A ‘Stunned’ Tom Petty Inspired a Scene in ‘This Is Spinal Tap’
TL;DR:
- This Is Spinal Tap is a mockumentary about a fictional band.
- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers inspired a scene in This Is Spinal Tap.
- Tom Petty later attended a party where Spinal Tap performed.
Over the course of his lengthy career, Tom Petty inspired a number of artists, including the writers of This Is Spinal Tap. Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest wrote the mockumentary, which follows a fictional British heavy metal band called Spinal Tap. Petty’s music wasn’t what inspired the creators, though. Instead, they took inspiration from a confusing moment at a Heartbreakers concert.
‘This Is Spinal Tap’ is a mockumentary about a band
In 1978, Reiner put together a TV special that aimed to satirize network and local television.
“I knew Rob, and several of the writers were old friends of mine,” McKean wrote, per The Guardian. “One of the proposed pieces was a parody of a show called Midnight Special, a rock’n’roll concert/variety show, hosted by the late Wolfman Jack. Christopher Guest, who would go on to play the Tap’s Nigel Tufnel, suggested that a pea-brained English rock band be featured in the sketch.”
Later, Reiner wanted to direct feature films and decided to make a mockumentary about the band, which they had named Spinal Tap. They wrote a screenplay without necessarily intending to, and in 1984, they released the film.
“We had achieved an important goal: shelf-life, the ability to stay fresh and crisp while other comedy gets stale and moldy,” McKean explained. “When someone reports watching the movie regularly and finding new stuff to laugh at each time, it makes us very glad. Lots of other stuff has happened since. Rob, Harry, Chris and I have been thankfully busy most of the time — but for each of us the making of this strange movie was a high point.”
A confusing concert moment for the Heartbreakers inspired a scene in the movie
When writing the film, Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer took inspiration from real-life music moments. In one scene, the band gets hopelessly lost at a venue in Ohio while trying to find the stage. According to Guest, Petty inspired this scene.
“We saw a tape of Tom Petty playing somewhere in Germany, where he’s walking backstage and a door’s opened and he ends up on an indoor tennis court,” Guest said, per BBC, “and there’s just this moment of stunned, you know, ‘Where am I?'”
Tom Petty later attended a performance by Spinal Tap
Eight years later, Petty attended a party at the Golden Monkey nightclub in Santa Monica, California, where Spinal Tap performed. In 1992, the Pollack Media Group threw a party for high-ranking radio and record executives. Petty was one of many musicians in attendance that night. The LA Times reported on the event.
“‘Hello, Long Beach!’ yelled McKean, the lead singer of Spinal Tap, before the band went into an ear-blistering set of funny occult tunes (‘Christmas With the Devil’) and very impassioned, very pointless guitar solos,” the outlet reported.
