature "Stonehenge" fiasco was a parody of a gigantic Stonehenge set used on Black Sabbath's Born Again tour.
      • The "lost backstage" incident was based on something that happened to Saxon, although performers of all performing media and genres can attest to similar incidents. It even happened to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers before a football game!
      • Some of the bandmembers were recognizably modeled after real people, notably Nigel Tufnel (Jeff Beck) and Derek Smalls (Steve Dawson of Saxon).
      • The band's career arc is very similar to that of Status Quo, who began around the time of the British Invasion, and evolved into a hard rock band whose popularity by the early 1980s was limited to Britain. Uriah Heep also follows a similar timeline, notably with a dip into Prog Rock similar to Spinal Tap's.
      • Marseille wrote a song which contained the line "Tonight, I'm gonna rock you tonight".
      • Harry Shearer mentions in the DVD Commentary that the Air Force show was specifically a reference to Uriah Heep, whose keyboardist John Sinclair had met the actors just before filming began and told them that Heep had been booked to play an air force base.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Bobbi Flekman. Her character was so popular that an episode of The Nanny revolved around her.
  • Fridge Brilliance: The "Mach" piece. It's a combination of Mozart and Bach, but it's also a mach piece (as in, say mach 5), something the band members would likely call their music, as well as a "mock" piece, because it's not a real song.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: The story about Spinal Taps first drummer dying in a "bizarre gardening accident". On August 5th 1992 the drummer Jeff Porcaro from the American rock band Toto died from what was originally believed to be an allergic reaction to a pesticide he was spraying in his garden. The coroner's report later stated his death was due to heart failure resulting from cocaine abuse.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: The experience making this film actually helped Tony Hendra, who played the manager, get over his suicidal depression. The Power of Rock indeed.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The Life Imitates Art section on the main page.
    • Billy Joel retiring from rock to write classical piano pieces is bizarrely reminiscent of Nigel's own hidden talents.
  • Ho Yay: Nigel seems to have a crush on David. As Roger Ebert noted in his re-review of the film:

Ebert: When Nigel learns that David's girlfriend Jeanine Pettibone is flying over from England to join the tour, his heart sinks. His crush on David is obvious to everyone except, of course, David.

  • Memetic Mutation: "None more black", "Quite exciting this computer magic", etc.
  • Squick: One drummer died choking on vomit. Someone else's vomit.
    • Or so the police officially concluded. As the band correctly observed when relating the incident, they don't really know whose vomit it was, since "you can't really dust for vomit".
    • Probably, that was a rather off-color Shout-Out to Led Zeppelin's John Bonham.. or Jimi Hendrix.. or Bon Scott.. or any of the other rockstars who have died in this manner.
  1. ↑ Though, presumably, not being second-billed to a puppet show.
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