MUSIC

A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever

Rob Reiner with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer

Simon & Schuster, $36.99

Truth is a common casualty of rock legend but believe this if you can: the boy who would be Nigel Tufnel learned his chops on Woody Guthrie’s mandolin. Yes, way before he turned his amplifier up to 11 in the armadillo-trousered heavy metal band Spinal Tap, Christopher Guest grew up among the fabled Greenwich Village folk elite.

It’s only page eight of A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever and the line between fact and fiction is already … complicated. Tufnel is obviously a fictional character of Guest’s creation but his hands-on link to American roots sainthood surely gives him greater claim to authenticity than Keith Richards.

“Too much f---ing p

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