A ‘Spinal Tap’ Sequel Riffs on the End of Rock

On July 5, a few days after I noticed Spinal Faucet II: The Finish Continues, Black Sabbath performed its last present, at Villa Park, in Birmingham, England. Not solely are these two phenomena associated; they appear to have been impishly synchronized: Simply when the troupe behind Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Faucet, the mockumentary that satirically exploded the style of heavy metallic, reunited after 4 a long time for a sequel, the band that invented heavy metallic known as it quits.Discover the October 2025 IssueCheck out extra from this situation and discover your subsequent story to learn.View MoreAnd then, two weeks later, Ozzy died: Ozzy Osbourne, Sabbath’s entrance man, who at Villa Park had sung sitting down, enthroned on what regarded like a satanic workplace chair, heroically managing a bunch of illnesses (together with Parkinson’s illness). Nobody was extra metallic than Ozzy. On the similar time, nobody in metallic was funnier, extra in contact together with his personal bathos, extra submit–Spinal Faucet, in a way, than Ozzy, particularly in his shambling-paterfamilias incarnation on MTV’s actuality present The Osbournes. At Villa Park, his frailty was epic, defiant, at the same time as his bandmates labored drastically to summon the ability of fifty years earlier. Nonetheless, Sabbath sounded superb, the band’s distinctive vibe of limitless cosmic encumbrance, of Man squirming beneath the thumb of Destiny, God, insanity—the important heavy-metal imaginative and prescient—one way or the other magnified by the venerable wobbliness of its enjoying.Learn: Ozzy Osbourne’s wild, regular lifeSpinal Faucet II (which arrives in theaters on September 12) additionally issues itself with final issues. Because the film (once more directed by Reiner) begins, Spinal Faucet the band—ultra-English, ultra-deluded as to its personal high quality and standing, mainly a slavish amalgam of each pattern in onerous rock since 1966—isn’t any extra, its members lengthy dispersed and out of contact with each other. Lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel is the proprietor of a guitar-and-cheese store; guitarist-vocalist David St. Hubbins makes on-hold Muzak and soundtracks for true-crime podcasts; bassist Derek Smalls runs the New Museum of Glue. However upon the demise of Ian Religion, Faucet’s posh-sounding, cricket-bat-wielding supervisor, his daughter, Hope (Kerry Godliman), inherits from him a contract for one final Spinal Faucet present. Initially underwhelmed by this idea, Hope occurs to catch a clip of Garth Brooks sound-checking with a Spinal Faucet tune. The clip has gone viral; folks like it; Faucet has by chance re-impinged on pop consciousness. There’s cash to be made. She should get the band collectively once more for a last outing, for a grand farewell fling. She books the Lakefront Area, in New Orleans.This Is Spinal Faucet was an almost-clinical examine in anticlimax, in rock-and-roll humiliation. Time and again, the band falls (petulantly, peevishly, with English accents and English swear phrases) into the hole between its bombastic self-image and the details on the bottom, the dwindling ticket gross sales and tiny sandwiches and spontaneously combusting drummers. The world is in opposition to the members of Spinal Faucet: All the pieces undercuts them; all the pieces ironizes them. Their technique to rock-and-roll sublimity, to headbanging apotheosis, is comprehensively barred.And as dead-on comedies will generally do, the film claimed a chunk of actuality. After This Is Spinal Faucet, any band, in any style, might have a Spinal Faucet second: taking a incorrect activate the best way to the stage, being caught out by malfunctioning gear, struggling via an in-store look. For musicians, and metallic musicians specifically, it was a brand new and liberating type of self-awareness.From the Could 2011 situation: James Parker on how heavy metallic is holding us saneDoes the world want one other Spinal Faucet film? Clearly not, not more than—contained in the film—the world wants one other Spinal Faucet live performance. However the redundancy, the extraneousness, is precisely the purpose right here. Previous to their reanimation by Hope and her magic contract, the Tappers are in a state of almost-hysterical obsolescence. The cheese, the Muzak, the glue museum—they’re all doing, with full conviction, fully ineffective issues. They’re post-rock, post-culture, post-history in a way. An inferno of triviality. A cameo by Elton John, together with glancing appearances from Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and the Pink Sizzling Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, contributes to the sense of the film as an Finish Instances in-joke. And we’re all in on it.I don’t need to argue that rock and roll is over, its teleology exhausted, its wonderful arc attenuated and made obscure by Spotify and nostalgia and stylistic recyclings and live performance tickets that price $400 and blah blah blah—I’d die if I actually believed that. But it surely definitely feels over. (For the definitive account of this sense, and the explanations for it, learn Simon Reynolds’s Retromania: Pop Tradition’s Dependancy to Its Personal Previous.)From the June 2025 situation: Is that this the worst-ever period of American popular culture?Subsequent query: Is Spinal Faucet II humorous? I’ll offer you a certified sure. The feeling of a brand new comedian universe popping into being is absent, as a result of you are able to do that solely as soon as, however the unique components are nonetheless important: the luminous deadpan stupidity of Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Visitor), the wheedling self-importance of David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), the spacey sentimentality of Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer). These are nice comedians, working up their scenes, as earlier than, from hours of improv. There’s some pretty in-studio bickering as Tufnel and St. Hubbins lock horns over a posh new musical association. (St. Hubbins: “Why is it so onerous so that you can grasp?” Tufnel: “I’m greedy it! And my fingers are saying … don’t.”) Additionally, as earlier than, the occasional shamelessly scripted gag. St. Hubbins, in his solo profession, is engaged on the soundtrack for “a horror film that takes place in a retirement neighborhood. It’s known as Evening of the Assisted-Residing Lifeless.” We study of a brand new addition to the darkish lineage of deceased Spinal Faucet drummers—Skippy Scuffleton; explanation for demise: sneezing match—and we watch the band rustically keening its method via a people tune: “I liked me a lass whose hair was lengthy / And brown because the best stew.”In Spinal Faucet II, guitarist-vocalist David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), and guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Visitor) reunite for an absurd last present. (Kyle Kaplan / Bleecker Road)Talking of drummers, Valerie Franco—employed within the film for that last gig on the Lakefront Area—is sort of too good. Pushed by her clean and emphatic enjoying, Spinal Faucet comes near shedding its particular lumpy Faucet groove, its farcical Deep Purple mega-thump, and begins to sound disconcertingly like a correct band. But it surely’s okay, as a result of right here comes the cameo of cameos: Paul McCartney! He wanders into the rehearsal studio together with his lengthy Liverpudlian face and ironic O-mouth, takes Tufnel’s facet within the aforementioned musical dispute, after which sits down with the band for—sure!—a full-length model of “Cups and Muffins”: “Cups and truffles, cups and truffles / Oh what good issues Mom makes.” It’s a quantity from Faucet’s psychedelic infancy, and—in its pastiche-y, chamber-musicky method—splendidly McCartney-appropriate: It’s like “Martha My Pricey” written by … Spinal Faucet.Final query: Will Spinal Faucet II put a dent in truth, refine the consciousness of musicians, in the identical method as its predecessor? Time will inform. With my very own eyes, I’ve seen the uncanny afterlife of This Is Spinal Faucet. I’ve witnessed the film creating, because it have been, new scenes for itself, new nice strains. In 2006, for instance, I noticed Iron Maiden, maybe probably the most potently theatrical (and ultra-English) heavy-metal act ever, at an area in Boston. At one level within the set, throughout a characteristically epic, multipart quantity, the music turned moody and the stage blacked out. From up within the rafters, a single highlight coldly blazed. Its unlucky operator, nonetheless, couldn’t appear to seek out his goal. His beam wavered on a patch of blankness, or the nook of an amp, after which started to roam the stage in desperation, scanning right here and scanning there—till, from the darkness, the voice of Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden’s singer, was heard. “I’m over right here,” he stated dryly. “On high of the speaker. Twat.”*Lead-image sources: Bleecker Road; Album / Alamy; United Archives GmbH / Alamy; fast eye / GettyThis article seems within the October 2025 print version with the headline “This Was Spinal Faucet.” Once you purchase a ebook utilizing a hyperlink on this web page, we obtain a fee. Thanks for supporting The Atlantic.