It’s confusing: a man who gives every appearance of having no sense of humor suddenly revealing himself to be the funniest guy in the room. But then, as has already been established, much of Spinal Tap’s world is confusing. Despite Guest’s steely assurances that there’s no similarity between Spinal Tap’s on-screen misadventures and the experience of touring as Spinal Tap, the line between actors and characters does seem to blur occasionally. Every now and again, one of these erudite satirists says something about music that might have come from the lips of the people they’re satirizing. Shearer enjoyed last night’s gig in Atlanta not merely because of the audience reaction, but because the band played “balls out”: “It’s almost physics. It’s an interchange of energy. The audience gives it to you and you give it back.” I know what he means, but still, say it in a gormless English accent and it would be tough to distinguish from the golden philosophy of Derek Smalls.
Guest, meanwhile, has endorsed Marshall amplifiers in character as Tufnel, which boggles the mind: a mythic rock star famed for being so stupid he hasn’t actually fathomed out how the volume knob on an amplifier works, being paid to recommend amplifiers to other musicians. When touring, Shearer says, they’ve run into “all the stuff that’s in the film — silly promotion men, strange groupies,” the latter apparently undeterred by the fact that the rock star they want to sleep with doesn’t actually exist.
“A satirist’s dream is you make fun of it, then it’s all fixed,” Shearer smiles. “The reality is you make fun of it, then go and do it yourself, and you wind up thinking, how stupid am I? I knew how this was going to be, and it is, and I’ve signed up for it.”
He keeps signing up for it, the audiences keep turning up in their thousands, and the cult of Spinal Tap shows no sign of waning. Back at the Ryman, the gig pauses for questions and answers. “If I were a woman,” declares one teenage boy, “I’d let all three of you have me, one after the other.” Someone else raises a hand. “Could you give us some background into Spinal Tap’s formation?” he asks. “You mean,” says Shearer, “as if we were a real band?” And the audience cheer and thump the backs of the pews in approval.
Note: Back From the Dead is out on June 22, the anniversary DVD in September.
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