Spinal Tap blur fact and fiction

Comedy movies don't enter the realms of rock history, but This Is Spinal Tap was different. Its attention to detail in its depiction of a squabbling and struggling metal band was so perfect – and so well received – that real metal bands started to claim they had been the inspiration for the pratfalls portrayed. Black Sabbath's disastrous appearance at the 1983 Reading festival, with an oversized Stonehenge-themed stage set, certainly provided a model for the Tap's own miniature equivalent; dozens of musicians claimed they had been the ones who had really been lost in the wings, unable to find the stage. It also provided inspiration of its own: the amp that goes up to 11, for when 10 just isn't loud enough, has passed into rock folklore, and the Darkness appeared to have modelled their whole career on Spinal Tap.