Rob Reiner, the director of This Is Spinal Tap, called the members of Black Sabbath “dumb” for thinking the film’s famous Stonehenge scene was based on them. He pointed out that the scene was actually written and filmed long before Sabbath’s own Stonehenge stage setup.
The cult-classic mockumentary is full of over-the-top moments that poke fun at the extravagance and absurdity of ‘70s and ‘80s rock, many of which were so accurate that real bands later admitted they’d lived through similar things. Black Sabbath’s giant Stonehenge set during the Ian Gillan era became a legendary story, leading many to believe it inspired Spinal Tap.
However, while fans often say the Stonehenge joke came from Sabbath’s 1983 “Born Again” tour, the Spinal Tap scene was actually shot in 1982 for Spinal Tap – The Final Tour, which came out before the full movie was released in March 1984.
In a recent interview with Screen Rant, Reiner said Black Sabbath members were upset, thinking he’d stolen their idea.
Black Sabbath did have an instrumental called “Stonehenge,” and bassist Geezer Butler wrote in his memoir that the filmmakers told him it was just a coincidence — though he found that hard to believe.
“Black Sabbath was doing a tour, and they came out about two or three weeks before our film came out, [and they had Stonehenge]. They saw our film and they were furious that we had stolen the Stonehenge theme from them.”
“To me, it was the best thing, because what morons. What did they think? They [thought] that we shot the film, we edited it, [and] we got it into the theaters in two weeks? I mean, it is ludicrous. But to me, that was the great, perfect heavy metal moment: that they were so dumb that they thought that we stole it from them.”
Still, in 2022, Butler admitted he loved the film, saying: “It was lovely, it’s brilliant. I used to play it every day on the bus on tour.”
