A Brief History of Spinal Tap

Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, Ronnie Pudding, Denny Upham and John 'Stumpy' Pepys played their first gig as SPINAL TAP at the Music Membrane in December 1966. Pudding was soon replaced on bass by Derek Smalls, formerly with England's pioneer all-white Jamaican showband, Skaface. Tap's debut hit single, released in July 1967 on Megaphone, was the Summer Of Love anthem Listen To The Flower People.

Spinal Tap released 'Spinal Tap Sings Listen To The Flower People and other Favorites' and the album went gold, but their next album, 'We Are All Flower People', had dismal sales. The band panicked, fired keyboardist Upham, and toured as a four-piece band, supporting the then-hot Matchstick Men. Under the headliners' tutelage, Tap developed the heavier, acid-based, twin guitar attack which earmarks Spinal Tap product to this day.

Spinal Tap made their biggest splash at the now-legendary Electric Zoo concerts in Wimpton, culminating in the then-legendary St. Hubbins/Tufnel dual guitar solo on Short and Sweet. Their live recordings of the Zoo shows yielded the third Tap album, Silent But Deadly, which established them as a top draw.

Though neither a critics' nor a public favorite, Spinal Tap continues to fill a much needed void. For a comprehensive online history of Spinal Tap, read The Official History from SpinalTapFan.com.

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"Probably rock history's funniest inside joke, Spinal Tap was an ambitious dead-on parody of heavy metal's clichés and excesses, put on by skilled comic actors who wrote and played their own songs and were big enough fans of the music to satirize it -- however brutally -- with knowing affection."

Read more of the Rolling Stone Bio HERE!