Behind the Wigs: The Return of Spinal Tap

After announcing plans for an "Unwigged & Unplugged Tour" where the members of Spinal Tap — Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer — will take the stage as themselves, the unruly trio of rockers sat down with Rolling Stone to discuss the link between music and comedy, A Hard Day's Night and wigs:

If Spinal Tap were washed up in '84, what are they now?
Michael McKean: Dry cleaned.

Did you all wear wigs in the movie?
Christopher Guest: They were real wigs, and they were cheap-ass wigs.
McKean: I'm wearing my real hair for "Gimme Some Money," when we're playing as the Thamesmen.
Guest: And I'm wearing Michael's hair.
McKean: I sold it to buy him the watch-bob.
Harry Shearer: I was wearing Michael's ass-hair in the movie. I grew my facial hair for the movie, and I grew it for the tour [in 1992] and I got hair extensions for the tour. Worrying about a wig shifting during a two and a half-hour concert is not what I want to be doing.
Guest: It is what I wanted.

You have come together as a trio in various ways over the years. Could you have foreseen this long of a collaboration?
Shearer: Well, the Andrews Sisters weren't available.
McKean: Chris and I have been playing together forever. I was in a group called the Credibility Gap with Harry, and we did some music stuff together. Yeah, there's a nice balance to this trio.
Guest: It's one of many things we do together. To combine the idea of trying to be funny and to play some music is always the best for all of us.

It seems like Spinal Tap started a tradition that's been carried on by Flight of the Conchords and Tenacious D.
Shearer: I think we unleashed the inner-rocker and folky in a lot of people who would otherwise might have kept it to themselves.
Guest: The people who work in comedy that I know, there is often a connection with music. It's weird we haven't seen it even more. But you do need to be able to play and sing and write, so even if you're a comedian and fan of music, it doesn't follow you would be able to do stuff.

Was there something appealing about the material in the music world?
McKean: We had all had experiences in the music business. There were moments of exasperation. Who's running this show, Zippy the Pinhead? There's something about the business of music, all these non-creative people bossing around these semi-creative people. It's an amusing world. The more serious a musical entity takes itself, the bigger a target it makes.
Shearer: At the beginning, we all shared frustration that movies had never — since A Hard Day's Night — gotten rock & roll remotely right. It was insulting people.