Michael McKean Says Life Imitates Spinal Tap
Remember that movie that made you realize how brilliant comedy could be? More specifically, we’re talking about Spinal Tap. Well Michael McKean has some great Spinal Tap stories to share on Tuesday night on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Michael explained that he met future collaborator Christopher Guest at NYU. Michael was homeless, so he moved in with Guest, and they wrote songs together- of both the folk and rock variety. They named their group “Our Lady of Food and Maritime” which combined the names of two schools near where they lived.
Later, they would go on to do Spinal Tap together, and McKean said various bands think it was about them, because they had similar experiences to things that happened in the movie. Only McKean says all those things happened to those bands AFTER the movie, not before. “In some cases it was about them,” he said, “it just hadn’t happened yet.”
For example in the movie when their manager quits, and a girlfriend takes over as manager and reroutes the tour using astrology– that exact thing happened to a real band, several years later. McKean also says that he saw a film of Tom Petty and his band getting lost in a huge arena complex in Germany, and they wound up on a tennis court instead of in front of the audience. Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton had a similar story of their own where they got lost under the stage at the Apollo in Harlem for BB King’s 80th birthday. They said it was their twilight zone moment, where they thought they were in the movie.
Michael McKean currently stars in Better Call Saul airing weekly on AMC.
