Yo La Tengo have paid tribute to the late director Rob Reiner with a Spinal Tap cover. Watch it below.
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The This Is Spinal Tap filmmaker (78) and his wife Michele (68) were found dead in their Los Angeles home on Sunday December 14. The LAPD later said that it was investigating the case as an “apparent homicide”, and outlets including TMZ and People reported that the two had suffered wounds consistent with a knife attack.
On Monday, it was revealed that their 32-year-old son Nick Reiner had been arrested and was in custody on $4million (£2.9million) bail, and last night he was charged with their murder.
Yo La Tengo have now joined those honouring the actor-director, paying tribute to him during their annual Hanukkah show on Monday.
After performing a cover of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Heroin’ with Built to Spill’s Doug Martsch, vocalist Ira Kaplan addressed the crowd at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom. “As if that wasn’t ragged enough, this will be the most ragged one of all,” he said.
“Because we’re gonna salute a Jewish songwriter we were not expecting to be saluting this Hanukkah, and we certainly weren’t expecting to be memorialising him,” Kaplan added. “So we’re gonna try to do a song and see how this goes.”
The band then launched into ‘Gimme Some Money’ from Reiner’s debut film, the 1984 satirical rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. Watch the moment below.
The news of the deaths prompted many tributes from those who have worked with Reiner, including Stephen King and Paul McCartney.
US President Donald Trump, however, took to Truth Social to imply a link between Reiner’s death and his criticism of the Trump Administration.
The post has been condemned by a number of names in entertainment, including Jack White, who called Trump a “disgusting, vile, egomaniac loser, child”. Long-time Trump critic Jimmy Kimmel denounced the comments on his show, remarking: “Just when you think he can’t go any lower, he somehow finds a way to do that.”
Frozen star Josh Gad called Trump a “fucking psychopath,” while on talk show The View, Whoopi Goldberg asked that the comments not be read on air. “Don’t read it,” she asked co-host Sunny Hostin. “Just tell them that it’s there”.
Trump then doubled down on his comments, describing Reiner as “very bad for our country,” and a “deranged person” who was partly “behind” previous claims of collusion between Russia and Trump’s team. “I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all, in any way, shape or form,” he concluded.
Rob Reiner is remembered by the film community as the director behind a variety of classics from various genres. His directorial debut was the seminal 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, with its long-awaited sequel being his final film when it was released earlier this year.
His other films included the coming-of-age drama Stand by Me (1986), fantasy The Princess Bride (1987), romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally (1989), Stephen King adaptation Misery (1990), and legal drama A Few Good Men (1992), for which he received an Oscar nomination.
Nick Reiner worked with his father on 2015 drama Being Charlie, which was loosely based on his real-life struggles with addiction and homelessness.
Michele Singer-Reiner worked as a photographer, and married Rob in 1989 after meeting on the set for When Harry Met Sally. As well as working on the MysteryDisc video games, she collaborated with her husband on Misery (credited as a special photographer) and Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (as a producer).
The post Yo La Tengo pay tribute to Rob Reiner with Spinal Tap cover appeared first on NME.
