The trailer has finally dropped for the long-awaited Spinal Tap sequel, with our heroes older definitely, wiser maybe, and ready to make some kind of comeback – to climb out of obscurity and reclaim their legacy as one of Britain’s great heavy metal institutions.
For that, they’re going to need guitars, and lots of them. Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown might have made all the early running in the bid to be the most guitar-heavy film of 2025, but for all of Timothée Chalamet and Gibson’s efforts, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is going to be 1hr 23 minutes of NAMM on psilocybin.
“A lot has happened since the last time I saw you,” says onscreen director Marty Bergman, after a series of flashbacks to the original movie (we won’t retread old gear ground here). Ain’t that the truth. There’s Tufnel selling cheese.
In an interview with Empire, the real director, Rob Reiner, revealed some of the career changes that had been going on with the band. Tufnel did say he wanted to move into retail, and he did.
“Nigel has been running a cheese and guitar shop in Berwick-upon-Tweed,” said Reiner. “He’s also been performing with a local folk band in the village that play penny whistle and mandolin, and he plays electric guitar with them. We show a little clip of that.”
St. Hubbins, meanwhile, kept his hand in. He makes music, albeit for a true crime podcast – which sounds close enough to realizing his life’s dream of a scoring a light musical based on the life of Jack the Ripper. We also see him in a Mariachi band playing an old Dean nylon-string guitar (is that a Dean España?).
“David St. Hubbins has been living in Morro Bay in California, and he’s been writing music for podcasts, particularly this one true-crime podcast called The Trouble With Murder,” explained Reiner. “He also writes the music that you hear when you’re on hold on the phone.”
Smalls? He moved into glue.
“Derek is living in London and is now the curator of the New Museum of Glue,” continued Reiner. “He’s curated glue from every country in the world – the whole history of glue – and he shows me around.”
Onto the guitars that will feature in Spinal Tap II. As Reiner mentions, Tufnel is on the pub gig circuit. We’d like to think he is playing Slipknot covers but this is very much more of a shirts off for Roy Harper deal.
We see him playing a Butterscotch Blonde Tele with a P-90 pickup at the neck. We’d love to see if he has embraced amp modelers, a big old Helix on the floor, but maybe you’ll have to wait for the Blu-ray extras for that.
This Tele is very Julian Lage. This is probably the only time you will read Julian Lage and Nigel Tufnel's names in the same sentence.
Present-day Tap is a band transformed. Hubbins is playing an Ibanez JS-3 Joe Satriani signature guitar. Smalls has a Lakland Skyline bass. Somebody somewhere has probably got a Tonex One in the pocket.
Cut to the studio and it is clear the bottom has fallen out of the glue market; Smalls is playing a Schecter C-5 in Satin Metallic Light Blue.
His bandmates have more upscale choices. Hubbins has a PRS McCarty 594 Singlecut, and Tufnel has a… Wait! A Collings 470 JL Julian Lage signature model in Antiqued Sunburst! Maybe that T-style was a Nachocaster. Maybe Tufnel and Lage are kindred spirits after all.
Lick My Love Pump coming to a Blue Note recording sometime soon? Nothing would surprise us. We are in the craziest of timelines. Note also: there are some Jazzmasters hanging on the wall. Is an indie/alt-rock change of direction written in the stars?
Who knows what narrative threads Rob Reiner will pull upon for this sequel, but we can be sure that Paul McCartney and Elton John will be making sizeable cameos.
As Guitar World reported, Tufnel is playing St Vincent’s signature Ernie Ball Music Man Goldie in a custom Union Jack finish. St. Hubbins is playing an EBMM signature model in Union Jack finish, too, but this is a James Valentine HH model with custom block inlays, because why not?
He’s the frontman of Spinal Tap. And he’s gonna do a number called Stonehenge...
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is out September 12 through Sony Pictures.
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