Fresh from playing Glastonbury in 2009, the courgette-crotch-stuffing bass player and botanist is back! With the sequel to the classic rockumentary in the works and a Barbie-hating single.
Ask him anything in the commentsThink of an iconic bass player – Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, Hooky from New Order, Lemmy from Motörhead – and you’d be foolish to ignore the low-frequency rumblings of Spın̈al Tap bassist Derek Smalls.
Born in the lesser-known town of Nilford on the River Null in the West Midlands, Smalls was raised by his father, Donald “Duff” Smalls (who ran a telephone sanitisation business) after his mother, Dorothy, left home to join travelling all-girls’ jazz band The Hotten Totties.At 17, Smalls enrolled at the London School of Design (“Mainly because of the letters”), where he first became interested in playing music, joining the all-white Jamaican band Skaface.
In 1967, he spotted a notice on a…
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