Harry Shearer on the unplanned "Unwigged" DVD, the "shocking" cease-and-desist letter from Lego and his musical influences

You may have heard that the trio who starred in and created the music for two of the best mockumentaries ever, "This Is Spinal Tap" and "A Mighty Wind," reunited for a recent low-budget tour of the U.S. minus their getups.

On Friday I spoke with Harry Shearer, one third of the "Unwigged and Unplugged" tour, in anticipation of the concert DVD being released Sept. 1. (Speaking as a resident of a city where the tour did not play, may I just say: highly anticipated.)

And now I can pass along the story about how this well-received concert tour got preserved for all time.

Midway through their 29-city tour, Shearer, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest (pictured above) were approached by none other than our old pal Tom Roche, the longtime editor of "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" and a true friend of TVB. Tom suggested they make a DVD, offered to help make it happen, calls were made and three weeks later, a fancy production truck rolled into Milwaukee to record the final stop on the tour.

Read my interview with Tom Roche about the making of the "Unwigged" DVD

The DVD contains the entire concert just as it happened, except for the showing of a stop-motion animation video featuring Legos toys performing the Tap classic "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight." That's because attorneys for the US subsidiary of the Royal Dutch Lego Company refused to grant permission to include the video on the DVD (even though, as Harry notes below, it's already been seen by more people on YouTube than will ever watch the DVD).

I asked Harry for his reaction to the Lego spokesflack's quote in the New York Times, and Harry didn't fail me with his response. I also asked him how he learned to play, how often he's in New Orleans, and (while I was at it) his take on the health care debate.

The audio contains our whole interview; excerpts are below.

TVB: How long did you guys rehearse this?

Shearer: Well, any time we talk about going onstage we have to deal with the fact that Christopher particularly — I mean, all of us are kind of sticklers, perfectionists — but Christopher is just like, "Uhh, let's take a couple of months and rehearse that song." We rehearsed and planned the show for a solid month and a half, from as soon as I got back from Mardi Gras all the way until April 17. Part of it was not just learning the song but learning how we would play the songs as opposed to the characters.

(I ask for an example.)

I think the most extreme case was "Big Bottom." We knew that because we were only carrying one or two instruments apiece -- this was a very logistically stripped down tour -- people were not, you know, going to just be able to whip out basses. So our traditional approach to the song was not available. One day we were rehearsing and I said, "Guys, what about this?" — and I played, haltingly at the time, this sort of jazzy approach to the "Big Bottom" riff, and that Michael and Chris started snapping their fingers and doing a kind of scatty approach to singing it and we looked at each other at the end and said, "Yeah, okay, that's us." ...

TVB: I understand when you began your tour, doing a DVD wasn't on your radar.

Shearer: Oh God no.

TVB: So how'd it come about?

Shearer: Sort of by accident. Maybe about midway through the tour we played Atlanta, and a friend of mine who is a supervising editor at a post-production house in Atlanta, Tom Roche, came up to us backstage after the show and said, "God, you guys should do a DVD. This is a great show." And you know, we put up the show and for the first few days we were working out the kinks, I had terrible sound problems, and it was basically a struggle just to do it. I mean, we knew we were getting good audience response as it chugged into the Rocky Mountains, but now we were just in the phase of enjoying it because we'd solved our sound problems and somebody comes and says, "Boy, this is good enough that I'd like to see it on a DVD." So we started talking about it.

To pull it together in the middle of the tour was a bit of a challenge, but Tom works with and I have a friend in New Orleans named Jim Gabour who is a filmmaker/director/shooter. He worked with me on a project for MyDamnChannel in New Orleans a couple of years ago and I called Jim ...

By the time it was all put together it was our last show, which was good because we were pretty experienced at doing the gig. ... Jim and Tom put together a great crew in Atlanta to do the post-production, so really, it was about as smooth a transition from, "Hey, we should do this" to "It's done" as one could imagine -- except for certain people like the Lego folks.

TVB: Yeah, let's talk about that. (I then read the quote from the Lego spokeswoman that appeared in the Times story.) Yes, it was fine to have it on YouTube because that is a "less commercial use, but when you get into a more commercial use ... that's when we have to look into the fact that we are a trademarked brand, and we really have to control the use of our brand.” THis is a company that has started up a theme park based on Legos and in other ways seems to be determined to become the Disney of premolded construction toys.

Shearer: You know, you look at some of those other Lego videos on YouTube like Lego Weapon Store, Lego Beer bust, Lego Thriller starring that noted friend of children Michael Jackson -- and you think, "Well, that's all good for the brand." As a copyright holder, Lego could have all of those taken off YouTube with one letter. And certainly any YouTube video, especially in this genre is going to get more eyeballs, probably, than this DVD will.

So one searches in vain for what they were really about except if you read the letters from their intellectual property lawyer, a woman who clearly has had a bad time sometime in her life. They drip with such venom. "I find it unfathomable that you would think," she writes, "that we would in any way allow our brand to be associated with a song that endorses sex with an underage person. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Spinal Tap! Seen the film several times. But how could you ever -- and just in case you don't know what we are talking about, here are the offending lyrics!"

I mean, it was just astonishing, this woman, and all I can say is I hope that therapy is available on the Lego campus for their employees. But this was really shocking. The idea that a Spinal Tap song endorses anything is so insane as to defy understanding.

TVB: I would be remiss if I didn't ask you what you think of the current health care reform process.

Shearer: (Laughs) I was thinking about it this morning. One of these days the Democrats are going to learn that whining about the tactics of the Republicans doesn't make them look strong, tough and like great leaders. They keep making the same mistake, as if there's a ref in this game. "Oh, they're spreading lies and buying time and paying all these people" -- it's so tiresome to see the Democrats literally running for the ref, as if there is a ref in politics. .. It has this sad echo of previous battles where the Republicans take the gloves off and the Democrats go looking for Mom.

(d/l)

Read my interview with Tom Roche about the making of the "Unwigged" DVD