This Is Spinal Tap director insists Stonehenge scene was not inspired by Black Sabbath's stage prop blunder

Black Sabbath in Spain part of their European tour, (clockwise) Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, Ian Gillan and Geezer Butler. 14th September 1983. — (Image credit: Bill Rowntree/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)

The director of cult hit movie This Is Spinal Tap has cleared up a long-held misperception that the famous Stonehenge scene in the movie was inspired by a similar incident on a Black Sabbath tour.

In the 1984 film, the band Spinal Tap commissioned an artist to create a huge recreation of the mystical prehistoric structure that draws countless visitors to the Stonehenge site in England.

The rockers were left embarrassed when the artist turned up with a small scale model, revealing the written instructions she was given said to build an 18" (inches) replica – rather than an impressive 18' (feet) version. The hilarious scene can be viewed below.

In 1983, Black Sabbath – fronted at the time by Ian Gillan – had a model of Stonehenge made for a stage prop. But the person making the prop incorrectly read Sabbath manager Don Arden's measurements as being in metres instead of feet, resulting in it being three times bigger than planned.

The similarities in the movie scene and the real-life metal mishap are remarkable.

In Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler's memoir Into The Void, he explained how it went down.

Butler wrote: "Presumably because we had an instrumental called Stonehenge on the album, Don wanted a Stonehenge stage set, with a massive sun rising up behind the stones as the show progressed. I thought it was an utterly ridiculous idea.

"When we rehearsed at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, the stones were set up on the floor and actually looked really expressive. But when we did our first gig of the tour in Norway, and put the stones on the stage, they were almost touching the ceiling.

"Years later we did a photo shoot with Spinal Tap and asked them if they'd based those scenes on us, but they said it was just coincidence. I find that difficult to believe."

Now This Is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner has spoken out, insisting his idea had been years in the making and he couldn't possibly have stolen Sabbath's farcical story and make the movie in such a short period of time.

He tells Screen Rant: "Black Sabbath was doing a tour and they came out about two or three weeks before our film came out. They saw our film and they were furious that we had stolen the Stonehenge theme from them.

"To me, it was the best thing, because what morons. What did they think? That that we shot the film, we edited it, we got it into the theaters in two weeks? I mean, it is ludicrous.

"But to me, that was the great, perfect heavy metal moment. That they were so dumb that they thought that we stole it from them."

A sequel to the film is set for release this year.

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Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.

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