Tap into the future

The last time we heard of Spinal Tap - "England's loudest band" - they were playing the Albert Hall in February 1992, still complaining vociferously to anyone who would listen about the film that introduced them to the wider world.

"I don't know how they managed it," Nigel Tufnel, the band's guitarist, said back then. "But that film made us look like... like buffoons." The film This Is Spinal Tap was made during the band's final, unhappy tour of America, undertaken in 1983. Film-maker Marti Di Bergi attached himself to them intending to present a unique picture of life on the road; an "if-you-will rockumentary" he called his concept. Di Bergi admitted at the time that he got more than he bargained for - "a lot more". Indeed for many critics, fans and almost everyone involved in the rock business, the result remains the funniest movie ever made.

"Clever cutting" was Tufnel's bitter analysis. "There were things he filmed which wouldn't have made us look foolish and he didn't choose to show them. I can't remember what they are right now, but he had them." "Well, for example," said Derek Smalls, the Tap's bassist, "he filmed nights when we had no problems finding the stage. Did he use that material? No." "If he'd done a film where everything went like clockwork no one would want to see it," said Tufnel.

"Except the Swiss," said Smalls.

The irony (Tufnel called it "perverse", Smalls "a paradox within a paradigm") is that the film appears, ultimately, to have done the lads no long-term harm. Indeed, 12 years after the movie was released, they are set to become not so much household names as household institutions. They have re-formed for the third time and joined forces with IBM in a television commercial to be screened worldwide to promote the computer manufacturer's involvement with this summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta.

"It's going great, we're very thrilled," said Derek Smalls, speaking yesterday from the headquarters of his father's telephone sanitisation service in Wolverhampton (motto: "Clean, fresh dialling for the Black Country"). "When we went back in the studio to do the commercial we found a new-found immaturity, which is so much more fun if you stop to think about it... which you shouldn't if you're being immature because that would be mature."

If any band deserve a re-acquaintance with the big time it is the Tap. After the end of their come-back Japanese tour with which Marti Di Bergi's movie concludes, they split in acrimony, law suits and complaints about the back-stage catering arrangements. Nigel Tufnel, confused by the break- up, subsequently spent a lot of time in the Waitrose near his Chelsea home "buying food"; guitarist David St Hubbins collaborated by mail with his amateur musician father, Ivor, on an "all-scat" version of Bizet's Carmen; and Derek Smalls joined a Christian rock band called Lambsblood. He had a fish tattooed on his arm: "It was just to say, 'Yeah, I'm with you, I may not be a practising Christian or anything, but I've got the tattoo'."

A chance meeting when Lambsblood next-to-headlined at a "Monsters of Jesus" festival in Orange County, California, led to the band re-grouping.

"I decided to throw my lot in with the devil again," says Smalls. "At that point I felt the tattoo would be inappropriate. I tried to have it removed, but it was not possible, so an artistically gifted friend tattoed a devil's head above it, apparently consuming the fish."

In 1992, the threesome released a come-back album Break Like The Wind, which introduced a new Tap philosophy to the world. Gone was the hedonism of "have a good time all the time" touring days. Gone was the new-age mysticism manifested by St Hubbins's boutique in Southern California called Krystals 'n' Kandles. And in its place came a proselytising urge to sell as many records, and as much merchandise and associated products as possible.

"Maybe philosophy is not the word," claims Smalls. "Sales isn't a philosophy. Sales is a strategy to get the philosophy across. Sales is philosophy's hand-maiden." "What we are saying," says Tufnel, speaking from his new base in Kent, where he is seeking a patent for his invention of folding wine glasses, "is 'Join us, won't you, in a consumer sense'."

And it was this philosophy that led to the connection with IBM.

The group resists any suggestion that their affiliation with the most buttoned-down of mega-corporations is in any sense a sell-out of the rock 'n' roll aesthetic.

"To me Tap represented the ultimate rebellion. You know, rebellion not just against authority, but against taste and standards," Smalls explains. "That rebellion has become the new establishment so it was inevitable we would be welcomed into it. I take my lead in this from Laurence Olivier. He did an advert for Polaroid something or other. If it's good enough for Larry, it's good enough for old Dell, isn't it?"

Indeed Smalls claims there was something artistically stimulating about engaging with the forces of commerce.

"We were egging on the IBM people and all that. It was all high spirits really," he says, voice lowered conspiratorially. "I think having all these people in suits - they weren't really suits, they were light blue polo shirts, the no-uniform uniform - freed us up in a way. It's a paradox, isn't it? Dealing with the unfree made us the free. If we were alone in the studio we became the suits because you are, after all, your own suit."

So, where once The Tap collectively swore they would never be asked to do a commercial, now Tufnel, Smalls and St Hubbins have launched into the advertising world with gusto. The campaign, filmed earlier this year, was created as part of IBM's "Solutions for a Small Planet" theme in which people speak in foreign tongues and are deciphered in English subtitles. Just so with Spinal Tap, who can be seen on stage performing a new song, "Goat Boy". What they sing appears unintelligible. But the translating subtitles reveal that the lyrics centre on a collective decision to hire IBM to help organise the complex logistics of their "third world come- back tour". These include "nutritionists, au pairs, personal trainers, not to mention erupting volcano apparatus".

The important question is whether this another example of the manner in which commerce has reflected art reflecting commerce which has characterised the band's career. Or have IBM actually helped sort out the details of touring?

"It would have, except for two things: one, the computers they promised us are still being fitted up with soft - whatever they put in 'em - soft goods," says Smalls. "Second, a closer look at the itinerary revealed that this was not to be our third world tour but a Third World tour. So it's your long haul. Your Dakka, your Bangladesh and really there's not a lot of logistics involved except where's the fucking electricity. We're bringing loud music to people who don't have food, basically."

The IBM gig also coincides with the release of a Spinal Tap CD-Rom and World Wide Web site at www.spinaltap.com. There, Tap-heads will be able to catch up on Tap arcanery and exchange information. Here, answers to Tap mysteries may be solved, such as what happened to the last occupant of the band's fatal drummer's seat, Rick Shrimpton? Famously careless of their rhythm section, the boys have, in their 25-year existence, lost John "Stumpy" Pepys in a bizarre gardening accident; Eric "Stumpy Joe" Childs, who choked on vomit (someone else's); Peter James Bond, who spontaneously combusted; Mick Shrimpton, hideously maimed in an onstage explosion; Joe "Mama" Besser, missing (presumed dead). And now Rick Shrimpton, last heard of as drummer with the Eurovision Song Contest house band.

But more important than that, via the web-site, fans will be able to exercise their credit cards and purchase exclusive Tap merchandise: computer mousepads, fly-swatters, barbecue aprons, that kind of thing.

"We're not just a band, we're a brand," says Smalls. "It's the state we have always sought after - to be but not really to do. We don't lift a finger unless there's great bread spread across it. Along with a bit of butter and jam."

"As you may or may not know," adds St Hubbins, speaking from California, where he spends a lot of time coaching kids' soccer for the local park commission. "Tap as a creative entity has been loath to put its imprint on just any old crap. In fact, if the band has a motto, it would likely be that crap is not worth going out of your way to get more of. Or words to that effect. Fewer words, certainly."

Thus the Tap juggernaut shudders into gear once more. One thing is certain: if it is to be kept on the road, the food had better be good. The last time the band toured Britain, this was their daily lunch requirement. For Nigel Tufnel: open-faced smoked salmon sandwich on Polish rye with de-tanninated Assam tea. For St Hubbins, the same but with Italian dressing on the side and a Diet Tango. For Smalls, a banana ("just a banana"). It was a demand that frightened their press officer - a man with a greying pony tail called John Roy - into a frenzy of panic.

"They like to eat well. I don't mean a lot, I mean well," he said at the time. "You know, LA well, good food, well presented. Next time they come I'm going to make sure they have set meal times in London restaurants that can cope with their tastes. That's really all you have to do for them, as a matter of actual fact. The right food at the right time. On the continent, I'm not sure they'll understand that. You know, heavy sauces? Not Tap at all.''

Now Spinal Tap are back together and working, it is safe to predict that things will be much the same as before.