Video released ahead of Spinal Tap bassist's album

Simpsons star Harry Shearer has released the first video from his new album recorded in the guise of his Spinal Tap alter-ego Derek Smalls.

Smalls Change is the title track of the release, subtitled Meditations on Ageing, which will be released globally on April 13.

The 74-year-old comic will also be performing a series of dates in the US to launch the album, with a tour called Lukewarm Water Live: An Adventure in Loud Music

Tracks reflect the toll of a hard-partying lifestyle at an advanced age, with titles such as It Don’t Get Old, MRI and Memo To Willie, which is about erectile dysfunction.

In character, Shearer describes Smalls Change as  ‘halfway between "rage against the dying of the light" and "trying to find the light".’

The album also features guest appearances from legendary rockers  including Peter Frampton, Donald Fagen, Dweezil Zappa and Rick Wakeman

When asked how he managed to round up so many stars, bass player Smalls said only: ‘Pity fuck.’

Here is Smalls Change:

The full track listing has  also been released, with notes  written in character.

1. Openture - Derek with The Hungarian Studio Orchestra. The philosophy of this record, expressed in fewer words than I’ve taken to almost describe it.

2. Rock 'n' Roll Transplant - Derek with Steve Lukather (guitar, Toto), drum legends Jim Keltner (George Harrison) and Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers) Whatever might be ailing you, rock ’n’ roll is the cure.   Ask Dr. Derek!

3. Butt Call - Derek with Phil X (guitar, Bon Jovi) and Taylor Hawkins (drums, Foo Fighters). In one lifetime, the telephone has gone from a miracle to a pain in the arse. 

4. Smalls Change - Derek with The Hungarian Studio Orchestra, Judith Owen (vocals) Danny Kortchmar (guitar, Don Henley) and Russ Kunkel (drums, James Taylor). Why Lukewarm Water is no longer bracketed by Fire and Ice.  A nod to what’s past, and a wink to what’s next. 

5. Memo To Willie - Derek with Donald Fagen (vocals), Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Larry Carlton (guitars, Steely Dan), and The Snarky Puppy Horns. An urgent missive to the Honourable Member: continued tumescence, if you please.

6. It Don't Get Old - Derek with Peter Frampton (guitar, vocals) and Waddy Wachtel (guitar Keith Richards). Life on the road, an endless series of pointless encounters.   What could be better?

7. Complete Faith – Derek with The Hungarian Studio Orchestra. A musical interruption

8. Faith No More - Derek with The Hungarian Studio Orchestra and Todd Sucherman (drums, Styx). As I get older, I look back more fondly on all the people I’ve known.   Except for Ian.

9. Gimme Some (More) Money - Derek with Paul Shaffer (piano and organ), Waddy Wachtel (guitar) and David Crosby (vocals). Time and technology change everything, except the need for change. 

10. MRI - Derek with Dweezil Zappa (guitars). Everybody’s going to have one, eventually.   It’s just another ride.   To hell, but still….

11. Hell Toupee - Derek with The Hungarian Studio Orchestra. Think Satan doesn’t have dark thoughts about his appearance as he ages?   Think again. 

12. Gummin the Gash - Derek with Steve Vai (guitar), Gregg Bisonnette (drums, Ringo Starr) and Jane Lynch (vocals). Losing your teeth closes one door, and opens another.   A celebration of the meeting of two toothless cavities.

13. She Puts the Bitch in Obituary - Derek with Richard Thompson (guitar) and Jane Lynch (vocals).A hymn to womanhood in all her splendor

14. When Men Did Rock - Derek with Michael League (bass), Joe Satriani (guitar), Rick Wakeman (keyboards) and The Hungarian Studio Orchestra

A fictional biography has also been released, with occasional brushes with Spinal Tap’s truth: 

DEREK SMALLS BIOGRAPHY

The Road of Rock is a rocky road, and no one’s life exemplifies that more thoroughly than that of Derek Albion Smalls who celebrates his 75th birthday with a hoped-to-be triumphant return to at least one of the echelons of the rock firmament.

Derek was born 1 April 1941, having to endure growing up as an "April Fool’s baby". His father, Donald "Duff" Smalls, raised Derek after his mother, Dorothy, left home to join a traveling all-girls’ jazz band, The Hotten Totties.

While Derek had a quiet school career in his hometown of Nilford, on the River Null in the West Midlands, Duff carried on his work as a telephone handset sanitiser, working for the pioneering firm in the trade, Sani-Phone, until it was absorbed by the former British Telecom, primarily, according to reports at the time, for its "robust bill-collecting operation".

At age 17, Derek enrolled in the London School of Design, primarily, as he later explained it, "because of the initials".

Like many art-school students of the period, he was more interested in music, and soon found himself a member of the all-white Jamaican band Skaface. ‘I never even tried to play the guitar, because it had too many strings and they were too small. Bass felt just right,"’ he told Ska News.

Walking one day in 1967 through the then-tatty Soho district of London, Derek spotted a "bass player wanted" notice on one of the neighbourhood’s lamp-posts. It turns out Ronnie Pudding had just left the band Spinal Tap for a solo career when their first single, Gimme Some Money failed to chart.

Derek fit right in, and made a notable contribution to the band’s jump on the Flower Power bandwagon, mouthing a silent: ‘We love you’ at the end of its performance of  (Listen to) The Flower People on the short-lived TV music show, Bob’s Your Uncle.

Tap then went on to carve a reputation as one of England’s loudest bands. Its series of mishaps—breakups and reunions, drummers perishing in bizarre ways—was chronicled in a 1984 film. ‘A hatchet job,’  Derek calls it dismissively. ‘There were plenty of nights when we found our way to the stage, but of course they didn’t show you that.’

In the late 1980s, as Tap’s fortunes waned, Derek joined a Christian heavy-metal band, Lambsblood. Their best-known song, Whole Lotta Lord, made a respectable showing on the Christian charts. To cement his relationship with the band members, all of whom were Americans, Smalls got a Christian "fish tattoo".

As luck would have it, Tap soon reunited for the 1992 Break Like the Wind album and toured across America. Concerned that he would have to cover up the tattoo, Derek hired an artist to fix it, and the piece now featured a devil eating the fish.

Following that tour, Tap broke up and reunited twice more, once in 2000 for an American tour that included a historic New York venue that Derek described, onstage, as ‘Carnegie Fuckin Hall’ and in 2009 for appearances at the Glastonbury Festival and Wembley Arena. In between, Derek cultivated a near-thriving career on camera, building upon his cameo role in the 1979 "Spaghetti Eastern" - Roma ’79. 

He appeared in TV commercials for the Belgian snack food Floop, and served for a time as a judge (alongside the lead singer for the Europunk band Hot Garage) on the Dutch reality-competition show RokStarz, before the show was rebooted as Tomorrow’s HipHop Hero. Derek stepped forward as a composer during this time; his jingle for Floop, ‘I’m in the Floop Group’, was a regular earworm on European television until the publisher of The In Crowd threatened a plagiarism lawsuit.

Derek’s fortunes have fluctuated with his romantic entanglements. His long-time girlfriend Cindy Stang went through a good share of his back royalties to launch her ill- fated tech start-up, macrame.com. Of that project, Smalls now says ruefully,’"It was ahead of its time. Or behind the curve. Or both.’  He’s also had his share of personal struggles, having twice sought treatment for internet addiction.

Smalls’ return to music, and composing, came courtesy of a grant from the British Fund for Ageing Rockers. As he prepares to re-enter the spotlight for the first time, Derek tips his hat to the government grantors: ‘At least austerity was good for something,’ he says.

Published: 17 Jan 2018