Cheese, glue and skiffle: Spinal Tap & Marty Debergi on “Spinal Tap II: The end continues” | Interviews

It was a special treat to have the opportunity to interview Spinal Tap, Derek Smalls, David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel, as well as the director of the new film on their meeting and their performance in New Orleans, and the director of the two films, Marty Debergi. Seeing the group recovering together after a few years of distance is comforting and, as in the first film, very funny. In our interview, Debergi explained to me why the group was not satisfied with the first film and Spinal Tap spoke of certain contemporary musicians they admire, their first influences and the reaction of the public when they had the folk song trio [Editor’s note: The Folksman bear a very strong resemblance to the members of Spinal Tap as you in see in what might be called a companion movie, “A Mighty Wind.”]

Derek, I was very interested in seeing that you pivoted music to the exploitation of a glue museum, so I want to start with a request for help. I have a piece of paper and a piece of cardboard that must be glued together. What type of adhesive product do you recommend for this project?

Derek Smalls: mucilage. It is based on animals and it’s great for flat surfaces.

And Nigel, you have managed a shop that sells guitars and cheese. I am a big fan of a good grilled cheese sandwich. Which cheese do you recommend?

Nigel Tufnel: Well, you have different cheeses in the United States. In the United States, I would say that you have to make cheddar. The English cheddar is different from the American Cheddar, you see. Our cheddar is a white cheese, in fact. And the Irish cheddar is also white. The Americans put the false coloring. But you can’t go wrong with a good cheddar. On toast.

As all Spinal Tap fans know this well, you have lost several drummers. So, an important part of this film is when you have to audition drummers to play with you in the concert. I noticed that you have reached a consensus without consulting each other.

David st. Hubbins: Yes, we were all on the same wavelength. We have seen a lot of different styles.

NT: Well, we have played so much that we know in a way what we are looking for. A living person is important.

DS: Alive right now.

NT: Living for the moment, for the concert. And yes, we all know what we hear, and that’s how it happens.

Have you been satisfied with her?

DSH: He is a remarkable young and alive person. It is the spirit of rock and roll that we have dropped in us a little in us, but that is part of aging.

DS: This is invigorating the introduction of women into the rocky pantheon. It is very important.

DSH: Well, there is the warning, a group with a remarkable bass player. She doesn’t really play much, but what she plays is “Churce” as children say. Of course, Joan Jett, God bless her, always.

NT: Tal Wilkenfeld is a great bass player. Esperanza Spaulding.

DS: She’s not in rock.

NT: It is sometimes.

Why are you so interested in Druids?

NT: Druids have a long history. It dates back 4,000 years of worship of everything it is. It is not so specific. And let them do what they do, I say. Let them dance. Let them sing. Let them love it, anything.

DSH: Do not let them do certain rides.

NT: You do not leave them in roller coaster because they are too short.

DS: You say that druids are druids.

NT: It’s true. I say that. If it comes down to one thing, yes.

I heard that you had the folk singing group that the population men opened you, and some public members were not grateful because your musical styles are so different. Are you friends with people?

NT: We are not friends friends, you know they have opened us several times.

DSH: We were reserved by an outfit that also managed people and they could not find a niche for them. And we love folk music. “Flower People” is essentially a folk song.

DS: It was probably the concert in New York at the Beacon, where the public had not been informed that there was an opening act and they had prepared themselves in terms of drugs for us

Nt: and hear wise. They are perfectly nice people but we don’t have much in common.

DS: So the public began to “type!” Tap! ”

DSH: And someone in the third row shouted: “Do you call this noise?”

NT: Yes, and it was their manager.

David and Nigel, you know yourself long enough. You remember the first music you played together.

NT: It was the type of skiff music because Lonnie Donegan was huge at the time. It would have been in the early 1960s. “Does the chewing gum lose its flavor on the bed post overnight?” It’s Lonnie Donegan.

DSH: And it was really the first thing, and everyone seemed to play. We listened to the version of Nancy Whiskey “Freight Train”. Where does it come from? And then you arrive at Elizabeth Cotton. And she does the same thing. And so, he opened exploration sites of different types of music, styles of music. And at the same time, it was very easy to play, you know, a few guitars and then a guy to stand out with a washing bass, and you left, you are.

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What is the greatest honor, “he goes to 11” in the Oxford English Dictionary or your film in the Criterion collection?

Marty Dibergi: The simple fact of being alive and speaking with you is the greatest honor I can have. I’m not here for honors. I’m here for work. And unfortunately, it was very thin for me. I had the chance to make the first documentary. And that inspired all these programs like, you know, “Parks and Rec” and “The Office” and “Abbott Elementary” and all these programs that make this documentary style that I started and I launched and no one thinks of me. Person. I didn’t penny. I have been sitting, I have lived in melee for 40 years. I am not there for honors. I just want to work.

Why do you think Spinal Tap is so in Druids?

No one knows Stonehenge and how it happened. They do not know whether or not there were druids. I don’t think the druids were small people. I think they were regular people. But for any reason, Spinal Tap believes that they are small people. And who am I to chat with that? Because no one really knows.

Many things have changed in 40 years, especially technology. How is it different to shoot this film than to shoot the first?

I like to say that I grow up with Times, and I became a more modern filmmaker. The fact is that the first film was shot on 16 millimeters with a camera. This one is turned digitally with two cameras digitally, so there is a big difference there. I must say that, a bit like the group that has not succeeded in the last 40 years emotionally or musically, the only thing they could have cultivated is some skin tabs, but it comes with age and I will not blame them because I myself fought with that; I hope I will mature as a filmmaker, but I am a traditionalist and I hope there is the same feeling in this film that you saw in the first.

I saw the first in the theater when it came out because it was the first time that my husband and I spent a night after the birth of our son, and it was the shortest film that was shown. We fell in love with it and watched it several times. What do most people tell you when they tell you how much they love the film? Do they start to quote it to you?

They quote it a lot, but I think the thing you hit is correct. It’s short. There are only 83 minutes left. And I knew that the second film, if I was going to succeed, I had to start again. The second lasts only 83 minutes too. If someone will go see the first film, and it’s a young man who has just had a child, it’s the film to see.

I was surprised to hear “listening to the people of flowers” in the film because it is so different from their later work.

Well, it was not a choice I made, and it was certainly not a choice that the group made. It happened when Elton John came to visit them because he was going to perform in the show, during the last concert, they were trying to understand which song should he sing. It was raised, and he tried this, and it worked. But then they thought it might be better to do Stonehenge, which he does in the film.

It is often said that in the narrative film, the director is God, but in a documentary, God is the director. So what surprised you? What were you expected to perform that occurred during the production of this film?

I don’t consider myself God. Let’s say it this way. Not really God, you know, but similar to God. I am a fly on the wall. I don’t expect or do not expect anything. I’m just there as an observer. Whatever happens, I try to capture it. And I know they were not satisfied with the first film, but I think they will like it much more.

Do they still get lost while trying to find the scene?

And this is one of the things they are always angry with me because they said, you did not show us to go on stage most of the time. They did it successfully and I saw the only time they got lost. But they found the scene between 60 and 70% of the time. In this case, they only made one performance and that was in this arena and they knew how to get there. So no, they didn’t get lost.

So you have resolved all your conflicts with them, you know, because they resolved them with each other, you came to a kind of understanding.

I hope I did it. I mean, they accepted me in return. I think they were sort of forced, you know, because the contract in which they were forced, having to make the concert. There have always been tensions between David and Nigel. They knew each other because they were small children and as they get older, these tensions can even deepen and become more dramatic. I feel bad for them, but for a filmmaker, it’s great. I love the fact that they are more against each other. It is for me a good cinema. Far that it is for me to prevent them from arguing.

I’m not going to spoil the cameos but I will just ask you if you had a favorite.

When I discovered what Artie Fufkin was going. I did not know that he had left the music industry and now sold these dancing inflatable balloons that appear in front of second -hand car lots. It was therefore exciting for me to find. And to find Bobby Fleckman, who was their publicist, is now, you know, becomes a Buddhist and manages influencers. These were exciting.