Many bands have admitted that the content of Rob Reiner’s 1984 spoof rock documentary This Is Spinal Tap felt uncomfortably close to the truth, so it’s perhaps not surprising that when Gen-Z singer-songwriter Beabadoobee watched it for the first time she thought it was real.
The star – real name Beatrice Laus – fessed up during an appearance on Amoeba Music’s What’s In My Bag? web series, in which celebs take a tour of one of the retailer’s stores and pick out stuff they’d like to take home with them.
After discussing albums by Bloc Party, Cibo Matto, Pixies and Red House Painters – plus a Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry DVD boxset – Beabadoobee turned to the Tap Blu-Ray she’d taken a fancy to.
“I thought it was real when I watched it and I was really confused,” she admitted. “I was like, are these guys just really dumb?”
“It's just so epic,” she continued, “a rite of passage if you're a musician or just a human being – just a rite of passage to watch this.”
Laus isn’t the first singer to be taken in by the authenticity of the film, Back in 2005, Noel Gallagher told the Observer Music Monthly about the night his brother Liam was made aware that the members of Spinal Tap were actually actors.
“He thought they were real people,” said Gallager senior. “We went to see them play in Carnegie Hall. Before they played, they came on as three folk singers from the film A Mighty Wind. We were laughing and he said: 'This is shit'. We said: 'No, those three are in Spinal Tap. You do know they are American actors?' 'They're not even a real band?' 'They're not even English! One of them is married to Jamie Lee Curtis.'”
According to Noel, rather than laughing off his mistake, Liam took umbrage at the fact that he’d been taken in. “'I'm not fuckin' 'avin that,' he says, and walks off right up the middle of Carnegie Hall. He's never watched Spinal Tap since. He'd seen the film and loved it and thought they were a real band.”
Ozzy Osbourne, meanwhile, once admitted that, while he was well aware that This Is Spinal Tap was a spoof, its close resemblance to his own life experiences – including getting lost on the way to the stage – meant that he struggled to see the funny side.
“Funny thing about Spinal Tap, when I went to see it I was the only person in the audience that wasn’t laughing because it was really like a documentary to me,” he told talkshow host Conan O’Brien. “Those things actually happened.”
