Credit: Dangerous Minds

In a film packed with spectacular jokes, one of the best jokes in This is Spinal Tap is one that goes under the radar despite the fact that it’s staring us right in the face. Like so many other heavy metal bands, Spinal Tap have umlauts in their name. The problem is that it’s over the N.

That’s not how anything works in German grammar, and as we all know, you can get away with a lot in German grammar. If you ask the band themselves, then they’ll tell you that it’s not actually an umlaut, really, but more “like a pair of eyes. You’re looking at the umlaut, and they’re looking at you”. Inspired stuff, and as so much of This is Spinal Tap is, so completely based in real-world heavy metal culture that you could forgive a few people for thinking it’s real at first.

After all, the Spinal Tap (perhaps that should be Spın̈al Tap) umlaut is a trick the filmmakers cribbed off both Blue Öyster Cult and Motörhead, the two originators of the practise. At least in heavy metal. The first band to put umlauts in their name were the two bands known as Amon Düül, which does make a decent amount more sense than most other uses of umlauts in band names since they were, y’know, from Germany and all that.

Just because they’re German doesn’t mean it makes any more sense in context, though. The bands were spin-offs from a Munich-based political art commune of the same name, taking their name from Amon, the Egyptian sun God, and Düül… Because it sounded funny. I’m sure mind-expanding substances were involved in the naming practise somehow, but I just can’t put my finger on the specifics. Neither of the bands themselves were traditional heavy metal bands, so the band to truly introduce the practise into the world of heavy metal were in fact the ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’ hit makers.

The reason? Just looked cool, innit?

Why did metal bands start putting umlauts in their names?

OK, so the reason for it was a little bit deeper than that. Perhaps this is critic Richard Metzler inserting himself into rock legend as we critics are wont to do, but he says that he suggested adding the umlaut to reflect “the Wagnerian aspect of metal”. Which, to be fair to the lad, he’s not wrong about. However, pretty much everyone involved in the band claims to have suggested the umlauts, so I guess we’ll never really know for sure.

Credit to Lemmy, he fully owns up to cribbing Motörhead’s umlaut from the Öyster Cult, so we can at least credit them with being the first heavy metal band to start the trend. However, in terms of why? It really does seem to be quite simply, because it’s cool. It’s definitely not because of the pronunciation, as Mötley Crüe found out the hard way the first time they actually toured Germany as one of the world’s most exciting rock bands.

Vince Neil says, “We put some umlauts in there because we thought it made us look European. We had no idea that it was a pronunciation thing. When we finally went to Germany, the crowds were chanting, ‘Mutley Cruh! Mutley Cruh!’ We couldn’t figure out why the fuck they were doing that.” However, Spinal Tap did seem to be the moment that everyone acknowledged that no, the umlauts don’t make anyone look cool, it’s just a bit silly

Which, ironically enough, is the heart of heavy metal culture in a nutshell.