The Spinal Tap Sequel Arrives Next Month: Watch the Trailer and a Scene with Elton John & Paul McCartney

This Is Spinal Tap came out more than 40 years ago. At the time, says direc­tor Rob Rein­er in a recent inter­view at San Diego Com­ic-Con, “nobody got it. I mean, they thought I’d made a movie about a real band that was­n’t very good, and why would­n’t I make a movie about the Bea­t­les or the Rolling Stones?” Indeed, sto­ries cir­cu­lat­ed of peo­ple in the music indus­try (includ­ing the late Ozzy Osbourne) not real­iz­ing it was sup­posed to be a com­e­dy, so close was its satire to their actu­al pro­fes­sion­al lives. Even­tu­al­ly, “the real word start­ed creep­ing in”: the fic­tion­al band “played Glas­ton­bury, they played Roy­al Albert Hall and Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um.” Real-life rock and pop musi­cians also became fans of the film. “Every time I see it,” Rein­er quotes Sting as say­ing, “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

The bound­aries between Spinal Tap’s world and the real one have remained porous enough that the pro­duc­tion of the film’s upcom­ing sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Con­tin­ues has involved a great many celebri­ties play­ing them­selves, or at least ver­sions there­of.

Take, for exam­ple, the new­ly released ver­sion of “Stone­henge,” whose music video fea­tures not just Elton John, but — to the delight of some fans, and per­haps the dis­ap­point­ment of oth­ers — a cor­rect­ly scaled stage prop. The song will be includ­ed on the album of The End Con­tin­ues, sched­uled for release along with the film on Sep­tem­ber 12th, whose thir­teen tracks bring in guest stars like Paul McCart­ney, Garth Brooks, and Trisha Year­wood.

It’s been about fif­teen years since the last Spinal Tap album, a fac­tor the sequel incor­po­rates into its premise. “We cre­at­ed this whole idea that there’s bad blood, they’re not speak­ing to each oth­er,” says Rein­er, “but they now are forced togeth­er because of a con­tract” dic­tat­ing that they must give one last per­for­mance, a prospect sud­den­ly made viable when their song “Big Bot­tom” goes viral. As unrec­og­niz­able as both pop cul­ture in gen­er­al and the music indus­try in par­tic­u­lar have become over the past four decades, Rein­er assures us that David St. Hub­bins, Nigel Tufnel, and Derek Smalls “have not grown emo­tion­al­ly, musi­cal­ly, or artis­ti­cal­ly. They are stuck in that heavy-met­al world.” In a Hol­ly­wood movie, such a fla­grant lack of char­ac­ter devel­op­ment would con­sti­tute a vio­la­tion of sto­ry­telling laws; in rock, it’s unflinch­ing real­ism.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ori­gins of Spinal Tap: Watch the 20 Minute Short Film Cre­at­ed to Pitch the Clas­sic Mock­u­men­tary

Ian Rub­bish (aka Fred Armisen) Inter­views the Clash in Spinal Tap-Inspired Mock­u­men­tary

The Spinal Tap Stone­henge Deba­cle

Watch The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne: A Free Doc­u­men­tary on the Heavy Met­al Pio­neer (RIP)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.