Journeyman drummer made his name in cult mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap
Drumming in the fictional rock band Spinal Tap was a high-risk occupation. One drummer died in a ‘‘bizarre gardening accident’’ and another by choking on someone else’s vomit. Ric Parnell’s character outdid them both by spontaneously combusting on stage.
As Mick Shrimpton in the 1984 mockumentary ‘This Is Spinal Tap’, Parnell had some of the movie’s funniest lines. ‘‘As long as there’s sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll,’’ he says at one point.
He was also asked about the unfortunate list of his drumming predecessors who had perished from freak accidents. ‘‘It did kind of freak me out a bit,’’ he admitted, before adding that the law of averages meant that ‘‘it can’t always happen to every drummer, can it?’’ It did, of course, and by the end of the film Parnell’s character had joined the roll call of those lost in action.
The running gag was based on the black humour of rock’n’roll folklore which holds that, from Keith Moon to John Bonham, the drummer is invariably the first member of a band to die.
In real life, Parnell bucked the doleful trend and spent more than half a century drumming with various bands. He was still playing until shortly before he died, aged 70, after a lengthy illness.
If it irked him that he was best known for his fictional exploits rather than his genuine achievements as a drummer, he did not let it show and went along with the joke. The success of the film meant Spinal Tap became a going concern, recording genuine albums and playing high-profile gigs, including the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium in 1992.
Faced with the problem that his character had died in the film, Parnell simply took to the drum stool as Mick’s twin brother, Ric Shrimpton. When he finally left in 1999, the ‘‘story’’ was that he had sold his dialysis machine for drugs and yet another Spinal Tap drummer had bitten the dust.
He settled in Missoula, Montana, where he presented a radio show called Spontaneous Combustion. He was a familiar sight around town, pedalling an old bike with his golf clubs strapped to his back, and in the local bars, where he dismissed American beer as rubbish but drank copious amounts of it anyway.
Parnell cited his marital status as ‘‘four swings and four misses’’ and claimed another short-lived ‘‘half marriage’’ to a singer named Merrick Morgan. He is survived bymckenzie Sweeney, a girlfriend more than 30 years his junior, who ran a Gofundme page to pay for his care, and was at his side when he died.
Richard John Parnell was born in Paddington, west London, in August 1951, one of five children of the jazz drummer and band leader Jack Parnell from three different marriages. Showbusiness was in the blood. His grandfather was a noted music hall artist and his great uncle, Val Parnell, ran a chain of theatres and presented ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’.
Influenced by the arrival of the Beatles and the ‘‘beat boom’’, Parnell followed a different musical path and the one and only drumming lesson he took from his father ‘‘did not go well’’. He instead developed his own style and admitted that, even after decades as a professional drummer, he still ‘‘didn’t know a paradiddle from a flam-doodlehead’’.
His family connections, though, gave him an entree to the music industry. When he was 17 his father introduced him to Jimi Hendrix backstage and he struck up a lifelong friendship with the guitarist’s drummer, Mitchmitchell.
Parnell Sr also got him a job as an office boy at NEMS, Brian Epstein’s management company, and when the Beatles played their final concert on the roof of the Apple building in 1969, Parnell was in the street below. It was, he said, the only time he wished he could fly.
By the time he was 18 he was drumming on tour with Engelbert Humperdinck, although it was no place for a long-haired, dopesmoking teenage hippie and he was soon sacked. He found amore sympathetic home in the prog-rock band Atomic Rooster, before their split in 1974.
Three years later he moved to the US to play with the band Nova. There were studio sessions with Jeff Beck, Cher and Bette Midler, but he turned down an invitation to join Journey and, by the time he auditioned for Spinal Tap, he was at a loose end.
When the producers asked him ‘‘What do you think about amovie that’s going to tear your career apart?’’ he replied, ‘‘You should have made it about 10 years ago.’’
Spinal Tap did not wreck his career, but it certainly cast a shadow. Many rock musicians appreciated the spoof, but not all of them. When Parnellwas offered a job drumming with the heavy metal band Whitesnake, the invitation was withdrawn when they learnt he had been in Spinal Tap. ‘‘People might thinkwe’re a joke,’’ he was informed. Bruce Dickinson, lead singer with Iron Maiden, told him, ‘‘I hate you f...ers, you made fun of me and my band’’.
Always ready with awisecrack, he was once asked what his epitaph should say. ‘‘He hit things for a living’’ would do just fine, he replied. – The Times