Director Rob Reiner has never before made a sequel in his long career, and he hadn’t ever contemplated a follow-up to the most beloved rock comedy ever made, 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap . But then Harry Shearer , who plays Tap bassist Derek Smalls, fought a year-long battle to reclaim ownership of the film — and won.  ”We sat and we said, ‘Well, what do we do?'” Reiner says in the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now . “We got the rights back. What do we do with this? And so at first we said, ‘Eh. Forget it. We are not gonna do anything.’ And then we started talking and then all of a sudden this kind of idea percolated and generated. So we said, ‘Okay, let’s go with it.'”

The resulting film, Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues , due Sept. 12, reunites Shearer, Michael McKean

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