Judas Priest’s Rob Halford on seeing ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ for the first time: “It was like watching ourselves”

Rob Halford has revealed how much he related to the scenes depicted in classic mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap.

The Judas Priest frontman recalled seeing the 1984 film with his bandmate Glenn Tipton, which both musicians remarked was a mirror image of their classic rock star antics.

“I love satire. Glenn loves satire,” Halford told The Horn 104.9 & AM 1260. “The thing about satire, you can only make satire from great things that have happened in the real world.

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“To us, that was just what Spinal Tap was all about. We could see ourselves in that movie time and time again, whether it was in hotels or losing the way to the stage or things going wrong on stage with the props and the accessories. It was like watching ourselves from the outside looking in. We roared through the whole thing” [quotes via Blabbermouth].

This Is Spinal Tap follows fictional English band Spinal Tap as they tour the US in the early ’80s. The film is widely regarded as establishing the mockumentary format and, despite not releasing to commercial nor critical acclaim, it has since become a much-loved classic.

In 2002 it was recognised by the US Library of Congress as a culturally, historically or aesthetically significant film.

Halford added to The Horn: “We roared through the whole thing. It was kind of a miscommunication, I think, that this is about a real band called Spinal Tap and this is a documentary about their life. So some of the people that were in the movie theatre that afternoon that Glenn and I went to see the movie, they were very upset. They made their feelings known as they stormed out of the movie theatre.”






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In other news, Halford revealed recently that the best piece of advice he’s ever received was from Kiss’ Gene Simmons.