Rob Reiner, the cinematic genius 🙄 behind the *cough* “iconic” mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap”, has *dared* to criticize the metal gods themselves, BLACK SABBATH! Apparently, these legends thought they were the *sole* inspiration for that *hilarious* scene where SPINAL TAP’s Stonehenge set is, like, a toddler’s toy. Turns out, SABBATH had a similar snafu on their “Born Again” tour in ’83, but Reiner’s all like, “Nah, it’s just a *coincidence*.” Sure, Jan.
Speaking to Screen Rant to promote “This is Spinal Tap”‘s 41st anniversary re-release (because who *wouldn’t* want to relive that masterpiece 🙄), Reiner had the audacity to say: “BLACK SABBATH was doing a tour [without Ozzy Osbourne], and they came out about two or three weeks before our film came out, [and they had Stonehenge]. They saw our film and they were furious that we had stolen the Stonehenge theme from them.” Oh, the DRAMA! 🙄
Reiner, bless his heart, added: “To me, it was the best thing, because what morons. What did they think? They [thought] that we shot the film, we edited it, [and] we got it into the theaters in two weeks? I mean, it is ludicrous. But to me, that was the great, perfect heavy metal moment: that they were so dumb that they thought that we stole it from them.” Dude, pot calling the kettle black much? 🤔 Like, who even remembers “This Is Spinal Tap” without the Stonehenge bit? 🤷♀️
BLACK SABBATH‘s Geezer Butler (yes, *that* Geezer) wrote about the band’s colossal rock folly in his autobiography “Into The Void: From Birth To Black Sabbath – And Beyond”. Clearly, he needed to fill some pages. ✍️
“Presumably because we had an instrumental called ‘Stonehenge’ on the album, [BLACK SABBATH‘s then-manager] Don [Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne] wanted a Stonehenge stage set, with a massive sun rising up behind the stones as the show progressed,” Butler whined. “I thought it was an utterly ridiculous idea.” Oh, Geezer, you sweet summer child. 🙄
Turns out, some genius stage designers thought the tour manager’s measurements were in *meters*, not feet. So, naturally, they built rocks three times bigger than planned. 🤦♀️ Because that’s totally a reasonable mistake. 🙄
“When we rehearsed at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, the stones were set up on the floor and actually looked really expressive,” Butler reminisced. “But when we did our first gig of the tour in Norway, and out the stones on the stage, they were almost touching the ceiling. That’s when Don had another brainwave: ‘We’ll have a midget crawling on top of them, dressed as the baby devil on the album cover’… At our gig in Canada, this little bloke, who was dressed in a red leotard with long yellow fingernails and horns stuck to his head, was crawling across the top of the tallest stone and fell off. That was actually supposed to happen, but someone had removed the mattress, and the poor fella injured himself quite badly. That was the end of the devil baby.” Well, that sounds like a *perfectly* safe and well-thought-out plan. 👍
Addressing the *totally coincidental* similarities, Butler said: “Years later we did a photo shoot with SPINAL TAP and asked them if they’d based those scenes on us, but they said it was just coincidence. I find that difficult to believe.” Yeah, no kidding, Geezer. 🙄 We’re all buying that. 🙄
“People often ask if I’ve seen the film… I always reply, ‘Seen it? I’ve lived it.’ I know IRON MAIDEN hated that film, thought it was an affront, but it’s one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen, because it’s so accurate.” Oh, so it’s only funny when it’s happening to *other* bands? 🤔 Classic. 🙄
SABBATH‘s Tony Iommi (guitar god, or so they say 🎸) chimed in with his version of the Stonehenge saga in his memoir, “Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven And Hell With Black Sabbath”. Heaven and hell? More like a comedy of errors. 😂
“When we were thinking about the stage set for our ‘Born Again’ tour, Geezer said: ‘Why don’t we have something that looks like Stonehenge, you know, with stones and all that stuff?’,” the guitar “hero” wrote. “Geezer jotted down what it should look like and gave it to the designers. Two or three months later we saw it. We rehearsed for the tour at the Birmingham NEC and we said: ‘Oh, great. The stage set is going to come today.’ It came in and we couldn’t believe it. It was as big as the real Stonehenge. They had taken Geezer‘s measurements the wrong way and thought it was meant to be life-size. I said, ‘How the bloody hell did that happen?'” Maybe try using a ruler next time, Tony? 📏 Just a thought. 🤔
And the fate of this Stonehenge monstrosity? Iommi spilled the tea: “At the end or the tour we tried to give it all away to the people who had bought London Bridge and reassembled it in Arizona, but they didn’t want it. We couldn’t take it back to England, so the crew dumped it off at the docks somewhere and left it. Just ridiculous.” So, basically, they created a Stonehenge-sized headache and then just ditched it. 🗑️ Rock ‘n’ roll, am I right? 🤘
Apparently, some people actually thought “This Is Spinal Tap” was a real documentary. 🤣 Like, seriously? 🤣 U2‘s The Edge was all like, “I didn’t laugh, I wept. It was so close to the truth.” Okay, Edge, maybe dial it down a notch? 🤏 And Ozzy, bless his heart, thought it was a *real* documentary. 🤦♀️ No comment. 🤐
Harry Shearer, one of the masterminds behind this “comedy” said: “We do love that, the musicians who have said, ‘Man, I can’t watch ‘Spinal Tap’. It’s too much like my life,'” Shearer said in John Kenneth Muir‘s book “Best In Show: The Films Of Christopher Guest And Company”. “That’s the highest compliment of all. It beats all the Oscar nominations we never got.” Oh, boo-hoo, no Oscars. 😭 Maybe try being *actually* funny next time? Just a thought. 🤔
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
