50 Best This Is Spinal Tap Quotes

Derek: [on the phone to his solicitor] Isn't there a law against this sort of thing? Surely you can't just buy a full page ad in the music papers and publish your divorce demands.
[pause]
Derek: What do you mean 'I paid for it'?
[pause]
Derek: Joint account! Fuck! Can't we just have her killed? You know people.

[while playing a video game]
Viv: Quite exciting, this computer magic!

[Asked by a reporter if this is the end of Spinal Tap]
David St. Hubbins: Well, I don't really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you.

Nigel: [about the back-stage buffet] Look, this. This miniature bread, it like... I've been working with this now for about half an hour and i can't figure out... let's say I wanted a bite, right. You got this...
Ian: You'd like bigger bread?
Nigel: Exactly. I don't under stand how...
Ian: [gestures to the meat] You could just fold this... though.
Nigel: [folding the bread] Well, no... then it's half the size...
Ian: No, not the bread.
[folding the meat]
Ian: You could fold the meat...
Nigel: [still folding the bread] Yeah, but then it breaks up. It breaks apart like this...
Ian: [putting the folded meat onto the miniature bread] No, no, no... you put it on the bread like this; see?
Nigel: [folding the miniature sandwich] But if you keep folding it, then it keeps breaking...
Ian: Why would you keep folding it?
Nigel: ...and then everything has to be folded... and then you have
[holds up miniature sandwich]
Nigel: ... this. And I don't want this. I want large bread, so I can put this...
[puts meat between two pieces of miniature bread]
Nigel: ... so then it's like this. But this doesn't work, because then it's all...
Ian: Because it hangs out like that?
Nigel: Look! would you be holding this?
Ian: No. I wouldn't want to eat...
Nigel: No! Alright, A. Exhibit, exhibit A.
[throws down miniature sandwich]
Nigel: And now we move onto this...
[picks up an olive]
Nigel: Look, look; who's in here? No one.
[picks up an olive stuffed with pimento]
Nigel: And in here, there's a little guy, look! So, it's a complete catastrophe!
Ian: Alright, Nigel, Nigel... calm down...
Nigel: Look... no, it's no big deal, It's a joke... it's really... it's a joke.
Ian: I'm sorry, it's just some prat at university, you know? I really... I don't want it to affect your performance.
Nigel: It's not going to affect my performance, don't worry about that. I just hate it... it really, it does disturb me, but i'll rise above it; I'm a professional.

David St. Hubbins: [to the Janitor] We're in the group. We're in the group that's playing tonight.
Janitor: You go right straight through this door here, down the hall...
David St. Hubbins: Yeah.
Janitor: turn right...
David St. Hubbins: Yeah.
Janitor: and then there's a little jog there, about thirty feet.
Derek: A jog?
Janitor: jog to the left...
David St. Hubbins: A jog?
Derek: We don't have time for that.
Janitor: go straight ahead...
David St. Hubbins: We trust you. We trust you.
Janitor: go straight ahead, go straight ahead, turn right the next two corners, and the first door the sign "Authorized Personnel Only"...
David St. Hubbins: Yeah.
Janitor: Open that door, that's the stage!
David St. Hubbins: You think so?
Janitor: You're authorized. You're musicians aren't you?
David St. Hubbins: We've got guitars yeah.

Derek: That's not to say I haven't had my visionary moments. I've taken acid seventy... five, seventy-six times.
Marty: 76?
Derek: Yeah, so I've had my moments in the sky.

Nigel: [Showing Marty his Les Paul]
[Imitating Vibrato]
Nigel: You can go have a bite and
[vibrato]
Nigel: you'd still be hearing that.

Marty: Do you have a philosophy, or creed that you live by?
Mick: Well, like, personally, I like to think about sex and drugs and rock'n'roll, you know, that's my life.

[discussing Nigel's Guitar collection]
Nigel: Look... still has the old tag on, never even played it.
Marty: [points his finger] You've never played...?
Nigel: Don't touch it!
Marty: We'll I wasn't going to touch it, I was just pointing at it.
Nigel: Well... don't point! It can't be played.
Marty: Don't point, okay. Can I look at it?
Nigel: No. no. That's it, you've seen enough of that one.

Nigel: Why don't you play this alone, without some fucking angel hanging over your head, you know what I mean?
Derek: Jesus Christ, this is fucking all we need!
Nigel: You can't fucking concentrate, because of your fucking wife, simple as that, alright, it's your fucking wife!
David St. Hubbins: She's not my wife.
Nigel: Well, whatever fuck she is, alright, you can't concentrate. We can't fucking do the track.

Derek: We're very luck, in a sense, that we have two visionaries in the band. David and Nigel, they're both like - like poets, you know, like Shelley and Byron, people like that. They're two totally distinct types of visionaries, it's like fire and ice, basically, you see. I feel my role in the band is to be kind of in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.

[Nigel, introducing the Stonehenge theme concert]
Nigel: In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, an ancient race of people... the Druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing...

Bobbi: You put a *greased naked woman* on all fours with a dog collar around her neck, and a leash, and a man's arm extended out up to here, holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it. You don't find that offensive? You don't find that sexist?
Ian: This is *1982*, Bobbi, c'mon!
Bobbi: That's *right*, it's 1982! Get out of the '60s. We don't have this mentality anymore.
Ian: Well, you should have seen the cover they *wanted* to do! It wasn't a glove, believe me.

Derek: We're lucky.
David St. Hubbins: Yeah.
Derek: I mean, people should be envying us, you know.
David St. Hubbins: I envy us.
Derek: Yeah.
David St. Hubbins: I do.
Derek: Me too.

Mick: As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll.

[David raises hand after Ian Faith quits as the band's manager]
Derek: Can I raise a practical question at this point? Are we gonna do "Stonehenge" tomorrow?
David St. Hubbins: *NO*, we're not gonna fucking do "Stonehenge"!

[Asked to write his own epitaph]
David St. Hubbins: Here lies David St. Hubbins... and why not?

[Nigel is playing a soft piece on the piano]
Marty: It's very pretty.
Nigel: Yeah, I've been fooling around with it for a few months.
Marty: It's a bit of a departure from what you normally play.
Nigel: It's part of a trilogy, a musical trilogy I'm working on in D minor which is the saddest of all keys, I find. People weep instantly when they hear it, and I don't know why.
Marty: It's very nice.
Nigel: You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like - I'm really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it's sort of in between those, really. It's like a Mach piece, really. It's sort of...
Marty: What do you call this?
Nigel: Well, this piece is called "Lick My Love Pump".

David St. Hubbins: It's such a fine line between stupid, and uh...
Nigel: Clever.
David St. Hubbins: Yeah, and clever.

Marty: Now, during the Flower People period, who was your drummer?
David St. Hubbins: Stumpy's replacement, Peter James Bond. He also died in mysterious circumstances. We were playing a, uh...
Nigel: ...Festival.
David St. Hubbins: Jazz blues festival. Where was that?
Nigel: Blues jazz, really.
Derek: Blues jazz festival. Misnamed.
Nigel: It was in the Isle of, uh...
David St. Hubbins: Isle of Lucy. The Isle of Lucy jazz and blues festival.
Nigel: And, uh, it was tragic, really. He exploded on stage.
Derek: Just like that.
David St. Hubbins: He just went up.
Nigel: He just was like a flash of green light... And that was it. Nothing was left.
David St. Hubbins: Look at his face.
Nigel: Well, there was...
David St. Hubbins: It's true, this really did happen.
Nigel: It's true. There was a little green globule on his drum seat.
David St. Hubbins: Like a stain, really.
Nigel: It was more of a stain than a globule, actually.
David St. Hubbins: You know, several, you know, dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

Lt. Hookstratten: May I start by saying how thrilled we are to have you here. We are such fans of your music and all of your records. I'm not speaking of yours personally, but the whole genre of the rock and roll.

Ian: They're not gonna release the album... because they have decided that the cover is sexist.
Nigel: Well, so what? What's wrong with bein' sexy? I mean there's no...
Ian: Sex-IST!
David St. Hubbins: IST!

[Nigel Tufnel is showing Marty DiBergi one of his favorite guitars]
Nigel: The sustain, listen to it.
Marty: I don't hear anything.
Nigel: Well you would though, if it were playing.

David St. Hubbins: They were still booing him when we came on stage.

Marty: Dennis Eaton-Hogg, the president of Polymer Records, was recently knighted, what were the circumstances surrounding his knighthood?
Ian: The specific reason why he was knighted was uh for the founding of Hoggwood, which is um, a summer-camp for pale, young boys.

David St. Hubbins: I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the band was down. I think that the problem *may* have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being *crushed* by a *dwarf*. Alright? That tended to understate the hugeness of the object.
Ian: I really think you're just making much too big a thing out of it.
Derek: Making a big thing out of it would have been a good idea.

Derek: Remember at Luton Palace we were talking about writing a rock musical based on the life of Jack the Ripper.
David St. Hubbins: Yeah!
[singing]
David St. Hubbins: You're a naughty one...
Derek: Saucy Jack...
David St. Hubbins: You're a haughty one, saucy Jack.

Nigel: It's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.

Nigel: We've got Armadillos in our trousers. It's really quite frightening.

Ian: The Boston gig has been cancelled...
David St. Hubbins: What?
Ian: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town.

Marty: Do you feel that playing rock 'n' roll music keeps you a child? That is, keeps you in a state of arrested development?
Derek: No. No. No. I feel it's like, it's more like going, going to a, a national park or something. And there's, you know, they preserve the moose. And that's, that's my childhood up there on stage. That moose, you know.
Marty: So when you're playing you feel like a preserved moose on stage?
Derek: Yeah.

[first lines]
Marty: Hello; my name is Marty DiBergi. I'm a filmmaker. I make a lot of commercials. That little dog that chases the covered wagon underneath the sink? That was mine. In 1966, I went down to Greenwich Village, New York City to a rock club called Electric Banana. Don't look for it; it's not there anymore. But that night, I heard a band that for me redefined the word "rock and roll". I remember being knocked out by their... their exuberance, their raw power - and their punctuality. That band was Britain's now-legendary Spinal Tap. Seventeen years and fifteen albums later, Spinal Tap is still going strong. And they've earned a distinguished place in rock history as one of England's loudest bands. So in the late fall of 1982, when I heard that Tap was releasing a new album called "Smell the Glove", and was planning their first tour of the United States in almost six years to promote that album, well needless to say I jumped at the chance to make the documentary - the, if you will, "rockumentary" - that you're about to see. I wanted to capture the... the sights, the sounds... the smells of a hard-working rock band, on the road. And I got that; I got more... a lot more. But hey, enough of my yakkin'; whaddaya say? Let's boogie!

David St. Hubbins: We say, "Love your brother." We don't say it really, but...
Nigel: We don't literally say it.
David St. Hubbins: No, we don't say it.
Nigel: We don't really, literally mean it.
David St. Hubbins: No, we don't believe it either, but...
Nigel: But we're not racists.
David St. Hubbins: But that message should be clear, anyway.
Nigel: We're anything but racists.

David St. Hubbins: [singing] Big bottom, big bottom, Talk about mud flaps, my girl's got 'em! Big bottom drive me out of my mind, How could I leave this behind?

Jeanine: [following the disastrous Stonehenge performance] If it got solved, that would be alright, but it doesn't get solved. I mean what do you think happened out there? What got solved tonight?
Ian: For one thing that goes wrong... one... one single thing that goes wrong, a hundred things go right. Do you know what I spend my time doing? I sleep two or three hours a night. There's no sex and drugs for Ian, David. Do you know what I do? I find lost luggage. I locate mandolin strings in the middle of Austin. You know? I prise the rent out of the local Hebrews. That's what I do!

David St. Hubbins: Well, I'm sure I'd feel much worse if I weren't under such heavy sedation.

Marty: David St. Hubbins... I must admit I've never heard anybody with that name.
David St. Hubbins: It's an unusual name, well, he was an unusual saint, he's not a very well known saint.
Marty: Oh, there actually is, uh... there was a Saint Hubbins?
David St. Hubbins: That's right, yes.
Marty: What was he the saint of?
David St. Hubbins: He was the patron saint of quality footwear.

[Reading a review of Spinal Tap's latest album]
Marty: "This pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question, 'What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn't he have rested on that day too?'"

Nigel: You can't really dust for vomit.

Ian: Nigel gave me a drawing that said 18 inches. Now, whether or not he knows the difference between feet and inches is not my problem. I do what I'm told.
David St. Hubbins: But you're not as confused as him are you. I mean, it's not your job to be as confused as Nigel.

Marty: Let's talk about your reviews a little bit. Regarding Intravenus de Milo - "This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth rate of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry."
Nigel: That's... that's nitpicking, isn't it?

Lt. Hookstratten: This is our monthly "At Ease" weekend. It gives us a chance to let our hair down, although I see you've got a head start in that department. I shouldn't talk, though, I'm getting a little shaggy myself. I'd better not stand too close to you, people might think I'm part of the band. I'm joking, of course.

David St. Hubbins: Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year. It's just not really widely reported.

Viv: [when asked by Marty if he has a creed he lives by] Have... a good time... all the time.

[Marty compliments Nigel on his tee shirt]
Nigel: You like this?
Marty: It's very nice. It looks like hollow wood.
Nigel: This is my exact inner structure, done in a tee shirt. Exactly medically accurate. See?
Marty: So in other words if we were to take all your flesh and blood...
Nigel: Take them off. This is what you'd see.
Marty: It wouldn't be green though.
[Nigel points at Marty]
Nigel: It is green. You see how your blood looks blue.
Marty: Yeah, well that's just the vein. That's the color of the vein. The blood is actually red.
Nigel: Oh then, maybe it's not green. Anyway this is what I sleep in sometimes.

[reading a review of the album "Shark Sandwich"]
Marty: The review you had on "Shark Sandwich", which was merely a two word review, just said "Shit Sandwich".

[last lines]
Nigel: [on what he would do if he couldn't be a rock star] Well, I suppose I could, uh, work in a shop of some kind, or... or do, uh, freelance, uh, selling of some sort of, uh, product. You know...
Marty: A salesman?
Nigel: A salesman, like maybe in a, uh, haberdasher, or maybe like a, uh, um... a chapeau shop or something. You know, like, "Would you... what size do you wear, sir?" And then you answer me.
Marty: Uh... seven and a quarter.
Nigel: "I think we have that." See, something like that I could do.
Marty: Yeah... you think you'd be happy doing something like-...
Nigel: "No; we're all out. Do you wear black?" See, that sort of thing I think I could probably... muster up.
Marty: Do you think you'd be happy doing that?
Nigel: Well, I don't know - wh-wh-... what're the hours?

David St. Hubbins: I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything.

Nigel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel: Exactly.
Marty: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty: I don't know.
Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel: [pause] These go to eleven.

[When asked what happened to their first drummer]
David St. Hubbins: He died in a bizarre gardening accident...
Nigel: Authorities said... best leave it... unsolved.