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This is your Spinal warning
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After years of ups and downs, metal legends Spinal Tap just want an even break
by JOHNSON CUMMINS
Spinal Tap could be considered one of the most influential bands ever! The Tap have been heralded as "the cream of the crop of mediocrity" and continue to receive many accolades, like being "the ballast behind the career of heavy metal and twice as heavy." They may be a lot of things but one thing is for sure, they are the loudest. Unfortunately, most people's introduction to this incredibly loud band was in Marti DeBergi's documentary This Is Spinal Tap. Truth be told, the film didn't come even close to capturing what really sets the Tap apart from most of rock's greatest or, for that matter, music in general. The Mirror talked with singer/guitarist David St. Hubbins and bassist Derek Smalls and let them tell the real Tap story. Here's what St. Hubbins had to say:
Mirror: During the last Tap hiatus you moved out of the U.K. to Pomona, California and began teaching soccer to children. Are you still doing that?
David St. Hubbins: No, a lot of their parents felt that someone with a British accent shouldn't be teaching their kids. I was referring to it as football and the kids were giving me funny looks and then run home and tell mummy and daddy. If I sound bitter I might be, as they still owe me around $300.
M: With the new song "Back From the Dead," it seems that the Tap is going through a rebirth.
D.S.H.: It's really more of a press release. We look at our audience from two points of view. One is the personal--we have great love for our fans because they have great love for us. It's just mutual reciprocal love. The other way we look at them is as financial blocks. In the long run they supply the demand and we supply the, uh, supply.
M: With the Stonehenge and pods and all, you have become known for quite a stage production. Any new ideas?
D.S.H.: Well, this late in our careers it's too late for ideas. If we get the first sign of an idea we have to lie down and take a pill.
M: It has been said that you stole your idea for the Stonehenge from Black Sabbath.
D.S.H.: When did they do it, then?
M: In '79, on the Born Again tour.
D.S.H.: Well, they may have beaten us by a nose but you don't hear me screaming about Metallica ripping us off with the Black Album.
With friends like these...
M: Whatever happened to [Tap's ex-manager] Ian Faith, Marti DeBergi and [Tap's ex-keyboardist] Viv Savage and what do these people mean to you now?
D.S.H.: They don't mean much. Viv, actually, I like. It is unclear what happened to him. There are rumours that he went to visit our late drummer Mick Shrimpton's grave and it exploded and killed Viv. We later found out Viv was apparently a drummer before he played keyboards. Ian Faith, I believe, has passed away. I don't really know. He was such a sour person.
M: He wouldn't even call you to say he was dead.
D.S.H.: Exactly, where is the respect? Marti DeBergi, the less said the better. Hopefully he has gone back to his public service announcements--y'know, "Hello, I am Ed Asner, have you done something lefty today?" type of thing. As long as he stays away from us.
M: It seems he had a very slanted view in making the rockumentary.
D.S.H: Oh, you noticed that, did you? It was a total hatchet job. Here is this bloke who says he is a big fan and then makes us out to be as, uh, bumbling or something.
M: Your appearance on The Simpsons also seemed to put you in a bad light.
D.S.H.: Matt Groening is a bit, y'know, two-faced. He said, "C'mon, we'll have fun" and then in the end he kills us off at the end of the show. I always thought that was a bit arch, really. So we don't speak to him either.
M: It seems a lot of people have done you wrong. Do you ever think it could have something to do with you, Derek [Smalls] and Nigel [Tufnel]?
D.S.H.: No, of course not, because you have to believe in yourself. I understand there are some diverse personalities within the band. We don't get along together all the time but we know it's not us we want to upset. If we felt that way we would've quit along time ago--but we can't really quit because we don't really have anything else to do.
M: You have seemed to have a lot drummers die in your band. Do you ever question that?
D.S.H.: Not really, because I hate to sound cold but, c'mon, they're only drummers. Who cares! There's plenty more where they came from.
Union jackass
M: Can you suggest a good title for this article?
D.S.H.: How about "Underrated, and rightly so." Or maybe, uh, "We're for real--are you?" Hold on a second, I think that last one was an insurance company slogan, so better not use that one.
M: With the Tap representing the old-school metal, do you try to keep current with nu-metal?
D.S.H.: Kind of, but I've become more sensitive to the balladeers, really. Perry Como recently passed on and I picked up some of his albums. It's like this great, effortless thing, like he wasn't even lifting a finger. When I would listen to it I was envious because we have to work awfully hard on stage. It's like Raymond Burr--in his contract for Ironside, he said, "I don't want to stand up." What a perfect gig. He doesn't even have to get completely out of bed, just haul him up and put him in a chair. That's kind of what I want now.
M: Now that you are living in California, do you miss England?
D.S.H.: I love the English people. It's just that I like them more from a distance. The thing I miss the most, not living in England, is keeping up with Coronation Street. They show them here but my God, it's two years old. It's like the light from a distant star, it takes so long. I miss that and I miss certain philosophical scriptures. Y'know, completely arbitrary choices the Brits made. Stuff like, "No whistling in public squares." I really like that closet Nazism. I think America could learn something from that. The first move would be to limit bass speakers in cars--and for God's sake keep the those cars away from public squares, as that could result in whistling.
M: Do you find it weird that a highly regarded heavy metal band like the Tap is being booked at a comedy festival called Just for Laughs?
D.S.H.: Well, we were once booked at a watermelon festival in Shreveport, Louisiana in '68 and we aren't watermelons, either.
Spinal Tap host Gala 6 at Théâtre St-Denis on Wednesday, July 18, 7:30pm, $16-41
Small consolation
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What's in Tap bassist Derek Smalls' pants?
by JOHNSON CUMMINS
The tepid, pipe-smoking Tap bassist Derek Smalls' self-described role in the band is to play the lukewarm water between the two fire-and-ice figures of singer David St. Hubbins and guitar hero Nigel Tufnel. Despite some downturns, like having to join a Spinal Tap tribute band during the bands many breaks, he's left the bad times behind and explains it's just good to be back where he belongs.
Mirror: What have you been doing during your downtime with the Tap?
Derek Smalls: I have appeared in a couple of movies, most notably Marco Zamboni's Roma '79. I don't think it came out in Canada.
M: What was it about?
D.S.: It was this very futuristic film about what Rome would be like in 1979. Unfortunately it was made in 1976 so it didn't look very futuristic. Zamboni, I thought, was very visionary in casting me as a hitman. He called it stunt casting or something in Italian. Nowadays I have become quite a television personality in the Benelux countries because I have done these T.V. adverts for a Belgium snack food called Floop. If I go anywhere in the Netherlands, Belgium or even Luxembourg for that matter, people will point and say, "Look, there goes the Floop man."
M: What happened to the phone sanitation business you were in with your father?
D.S.: Well, Britain has changed quite a bit over the years. There has been a great deal of immigration over the past 10 or 15 years. You will find that with people coming from places like Bangor or Calcutta, they're just so very grateful that the streets aren't running free with piss that they don't seem to have such a great concern over whether their telephone receiver has been sanitized.
M: Do you want to tell me about the Christian heavy metal band you were in called Lambsblood?
D.S.: We headlined the Monsters of Jesus festival for two straight years. We actually had a couple of hits on the Christian charts, primarily with the song "Whole Lotta Lord."
M: A lot people thought that singing songs with the Tap like "Hellhole" and "Christmas With the Devil" and then turning around and playing Christian heavy metal was a bit suspect.
D.S.: I mean, in a way I converted. I got a fish tattoo and just thought we we're basically playing the same music but taking a slightly different position on the supreme evil one. When I got back to Tap I did get my tattoo redone. Now it's a devil head eating the fish.
M: David [St. Hubbins] mentioned that your doll is anatomically correct when you take the clothes off.
D.S.: Excuse me, dolls? They are action figures!
M: Sorry, he was alluding that you were a eunuch. Is Smalls a nickname?
D.S.: What? I haven't taken the clothes off on the dolls--uh, action figures. Are you saying there is no member there?
M: Apparently not.
D.S.: Well, I wasn't there for the meeting. They just sent me the head for basic checking and after I made my comments about the cheekbones I thought that was it.
M: What was your initial reaction the first time you saw the final cut of your documentary This Is Spinal Tap?
D.S.: I don't know if you have this expression in Canada but we were just gobsmacked. We felt betrayed, abandoned, strangely undernurtured. We felt we had been tricked and conned. It was a bouillabaisse of bad feelings.
M: Since then you've managed to buck up a bit and get back on the road where you belong.
D.S.: What? Fuck up?
M: No, buck up.
D.S.: Yeah, well, we're taking lemons and making a lemon meringue pie with them.
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