This is Spinal Tap, and this is lunch!
The original members of the legendary mock metal band — Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer — appeared Wednesday at Nathans of Georgetown for an episode of “The Q&A Cafe with Carol Joynt.” They played the Warner Theatre on Wednesday night as part of their “Unwigged and Unplugged” tour.
“There’s no pressure at all” in making a comeback, Shearer told us. “We’re going out there as ourselves, not as Spinal Tap, so the challenge is to figure out how to play these songs as ourselves.”
“We are unwigged and unplugged, except that we are plugged,” McKean told Joynt in the interview.
How have things changed since the last tour? “There are better buses,” said McKean.
“And we don’t have a drummer,” Shearer added.
The band also told about rehearsing in the space next to Paul McCartney’s band when it warmed up for its tour.
“I’ve never seen three so loquacious individuals so short of words,” Shearer remembered one observer saying, after they met the Beatles icon.
Guest, the director of many of the troupe’s “mockumentaries,” said he is considering a film that takes on politics. “It’s not Washington,” he said. “I have no interest in Washington, but I have interest in the general idea” of politics.
The three also discussed whether they find President Barack Obama funny. “He’s sharp and he knows what humor is,” said McKean. “They’re better when they don’t.”
Shearer, a student of politics himself, added that he fears that humor could come from the Obama administration being like the Kennedy or LBJ administrations, “where you had very smart people doing very stupid things.”
The entire interview with Joynt airs at 8 p.m. Friday on D.C. cable.
