Rob Reiner Reveals the Forgotten Origins of Spinal Tap
Before cranking the amps to 11 and shrinking Stonehenge, Rob Reiner had a vision for a mockumentary that would rock harder, play louder, and take out more drummers than anything Hollywood had ever seen. The filmmaker behind This Is Spinal Tap recently shared how the film and where the band were born.
Reiner, who played documentarian Marty Di Bergi in the film, appeared on the podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name to promote the release of the long-awaited sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. The film reunites the original cast as they reprise their roles of the rockers 40 years after the original, coming together for one final concert.
Hosted by Ted Danson, the episode featured Reiner reflecting on the seminal mockumentary he created in 1984 and sharing how he dreamt up the idea for the parody. Before the filmmaker and former “Meathead” could lay down some lore, Danson had to confess: he had never seen This Is Spinal Tap up until now.
“It’s one of those things that I lied about over the years,” admitted Danson on the podcast. “And I am obsessed with it. I laughed my a** off. It’s amazing. And everyone knows this because everyone else has seen it…Take me through it.”
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“We created it for this TV special I did for ABC called The TV Show, and it was on in 1979. And the show was a satire of all the different things on television: sitcoms, commercials, everything. And one of the things we satirized was a late-night TV rock ‘n’ roll show called Midnight Special.”
“I played Wolfman Jack introducing this band we created for the special called Spinal Tap,” continued Reiner. “They did a song called ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare,’ which was an MTV video-live mix of things.”
“They started improvising off-camera in these British rock ‘n’ roll characters — Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and Christopher Guest — and we thought, ‘Gee, what great characters! It be great to find another venue to explore these characters,'” said the filmmaker. “Then we put it aside. That was that. We went our separate ways. ”
“Harry and I started working on an idea for a movie about the life of roadies,” continued Reiner. “And then we read that there was a movie going to come out called Roadie with Meatloaf. And we said, ‘Okay, forget that.’ We put that aside.”
“Meanwhile, Chris and Michael did a little video of these two British rockers running into each other in a hotel lobby and vaguely remembering that they played in a band together at some point. And they were improvising,” said the storyteller. “They showed us the video and I said, “What a great thing. Instead of a tour told from the roadies’ point of view, what if we do it as the band’s point of view?'”
After that, Spinal Tap was born, much to the eternal dismay of drummers everywhere.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is in theaters on September 12, 2025.
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