You read the other day here about my chance meeting with Harry Shearer (aka Derek Smalls) on the edge of West Hollywood’s heterosexual ghetto in 1982, and how I planned to talk him into inviting me into the Spinal Tap musical and comedy collective, except my car wouldn’t start, and I couldn’t meet him for breakfast, and after that was unable to regain his attention.
Seeing the seriously lame Spinal Tap sequel last week, I was especially struck by how they wasted Paul McCartney’s participation. If Harry had done the right thing in 1982, I’d have advised the following:
Scrap the bits with Chad Smith, Lars Ulrich, and Questlove. In what world are they funny? Scrap the sequence in which the band tries out a succession of drummers, which serves only to set up the monumentally unfunny scene in which Derek comes on to the new drummer, only to discover that she’s gay. Replace it with a montage of David and Nigel auditioning a succession of bass players, Derek having been found to suffer a urological problem that requires urgent keyhole surgery.
McCartney appears, without fanfare, as the last of them. Nigel and David don’t recognize him.
They finish the song.
DAVID
Impressive. My guess is that we won’t be the first group you’ve played with.
PAUL
You’re right. I had a group called Wings. A guy on TV described it as the group the Beatles could have been. We had a hit. “Silly Love Songs”. Heard it?
DAVID
Probably before our time. Sounds a bit tamer than what we do. Thanks for coming in. You’ll hear from us.
NIGEL
Or not.
Paul leaves.
DAVID
He’s good, that one.
NIGEL
And clean. A clean old man.And left-handed. If he stands to one side of you, and I stand on the other, it’ll be quite…symmetrical.
DAVID
It won’t, though. You and I are both right-handed.
NIGEL
Not if you hold your guitar perpendicular to your body.
DAVID So it’s pointing at the audience. A bit phallic, then? I like it!
The next morning, a limo pulls up outside the building in which the band is rehearsing. Paul gets out , followed by nine other passengers. A security guard prevents their entering. He addresses Paul.
GUARD
Who are you?
PAUL
The bass player who’s subbing for Derek.
GUARD
Those are some big shoes you\re trying to step into, pal. And this lot?
PAUL
Oh, them. My accountant. My publicist. My personal trainer. My chef. My taster. My hair and makeup person. The bloke who tunes my bass. My bodyguard. My manicurist.
At the rehearsal, David discovers that it’t impossible to play a guitar perpendicular to the body. But lo and behold, here comes brave Derek, attended by a couple of nurses, one of them pushing one of those wheeled stands with an IV drip.
Intent on not letting the others down, he’s reporting for duty hours after his surgery.