Big Bottom

Album: This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
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Songfacts®:

  • The title refers to the female behind, but also to the low, bass-heavy sound in this song. Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap says, "Historically, people love hearing low sounds. Whales, orangutan, various creatures of the night - they all love a low sound."
  • On this track, guitarists David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel play bass, and bassist Derek Smalls plays a double-neck bass, leaving just drums and keyboards to enhance the sound. When Tufnel briefly left the band, they had the keyboard player double up his bass pedal to perform this live.
  • Conway Twitty had "Tight Fittin Jeans" and Dr. Hook had "Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk," but this was the first Heavy Metal booty song. The lyrics are filled with sexual euphemisms, including the famous couplet:

    My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo
    I'd like to sink her with my pink torpedo
  • This was originally released on their album Smell The Glove. After objections to the raunchy cover art, the album was released with a black cover. Spinal Tap believes Metallica stole this idea for their Black Album.
  • Spinal Tap performed this on the May 5, 1984 episode of Saturday Night Live with a guy who looked like John Belushi on bass synthesizer.
  • The line, "My love gun's loaded and she's in my sights, big game is waiting there inside her tights" is a reference to the KISS song "Love Gun." >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Bertrand - Paris, France
  • Harry Shearer, who plays Derek Smalls, is a real bass player and often works on music with his wife, the singer-songwriter Judith Owen. Harry says the band has done a few different arrangements of this song, and they love playing it. Regarding his bass aspirations, he told Songfacts: "I practice every day and my real love right now is the upright bass. But I love playing both instruments. I live in a city full of great musicians, I know where I am in that pecking order. I'm fine with that. I don't have any illusions. I'm an amateur, but I work hard and I've been allowed to get on stage and jam with some acts down here. That's happened from time to time and I felt incredibly privileged and extremely nervous. But I love to play."
  • Spinal Tap was the subject of the 1984 film This Is Spinal Tap, which was directed by Rob Reiner with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer playing the band members. These four guys wrote all the songs for the movie, which were used for the soundtrack album. In 1992, the band released another album called Break Like the Wind and toured to promote it.

Comments: 16

  • Dan Gillespy from Courtenay BcA funny sexual song.
  • Jay from Sacramento, CaBig Bottom was not the first Heavy Metal booty song. You're forgetting Queen's Fat Bottom Girls.
  • Kat from Adelaide, Australia"My baby fits me like a flesh tuxeto ... I'd like to sink her with my pink torpedo"

    What a great line!
  • Axeman from Melbourne, AustraliaThe riff is probably ripped off Cold Gin by KISS also!
  • Thomas from Somerville, AlThis song turned me on to Spinal Tap. I remember being at a friends house and just happened to catch the lyric "talk about mud flaps, my girls gottem" and had him to shut up and start the song over. I played it the next day at the radio station where I worked and got a butt chewing from the program director.
  • Robert from San Francisco, Ca 'This is Spinal Tap' is included in Roger Ebert's '100 Greatest Movies'.
  • Dylan from Port Orange, FlLyrically the greatest song ever written.
  • Luke from Manchester, EnglandSoundgarden did a live version which is downloadable somewhere...
  • Jen from Ontario, Canadai love is spinal tap its soooo... funni
  • Jay from Atlanta, GaThis was written on the glove box of Nigel Tufnel's Astin-Martin. They recorded it with Dolby Monosynthetic rhythms. It was originaly released as a b-side to Flower People, but Tufnel convinced the band to re-tool it and release it as a single. 9 Inch Nails did a cover version on their '97 tour. I saw them at the Kennedy arena in Warsaw. Rockin' show.
  • James from Enid, Okthe cold sores are because of a cut scene where they all find out they have slept with the same groupie and have herpes.
  • Richard Patrick Burchett from Versailles, KyI love the movie this is spinal tap but they all have cold sores strange 11!
  • Danny from Sydney, Australia"I love to sink her with my pink torpedo" - Genius
  • Brian from Corpus Christi, Txi think this song was written about my ex girlfriend...
  • Jay from St. Louis, Motalk about mudflaps, my girl's gottem.

    A song about an affinity to or a preclusion to dating women with large posteriors.
  • Krie from Ft. Drum, NySpinal Tap rules! "This Is Spinal Tap" is one of my favorite movies.
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