June 2001 classicrockrevisited.com

Jeb: You can tell me if this is complete bullshit or not… In the movie Spinal Tap, where the band has the scene where they come up with Stonehenge as a stage set came from a real life incident when you were Black Sabbath; true or false?
Ian: No two ways about it, its 100% true. In fact I told the scriptwriter exactly that story which is where it came from. The fact is that Spinal Tap's budget wasn't nearly as big as Black Sabbath's so they did a little one. Here is the story: we had made the album Born Again and were planning to go on tour. We were rehearsing and we went to a company called LSD (Light & Sound Design) in Birmingham to talk about production. The guys said, "Does anybody have any ideas for a stage set?" We were all looking around at each other and trying to think of something and Geezer said, "Stonehenge." The bloke said, "What a great idea. How do you visualize it?" Geezer said, "Life-size of course." They built an exact replica of Stonehenge, which is huge. The built it out of fiberglass and carbon fiber. They build it in sections. No one gave it any thought but we could only get it into two of the halls and even then it was only three of these things. The rest of them are in containers in a dock somewhere and they have been for the last 15-20 years!

I remember it being set up at the first gig at Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens. We had hired it out for a week to rehearse for the first gig. They could only get three of these things up. I remember that there was a dwarf hanging around. The manager looked around like, 'why is this guy hanging around here?' On the front cover of Born Again they had this baby with long fingernails and horns so we had this dwarf. We had a tape of a baby screaming and the sound was flanged. The dwarf would fall backwards about 20 feet and then the bells would toll and the roadies would come out dressed as Druids. They looked great. Apart from the Reeboks they looked authentic. We didn't want the dwarf thing to happen but Don Arden, the manager, refused to get rid of him. I was laughing my fucking socks off. When the dwarf would fall off of Stonehenge, the screaming would fade and the Druids would come on to the sounds of the bells tolling. On opening night, we could still here the screaming after the dwarf fell. He was supposed to fall onto some mattresses but on opening night, somebody had moved the mattresses! We didn't see the dwarf any more! I think he bounced right out the door.