Inside The Recording Sessions of ‘Spinal Tap II,’ Part 1

Los Angeles, CA (October 14, 2025)—It has been more than four decades since Spinal Tap earned a place in rock history as one of England’s loudest bands—and for its punctuality—with the release of the influential mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap. In mid- September, the band released a sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, which follows the three bandmates, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), as they reunite for one last, contractually obligated live show in New Orleans. The sequel is again directed by Marty Di Bergi (Rob Reiner).

Once principal photography had wrapped, the three musicians, with new drummer Didi Crockett, headed to Studio D at the Village in West Los Angeles for a couple of months to record a new album—the band’s fourth since the original film and its first since 2009’s Back From the Dead. Also titled Spinal Tap II: The End Continues and released on the day the film opened, the album includes nine new original compositions and four remakes of songs from This Is Spinal Tap: “Cups and Cakes” with Paul McCartney, “Stonehenge” and “Flower People,” which both feature Elton John, and “Big Bottom,” performed by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

Sound Pro Tapped for Spinal Tap II

CJ Vanston, the band’s longtime musical director and keyboard player (among other roles) was tapped to produce the new album. Vanston invited KamranV, an audio engineer and arts technologist, to assist him during the film shoot and the recording sessions, and to document the process. He has generously shared his photographs with Mix. “It was such a privilege to be in the middle of the process and see the magic,” KamranV says.

Here, Vanston, KamranV and engineer Steve Genewick tell the story of making the music for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.

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CJ Vanston: It was the first time I was able to be their producer without having to wear five hats, but I still had to also be the arranger and keyboard player. I said, “I’m going to hire Steve Genewick,” who was Al Schmitt’s right-hand man for 25 years, to help engineer. I’ve done all of Chris Guest’s movies, and we mixed a bunch of those with Ed Cherney at Village D, one of the greatest studios. This person I study with has me thank my mentors and invite them to help me through the day, so every morning, I’d bring up Ed Cherney, Greg Ladanyi, Phil Ramone, Al Schmitt, Dick Marx [Richard Marx’s father, an early mentor] and [studio architect] Vincent van Haaff. I’m representing all these guys and I’m going to f**** hit this out of the park!

Steve Genewick: The band wrote all the songs and came up with the parts. The guys would individually write their songs and do their demos, then send those Logic files to CJ and he would put them in order to give to me for Pro Tools. Sometimes Kamran did that, exporting the stems and tempo maps.

Vanston: Kamran was a huge help on this project. I wrote the lead song on the record, “Let’s Just Rock Again.” It ended up being the first single off the record.

Genewick: At times, we would track with the demos and then start replacing stuff, but very rarely was anything kept from those demos. For the most part, we would cut the track, overdub the guitars, do the vocals and the background parts and get it to pretty much a complete state, have lunch, come back tomorrow, do the next song. Actually, we usually started with lunch!

KamranV: Every single lunch was a sandwich. I promise you, we ate every sandwich in L.A., every day.

Genewick: I always joke that the two most important parts of any session are the headphone mix and the lunch order—because if either one of those goes south, you’re screwed.

COME BACK TOMORROW FOR PART TWO!

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