“In ancient times/ Hundreds of years before the dawn of history/ Lived a strange race of people, the Druids/ No one knows who they were or what they were doing/ But their legacy remains/ Hewn into the living rock… of Stonehenge”.
Yes, Spinal Tap (David St Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls) have left their indelible mark on the rock landscape. Yet considering them in isolation is akin to talking about Shakespeare without mentioning Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and John Webster. They had competition, they had peers, they had antecedents and followers.
So here, in honour of the band’s own legacy, which admittedly takes a bit of a knock in the very patchy new film, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, we’ve compiled a list of some of the greatest lyrics – the most Spinal Tap flights of fancy – that rock music has to offer.
Let us know your favourite absurdities in the comments below.
Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven (1971)‘And did you know/ Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?’
Tap’s masterpiece is, of course, Stonehenge. But they weren’t the first band to major in quasi-mystical bulls–t. The 1970s were awash with this nonsense, from Ronnie James Dio’s paeans to wizards and temples in Rainbow to Black Sabbath’s fairies wearing boots.
But you’ve got to hand it to this lot, who married sub-Tolkien fantasy with occultism and came up with one for the ages. “And it’s whispered that soon if we all call the tune/ Then the piper will lead us to reason”. Really? Yep, Stairway to Heaven deservedly kicks off this list. “And did you know/ Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?” Oh. Nowhere near Dudley, then.
Elton John – I Am Your Robot (1982)‘I’ve been beaming aboard her for a light year’
One of the highlights of Spinal Tap II is when Elton John gives his all to an arena-stage rendition of Stonehenge – finding (deeply) hidden depths in the lyrics of the song. Not altogether surprising, when you consider what Elton has been prepared to put his heart and soul into in the past.
Take this number from the tail-end of his late 1970s/early 1980s doldrums. It had been five and a half long years since John and lyricist Bernie Taupin had written Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word when they came up with this one. “I’ve been beaming aboard her for a light year/ From a strange craft/ She’s got a subtle touch on the silver key/ To a clockwork heart”, sings Elton and somehow – somehow – makes it sound good. Just listen to the way he sings “straaaange craft” – now that’s commitment to a lost cause. Or maybe just a brazen attempt to divert our attention from “beaming aboard her”.
Elton John gives his all to an arena-stage rendition of Stonehenge in Spinal Tap II
AC/DC – Big Balls (1976)‘It’s my belief that my big balls should be held every night’
Yes, it’s tongue in cheek, but still worth a spin. “I always fill my ballroom, the event is never small/ The social pages say I’ve got the biggest balls of all. [Chorus] I’ve got big balls, I’ve got big balls/ They’re such big balls, and they’re dirty big balls”.
OK, we get the idea. “My balls are always bouncing to the left and to the right”. Yes, we get it. “It’s my belief that my big balls should be held every night”. Enough. Blame Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Bon Scott for this one. And Benny Hill. “I’m just itching to tell you about them.” Stop.
Australian hard rock band AC/DC pictured in 1976 – Michael Putland/Getty Images
U2 – Get On Your Boots (2009)‘Hold the big revelations/ I got a submarine/ You got gasoline/ I don’t want to talk about wars between nations’
For some, Bono has been channelling his inner Tap for decades, but he surpassed himself here. Borrowing a little musical something from Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up, the song sadly takes nothing from Costello’s lyrical genius.
Where the latter wrote: “She said that’s that, I don’t wanna chitter-chat/ Turn it down a little bit or turn it down flat”. Bono essays, “That’s someone’s stuff they’re blowing up/ We’re into growing up/ Women of the future/ Hold the big revelations/ I got a submarine/ You got gasoline/ I don’t want to talk about wars between nations”. Tap that.
Toto – Africa (1982)‘I know that I must do what’s right/ Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti’
Proof that reaching for profundity can easily lead to doing yourself a mischief. This abiding soft rock classic lifts its eyes to the gods – and ends up awkwardly doing the splits. The lyrics were written by the band’s keyboardist and principal songwriter David Paich.
Blessing “the rains down in Africa” and musing that it’s gonna take a lot to drag him away from the object of his passion – either the love interest arriving by plane that night or the continent itself – Paich leans too far into a metaphor to express the immovability of his conviction: “I know that I must do what’s right/ Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti”.
Which, given that the mountain’s mighty peak can only be seen from the far eastern end of the Serengeti on the clearest of days, doesn’t sound that certain. And that’s the divine Olympus, with its palaces shining above the clouds, is it? Oh, we know what he means.
Oasis – Champagne Supernova (1995)‘Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball’
“Slowly walking down the hall, faster than a cannonball”. What’s to be said? Written by Noel Gallagher and sung aloud by roughly 1.4 million people – and a guy in a parka and desert boots – on the band’s recent reunion tour, the simplicity of this can hardly be bettered.
As TS Eliot wrote in a 1929 essay about Dante: “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” Which is just well, because in this case, that’s almost certainly going to be never. Perfection.
Van Halen – Why Can’t This Be Love (1986)‘Only time will tell if we can stand the test of time’
Spinal Tap may have given us the sublime Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight, but even they must have cocked an envious eye at this wordplay from 1980s rock giants Van Halen. The American rockers truly knocked it out of the park with their first single to feature new singer Sammy Hagar, as he belts out: “Only time will tell if we can stand the test of time”.
Hagar put voice to it, but the whole band shared the songwriting credit for this one, and it doesn’t get much better from there. “No, I can’t recall/ Anything at all”, roars Hagar later. Just as well Sammy, just as well.
Rainbow – Man on the Silver Mountain (1975)‘I’m a wheel, I’m a wheel/ I can roll, I can feel’
Anyone who loves the Ronnie James Dio-era Rainbow will know that the former singer from American rock band Elf (and future replacement for Ozzy in Black Sabbath) can make any old guff sound profound.
And he starts as he means to go on with the opening lines of track one, side one, of debut album Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, the band’s first single. “I’m a wheel, I’m a wheel/ I can roll, I can feel/ And you can’t stop me turning”, he bellows. Never intended to, Ronnie, but hey, roll on, man. Eat your heart out, Tufnel and St Hubbins.
The original line-up of British rock group Rainbow in Los Angeles in 1975 – Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images
The Beatles – She’s a Woman (1964)‘My love don’t give me presents/ I know that she’s no peasant’
No wonder the members of Spinal Tap panic about whether to salute Paul McCartney like a head of state when they are joined by the Beatle for a rendition of their early number Cups and Cakes in Spinal Tap II. (“Cups and cakes/ Cups and cakes/ I’m so full my tummy aches”).
The flourish that McCartney airs on the B-side of I Feel Fine, “My love don’t give me presents/ I know that she’s no peasant” is exactly the sort of thing that must have inspired Tap to their lyrical heights. For the writer of Eleanor Rigby, though, it might simply be seen as preparation for a lifetime of bringing forth lines like “The choir of children sing their song/ Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding”.
Paul McCartney makes a cameo in the highly anticipated sequel to 1984’s cult classic Spinal Tap
Yes – Close to the Edge (1972)‘Don’t surround yourself with yourself’
Oh yes. Yes. How about “Mountains come out of the sky – and they stand there”? Or “Don’t surround yourself with yourself”? Or even: “A seasoned witch could call you from the depths of your disgrace/ And rearrange your liver to the solid mental grace.”
If you were going there – and I am – you might go as far as to say that pretty much every line Yes singer Jon Anderson ever wrote would have graced Spinal Tap’s undocumented prog era. That last one’s just the opening couplet of an 18-minute wonder. Jon’s barely getting started.
“The time between the notes relates the colour to the scenes/ A constant vogue of triumphs dislocate man, so it seems”, he sings in the “Seasons of Man” section. “And space between the focus shape ascend knowledge of love / As song and chance develop time, lost social temperance rules above”. Aah, well, it rhymes. Magnificent.
Deep Purple – Highway Star (1972)‘Ooh, she’s a killing machine/ She’s got everything/ Like a moving mouth/ Body control and everything’
Tap have never been shy of a sexual metaphor – the cruder the better, as in Sex Farm: “Working on a sex farm/ Trying to raise some hard love/ Getting out my pitch fork/ Poking your hay”. But let’s face it, rock music is full of this stuff. And not just rock, either. Check out Katy Perry’s “Say the right thing, maybe you can be/ Crawlin’ on mе like a centipedе”. (I know, I know, it’s a simile.) Some of the crudest are too crass for this list, but others are tilling precisely the sort of fertile ground that Tap were harvesting.
Take this one, from the mighty Deep Purple, in a song that starts with a panegyric to a car. A car, right – got it? Then it slip-shifts to this, “Nobody gonna have my girl/ She stays close on every bend/ Ooh, she’s a killing machine/ She’s got everything/ Like a moving mouth/ Body control and everything”. It’s not a car.
Judas Priest – Turbo Lover (1986)‘I’m your turbo lover’
It didn’t stop there with the cars and motorbikes and sex, either, as Judas Priest were at pains to make clear. “Then we race together, we can ride forever/ Wrapped in horsepower, driving into fury/ Changing gear I pull you tighter to me/ I’m your turbo lover”. It’s not a motorbike.
Turbo lovers: Judas Priest performing in 1986 – Paul Natkin/Getty Images
Marillion – Charting the Single (1988)‘Plastered in Paris/ I’ve had an Eiffel’
Reliably Tap-like at times, but especially so on this under-appreciated B-side, Marillion’s lead singer Fish unashamedly takes a run at lines that are a sort of Interrail trip through the very worst puns that Europe has to offer. Before making an escape from his first city break destination on the midnight train, Fish sings of “Slow French kissing with the dauphin’s daughter/ If I fall in love now I’ll be floating in Seine/ Plastered in Paris/ I’ve had an Eiffel”. That’s how you do it.
Marillion’s lyrics can be reliably Tap-like at times: Fish and the band performing in 1988 – Pete Still/Redferns
Motörhead – Killed by Death (1984)‘The only time I’m going to be easy’s when I’m/ Killed by death/ Killed by death/ Killed by death’
There’s a straightforward allusion to “my snake” earlier in the song, and a less straightforward one to “my lizard” in this stone-cold Motörhead classic but the triumph is the chorus, in which Lemmy snarls that he ain’t gonna be “easy”, oh no. “The only time I’m going to be easy’s when I’m/ Killed by death/ Killed by death/ Killed by death”. And by easy, he means… oh god, I don’t know. The Tap themselves couldn’t have topped it. Killed by death? No chance. Immortal.
Killed by death? The Tap themselves couldn’t have topped Motörhead’s lyrics – Fin Costello/Redferns
Iron Maiden – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1984)‘The Mariner kills the bird of good omen/ His shipmates cry against what he’s done’
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s majestic long-form ballad is condensed into the form of a 13-minute heavy metal epic, but there’s just a faint suspicion that some of the poetry has been lost.
Take this: “The Mariner kills the bird of good omen/ His shipmates cry against what he’s done/ But when the fog clears, they justify him/ And make themselves a part of the crime”, which sounds suspiciously as if bassist Steve Harris had been clearing out his old bedroom and come across a slowly yellowing pile of Third Year homework. Still, only another 12 minutes and seven verses to go…
Dave Murray and Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden rocking on stage in 1984 – Paul Natkin/Getty Images
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is in cinemas now