Rhino: Harry Shearer has freely acknowledged the debt that Derek Smalls owes to you. So did he just come to see the band play, or did he actually go on tour with Saxon?SD: He came on tour with us! But how it went down was… You know, you’d get journalists coming on tour with you all the time. “Oh, is it okay if so and so from Kerrang! or Melody Maker or Sounds come with you for a couple of days? They’re gonna do a live review, blah blah blah…” “Yeah, come on!” So we didn’t know Harry Shearer for the fame he’s got now. He was just another journalist. “This guy wants to come and hang out with you for three days. Is it okay if he travels around with you?” We said, “Yeah, no problem!” So what happened was, after the concert, we’d just be hanging about in the bar, talking, and he just got us to talk about things that happened on the road. We didn’t know he was making Spinal Tap. We just thought he was a journalist. So he took the funny side of things and turned them into a film.
And I can remember, we were on tour with Iron Maiden in America, and we went to see Spinal Tap in the theater! [Laughs.] I mean, obviously, Harry Shearer had been with us, but then there was a time period between then and when the film came out, so we’d forgotten about us, and we didn’t relate any of the gags to us, really. But two of the members of Iron Maiden, halfway through, got up and walked out in disgust! But we were all there, laughing our balls off, because we thought it was funny! Because let’s face it: it is quite pantomime and funny, heavy metal music. That’s not taking anything away from the serious side of songwriting or the fans, but…if you analyze it, it is quite odd.
I mean, I can remember a funny story, where we were working in the studio in London, and I decided to nip out to get some air. And I’ve got me black leather biker jacket on, I’ve got a big mustache, skin-tight red jeans and boots…and I didn’t understand why all these guys kept whistling at me! [Laughs.] And shouting “faggot” and stuff like that. But that’s where we bought our clothes: the S&M shops in London, the porno shops. Because that’s the only place you could buy studs and leather belts and all that stuff! But it didn’t come across to us. We just liked leather jackets. There was no gay sexual stuff in it at all. That were other people who mentioned that later on. And when you look back, you think, “Oh, yeah!” And pulling gigs because the ham won’t fit on the bread…I mean, that happened all the time!
Rhino: It’s hard to believe that neither Shearer nor anyone from the movie studio let anyone from Saxon know that This is Spinal Tap was coming out, especially given that he’d actually gone on tour with the band.
SD: Nope. And we didn’t pick up on it right away, because Harry doesn’t look like Derek Smalls in real life. He was just a short-haired weedy guy. [Laughs.]
Rhino: And none of the moments in the film made you think, “Hey, that’s just like us”?
SD: Not really, no. We just watched it and looked at it as a funny film. I mean, okay, you could draw the comparisons in the way Derek Smalls played the bass, which is very similar to me. In fact, he said that was one of the key things that he got: the way I played with one hand up in the air all the time. [Laughs.] Just because playing rock bass, a lot of the time… You’re more or less like a drummer: you just keep things going. You’re not really up and down the neck all the time. You’re, like, pumping an A or an E or something. So just out of the fact that I’m only playing with one hand, I might as well do something with the other one!
That’s how that pointing thing got going: because I realized if you’re pointing at somebody in the audience… I mean, I’ve been in the audience at the Sheffield City Hall, and for some reason, if the guy in the band is looking into the audience, you always think he’s looking at you. He’s not, really. He’s looking at two or three thousand people! But I found if I picked on one guy and pointed at him, it liked to have made his day, if you know what I mean, and he went fucking crazy! So I thought, “Oh, this is all right!” So I just pointed at everybody, and they all went mad. They loved it! So that’s, like, a bit of a pantomime moment – or a Spinal Tap moment, if you will – but it was totally done out of just enjoying meself.
Rhino: So you weren’t guilty of trying to smuggle a cucumber through security, were you?
SD: Well, that cucumber… [Starts to laugh.] There is a famous photo. A guy from Sounds, a music paper in England, said, “We want to do a feature of the band, and we want to take some pictures of you walking about in London.” So we all thought, “Oh, if they’re gonna be taking some pictures of us, we’d better get into our stage gear!” So I had those stripey trousers on, and we were there in full spandex and leather, walking around London, and we just happened to go by a shop that sold vegetables. And I noticed this cucumber, so I picked it up and put it in the, uh, usual pose – sticking out – and that was on part of the feature! We told that story to Harry, and I think he just altered it slightly about being down his trousers.