SPINAL TAP : Mock ‘n’ Roll Reunion

They get second-billed to puppet shows. Their drummers spontaneously explode. The 1984 documentary movie “This Is Spinal Tap” made them the laughingstock of the music world. But the group that lays claim to the title “one of England’s loudest bands” is back with “A Spinal Tap Reunion” airing New Year’s Eve on NBC.

Based around the group’s triumphant Royal Albert Hall performances earlier this year, the performance was “an old-fashioned show, like a barn-raising,” the group’s members say. The one-hour special is a distillation of a two-hour home video to be released next year.

Controversy, or at least confusion, is the band members’ watchword. Their label would only release their risque “Smell the Glove” album with an all-black cover. Their most recent “Break Like the Wind” CD--issued in an ultra-long box, “so there’d be more you could recycle”--irked environmentalists.

Most recently, core band members Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls have had to refute rumors that they are actually impostors, played by satirists Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, respectively. It was in this atmosphere that the plucky, if rather testy, Brits sat for a recent interview with Jim Washburn in their manager’s LA office.

*

Why has Spinal Tap turned to the television medium?

Tufnel: As opposed to what? What’s left?

Smalls: Optical fiber? We tried telephones. We’ve got two bloody 900 numbers and no one ever calls.

Tufnel: Pretty much everyone’s on television now.

St. Hubbins: U2 actually just did a special. You can’t get too much bigger than U2 as far as marketplace you know.

Smalls: Or GM. They’re on telly, too.

St. Hubbins: You mean Guns ‘N Moses? I don’t look down on TV. You know I live in the states, in Pomona, Calif., and all we’ve got is TV. Oh, we’ve got a new area code too. I can’t remember it though.

Tufnel: Quite simply, we wanted to do the special to show what we’ve been doing since the film, and the Albert Hall concert we did. If we’d done another film it would have been...

St. Hubbins: ... too redundant.

Smalls: Too bloody redundant.

*

What induced NBC to carry the special?

St. Hubbins: I think they’re terrified that they’re going to wind up being Number 4. For the first of the top three to be Number 4 must be a terrifying prospect. So I think they’re just panicking. They’re grasping at straws. And we happen to be straw-like.

Smalls: See, they knew we’d been on “The Simpsons.” They thought when they bought the show that we were going to be animated.

St. Hubbins: And we were hoping they’d be the same.

*

Didn’t you all die on “The Simpsons” episode you did?

St Hubbins: You know in cartoons you can die and come back. It’s like the Itchy and Scratchy characters in that very same show. They’re always dying. The cat’s always being mutilated and killed, yet he’s always back again, hale and hearty for the next mutilation.

Smalls: Much like us.

St. Hubbins: Death is a cartoon tradition, really.

Smalls: The “little death.”

St. Hubbins: But a bit less messy.

*

Is it ever difficult to distinguish your onstage roles from reality?

Tufnel: You have to make your own reality. Then it becomes your own surrea ... what’s that word? Surreality. If you’re in a band it’s really like suspended reality (he extends pinched fingers to illustrate). If you hold up a little baby...

Smalls: By what, his eyelashes?

Tufnel: No, I’m just saying the word “rock” is not often touched by pink hands.

St. Hubbins: What about Elton John then?

Smalls: Our relationship to reality is live and let live.

St Hubbins: That’s right. We don’t bother it, it doesn’t bother us.

*

Haven’t you had some problems with American TV in the past?

Smalls: “American Bandstand” wouldn’t let us on in 1984 because our single was called “Hell Hole.” They’d only let us say the “hole” part.

St. Hubbins: How times have changed.

Smalls: Yes. Now we could say “hell” but we couldn’t say “hole.”

St. Hubbins: And also there was the “Christmas at Sea World” special we attempted. But really that was star-crossed. It just didn’t work out. It’s just there was a dolphin that fell in love with this one (pointing to Tufnel) and wouldn’t leave him alone. We couldn’t shoot anything.

Tufnel: The opening of the show was sort of us up to our knees in the wading pool and we were playing and this bottlenosed dolphin, he comes and starts rubbing me. We thought it was cute. They make that awk awk noise. But it got quite serious as he was sporting a chubby and it couldn’t be shown on TV. What magazine is this for, by the way?

*

TV Times.

Tufnel: Oh, that’s where they’ve got all those numbers, zip codes after the program listings, to program your VCR.

Smalls: What confuses me is you look up “90210” and it’s got a different number from the show, so why not just have it be “90210” to save you remembering?

St. Hubbins: I didn’t understand it. I kept trying to dial the numbers on the telephone, thinking that they would program your VCR for you. They don’t do that.

*

Do you feel TV has a certain power, and with it a certain responsibility?

St. Hubbins: Yes, you can’t touch the back end.

Tufnel: No, he means the material that comes across it. It’s probably the most powerful thing in the world.

Smalls: NBC was very good to us and didn’t mess with the show very much, but they did say that there’s one song we could not do on the air, which was “Christmas With the Devil” because they were afraid of the power.

Tufnel: They said that so many people presented with what they said was a satanistic message might cause the revolution or rioting of some sort. Of course, it’s not a satanist song at all.

Smalls: We’re not advocating anything, you know. It’s not like we’re telling you that you should believe this. Man’s relationship with the Supreme Evil One is a very private affair. It’s your own business. The song is just a depiction, imagining what’s happening with Satan at this time of year.

St. Hubbins: I mean, we know what Perry Como is doing this time of year.

Smalls: We know what Andy Williams is doing.

Tufnel: It’s a question planted in your mind of, “I wonder what he’s doing? Is he sitting at home alone? Is he looking at a little magazine?”

St. Hubbins: Does he get any cards?

Smalls: Does he feel sorry for himself?

Tufnel (turning wisftul): He probably hears children playing in the street and he goes to the window and looks down, and they look up...

St. Hubbins: ... And he rips the souls out of their eyes.

*

How did the Spinal Tap reunion come about?

Tufnel: The one thing that brought us together was the death two-and-a-half years ago of our ex-manager Ian. His funeral was like a magnet to us, the one thing we could all rejoice in.

St. Hubbins: He was a lying cheat, see? Ian died a wealthy man, yet he stuck us with the bill for the buffet at the funeral. Lovely spread, though.

Tufnel: The one final moment, which was gleeful, was just everyone standing over the open casket and flicking his nose in the coffin. It’s something you’ve always wanted to do, you know, and we did with a vengeance. And the funny thing was it still shook a bit. It wasn’t rigor mortized.

St. Hubbins: Well that goes away. Rigor mortis clears up. It’s a fleeting thing. Love and rigor mortis.

Tufnel: After the funeral we went back to my flat, picked up some acoustic guitars and it was zip, right back in. We’d played so long before that ...

Smalls: ... it’s like riding a bicycle.

St. Hubbins: You have to roll up one pant leg.

Tufnel: And your bum gets sensitive.

*

How does it feel to see young bands prospering from things you pioneered?

Tufnel: It’s flattering and a nightmare at the same time.

Smalls: Metallica said thanks for the idea of the all-black album cover. Well, how about a bit of money off it?

St. Hubbins: It’s the same as the old days, like with the old blues guys. People like Elvis Presley cashed in while old guys like Blind Willie Dixon got nothing.

Smalls: He wasn’t blind!

St. Hubbins: Well, he was vague.

*

Since your show is airing on New Year’s Eve, do you have any New Year’s thoughts?

Tufnel: So many people are depressed and think they have to have a good time going to parties and drinking bubbly stuff. For me, I make it a day when I forget about all that stuff and just have a very quiet day. So I would say just, ‘Sit down ... Sit down. Stay down.’

Smalls: In Britain the film “This Is Spinal Tap” has become a bit of a tradition on New Year’s Eve, when the BBC shows it. It seems to me maybe we’re staking our claim to a holiday. We’ll be like the Guy Lombardo of the new generation. Every New Year’s Eve we’ll pop up again. So my hope for the New Year is that you’ll have to watch us again next year.

*

What does the future hold for Spinal Tap?

Tufnel: Who ever knows.

Smalls: Wherever the music leads us next is where we’ll be.

St. Hubbins: But we’ll be back! Wherever the music takes us, we’ll be back.

“A Spinal Tap Reunion” airs Thursday at 10 p.m. on NBC.