Spinal Tap star Harry Shearer on folk, comedy, A Mighty Wind and The Simpsons’ Apu controversy

Ahead of his appearance with his wife at the Port Fairy Folk Festival, US comedian and Spinal Tap star Harry Shearer opens up on comedy and The Simpsons’ Apu controversy

When the revered rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap was released more than 35 years ago, it quickly found many famous fans, even among the very community it was making such wicked fun of.

It was partly the endlessly quotable jokes – the amp that went up to 11, the package-enhancing courgette that sets off airport security, the bizarre gardening accidents – that earned the praise of greats from Metallica to Dave Grohl to Sting.

But just as important was the fact that the fictional metal band’s songs, written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, were actually good – and all three could play their own instruments.

Actor Harry Shearer with Michael McKean and Christopher Guest as The Folksmen in A Mighty Wind.

Years later, the three collaborators reunited to give the folk music community the same treatment as The Folksmen in A Mighty Wind and as he prepares to play the Port Fairy Folk Festival next month and guest at a special Q&A screening of the film, bass player Shearer wonders what kind of reception will be waiting for him.

“You know I haven’t spent as much time in the folk community since that film came out as I have in the rock community since Spinal Tap came out,” Shearer says with a laugh.

“We thought we were being a bit cruel – and they love us. Or at least they were flattered that we made a movie about them.

“I think the reason I would expect we might get some love out of the folk community is that we were not making bad music. Everybody involved in the writing of that music was trying to write good music, it’s just the choices, lyrically and subject matter were peculiar. Nothing is entertaining about bad music so we weren’t attempting to make bad music or to play it badly. I think we have the respect of other musicians just for that fact alone.”

Thanks to Tap and his many roles (Monty Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders to name a few) in 30 years of The Simpsons, Shearer has one of the most distinctive and versatile voices in the business but he insists that he’s coming to Australia this time primarily as his wife’s bass player.

Shearer met Welsh singer/songwriter Judith Owens in a London hotel where she was performing and the pair married in 1993. He was in Smalls mode at the time – with full moustache and hair extensions – for a Spinal Tap tour, she was a huge fan of the film and the pair bonded over a mutual love of music and comedy. They have been guesting on each other’s artistic endeavours ever since and toured their cabaret show, This Infernal Racket, here in 2016.

Harry Shearer, left, as Derek Smalls in This Is Spinal Tap.’ Christopher Guest is in centre, Michael McKean at right.

“We both have a leg in each camp,” says Shearer, who also puts out his own comedy albums, and has hosted the political comedy radio show and podcast Le Show since 1983. “She’s a very funny person, she’s a wonderful actress and I have used her a lot in videos and this forthcoming film I am going to direct.

“So she usually has a part in my projects and I have played bass with her from Hollywood to Moscow. I write a lot of satirical songs for my radio show and it was pretty much her saying to me ‘you know, I hate satirical music unless it’s really good music’ that forced me to get better and better at doing that so she wouldn’t look at me sideways.”

Shearer has a long association with Australian comedy, and Melbourne in particular, dating back to the 1990s, when he guested on the second season of Working Dog’s current affairs satire, Frontline. He’s returned many times for their now-defunct The Panel and most recently for Have You Been Paying Attention, and says he’s always been an admirer of the Australian sense of humour.

“I have always been an admirer of the Australian ability to see all the American pop culture stuff and all the British pop culture stuff and still be resolutely Australian and having no trouble maintaining a distinct and definable Australian culture” he says.

“I particularly feel – and I have felt this more I guess because I spend more time in Melbourne than any place else there – a sort of a natural sense of humour in the sense that you can strike up a conversation people on the street and make a joke and pretty much rely on the fact that they will get it and they will joke with you as opposed to ‘huh?’, which is the default American position.”

Harry Shearer and his singer-songwriter wife Judith Owen brought their cabaret show This Infernal Racket to Australia in 2016. Picture Mark Brake

Shearer, like many of his Simpsons cast mates, is a little incredulous that the animated hit is still going strong in its 31st season and says now that Disney has acquired the rights from the Fox Network there’s every reason to expect it will continue.

“Now we are in the hands of another company, which I think is even more devoted to wringing every last drop from all of its intellectual properties, so I think one way or another we ain’t going away,” he says with a dry chuckle.

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He splits his time between homes in Los Angeles, New Orleans and London and doesn’t do the famed Simpsons table reads in person any more but says the breadth of his roles on the multi-Emmy-winning comedy is as satisfying now as it was when he first signed on.

“The basic reason that I found the show attractive in the first place was the reason I didn’t want to do a conventional sitcom – I thought I would go crazy playing the same character,” he says. “So The Simpsons has afforded me for all these many years, the opportunity to play dozens of different characters and that is still the essence of what I find joyful about it. Not only playing different characters – but playing scenes between characters that I do, which is just crazy fun.”

Harry Shearer says he still loves doing multiple voices – such as Waylon Smithers and Monty Burns — in The Simpsons, sometimes in the same scene.

The Simpsons has never been shy of courting controversy on its journey to becoming the longest-running American sitcom and hit the headlines in recent years when detractors called out Hank Azaria’s portrayal of Indian-American convenience store owner Apu Nehasapeemapetilon as being a culturally insensitive stereotype. Shearer, who also voices Apu’s brother Sanjay, chooses his words carefully, acknowledging the subject has become a “hornet’s nest”, with Azaria last month reportedly saying he would no longer voice the character.

“I have really only one thought on the subject,” says Shearer. “And that is, an actor’s job is to play somebody that they aren’t. I think there is a slight conflation between representation, which I think is really important that people of all genders and backgrounds be employed in the entertainment industry so that all possible stories can get told. And that’s about the whole range of behind-the-scenes from writers to directors to set designers, the whole panoply of creative folks. There is a difference between representation and portrayal – and portrayal is an actor’s job. And as I say, actors portray people pretty much ordinarily that they are not. John Wayne wasn’t really a cowboy, Humphrey Bogart wasn’t really a detective – you know what I am saying.

“There are many occasions when different kinds of casting are used to make a point – there is a production … in London of Death Of a Salesman with primarily African-American cast, which puts the show in a different perspective. That’s an artistic choice and that’s what this should be, artistic choice.”

SEE Port Fairy Folk Festival, March 6-9. Portfairyfolkfestival.com.

WATCH: The Simpsons, daily on Fox8.