‘This Is Spinal Tap’: The Comics Behind the Funniest Rock Movie Ever
Guest had had his own fling with the music business back in the Sixties, after he and McKean had met in a poetry class at New York University. “The first conversation we had was about Michael Bloomfield,” recalled McKean. “We were both marveling at this great sound he had.”
Soon they were sharing an apartment, writing, as Guest puts it, “a series of incredibly indulgent songs”: “Traveling Clowns,” “Molly’s Day at Home,” “Castle by the Sea” and “These Are My Children.” They were also being hustled by shady characters. “Michael and I were brought to an office on Eighth Avenue by some gentlemen of foreign descent who wanted to sign us to a record contract,” said Guest. “The guy, who was called Vito the Snake or something, had a stack of peel-off contracts, the kind you can buy at a stationery store, 300 to a pad. He said, ‘I want you guys to sign this thing, all right. And we’ll do a record, we’ll. . . .’ We thought we would be killed if we didn’t sign.”
Later, Guest played in a band called Voltaire’s Nose, and McKean was briefly in the Left Banke (‘Walk Away Renee”). “It was after their only major success,” he said. “We rehearsed for three months, and then it dissolved. We never actually played anywhere.”
While McKean and Guest were trying their hand at rock & roll, Rob Reiner was performing with the Committee, a West Coast improvisational comedy group. “It seemed like there was a tremendous cross-pollination between the rock & roll world and the improvisational-satire world,” said Reiner. “These rock & roll people were all fascinated by what we did — we improvised onstage — and they were always hanging around: Mama Cass, guys from Blood, Sweat and Tears, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Steve Miller, Janis Joplin.”
By 1970, McKean had also moved to Los Angeles, where he joined Shearer in the Credibility Gap, a popular group of satirists who used the day’s news as the starting point for their comedy. Around the same time, Guest had joined the National Lampoon and was working on such projects as Radio Dinner, Lemmings and That’s Not Funny, That’s Sick! Reiner, of course, became Meathead.
After leaving the Credibility Gap in 1976, McKean got his Laverne & Shirley role. Shearer became involved in feature films, cowriting Real Life and appearing in One-Trick Pony, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh and The Right Stuff (he played one of the government men assigned to recruit the original astronauts). He was also a member of the Saturday Night Live cast during the 1979–1980 season. Guest, who left the Lampoon in 1975, cowrote and starred in The Lily Tomlin Special, for which he won an Emmy, and worked on The Chevy Chase Special.
Though Guest had come up with the Nigel Tufnel character back in 1974, it wasn’t until 1978 that the four men actually began talking about a cinematic rock satire. At the time, Reiner, Guest, Shearer and McKean were working together on a rock & roll parody for an ABC special called The TV Show. Reiner, mimicking Wolfman Jack, introduced Spinal Tap, the band, to the world for the first time; they met the challenge by performing “Rock and Roll Nightmare.”
