There is a joke somewhere in the fact that Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath are having their farewell concert on the same weekend that This is Spinal Tap is back in some theaters as a lead-in to Spinal Tap II: The End Continues coming out in September. The rock mockumentary isn't too far off the actual lifestyle of 1970s heavy metal bands.
Coincidentally, This is Spinal Tap director Rob Reiner recently made some comments disparaging the members of Black Sabbath. To be fair to Reiner, he isn't wrong in his summation of the situation he addressing, though his use of words might go a bit too far.
What happened was that in 1982, the creators of the film recorded the scene where Spinal Tap had a replica of Stonehenge on stage, only the measurements for the prop were completely wrong. Instead of 18 feet tall, the replica was 18 inches tall. It was intentionally hilarious.
Rob Reiner addresses the This is Spinal Tap and Black Sabbath controversy
In 1983, at least a year after the idea for the film was created, Black Sabbath's manager at the time, Don Arden, came up with an idea that Sabbath should have a Stonehenge replica, but those measures were incorrect too.
He had built measures in terms of feet, but model builders worked off meters so the Stonehenge rocks reached the ceiling of arenas instead of going to the higher reaches of the stage. At least one member of Black Sabbath later saw This is Spinal Tap and assumed that the scene in the film with Stonehenge was making fun of Sabbath's mistake.
It couldn't have been as the script and production of the film was made well before the Black Sabbath debacle.
Speaking with Screen Rant, Rob Reiner discussed the situation when he found out Sabbath was upset at This is Spinal Tap filmmakers for the coincidence.
He said, "Black Sabbath was doing a tour, and they (started a tour) about two or three weeks before our film came out. They saw our film and they were furious that we had stolen the Stonehenge theme from them. To me, it was the best thing, because what morons. What did they think? They (thought) that we shot the film, we edited it, (and) we got it into the theaters in two weeks?... But to me, that was the great, perfect heavy metal moment: that they were so dumb that they thought that we stole it from them."
It should be noted, not like it would change things much, but the Black Sabbath lineup at the time had already moved on from Ozzy Osbourne. Perhaps the Stonehenge issue would have still occurred with Sabbath, but maybe they would have handled it differently. Perhaps not.
The real shame, of course, is that Black Sabbath did not choose to have a Stonehenge replica at their farewell show. Only, this time it would have been measured correctly.