“That’s how it all started”: The album that made Jack Black a rock ‘n’ roller
Both on-screen and off, Jack Black and rock music go hand-in-hand. It’s a staple part of his persona and always has been, with the actor and musician’s love for crunching guitar riffs and grandstanding performances in front of the cameras or onstage intrinsic to who he is.
Not that he could have imagined where things were heading when Tenacious D formed in the mid-1990s, at a time when Black was a jobbing actor notching up bit-parts in a variety of productions covering action, comedy, drama, and even dystopia when he swung by Kevin Costner’s Waterworld.
It was fitting that he caught his mainstream breakthrough in High Fidelity when much of the story unfolds in a record store, while it was equally apt that School of Rock became one of his most popular hits, and his desire to meld music and moviemaking has continued through Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, his cameo as Paul McCartney in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and a ‘Best Original Song’ nomination at the Golden Globes for The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘s ‘Peaches’.
Had he decided to follow in the footsteps of his parents, then Black could have quite literally become a rocket scientist. Instead, it was always the performing arts that piqued his interest, and his lifelong love of rock came at an early age. In fact, it was the advice of a record store employee that pushed him in that direction to begin with, after his tastes were frowned upon and disregarded in favour of something different.
“I was listening to Journey and Styx, they were my Sesame Street,” he told Combustible Celluloid. “One day I went to the record store and the guy told me not to buy the new Journey album. Instead, he handed me a copy of Blizzard of Ozz by Ozzy Osbourne. That’s how it all started.”
Ozzy’s first solo album, following his dismissal from Black Sabbath the previous year, and the first of his recordings to feature the inimitable Randy Rhoads were a hell of a place to start. Heralded as one of the best metal albums of the 1980s and proof that the frontman would be just fine without his iconic band, Blizzard of Ozz ended up selling more than five million copies in the United States alone.
For Black, it was akin to a spiritual awakening, with the cheesier sounds of Journey and Styx having been tossed aside in favour of something with a little more bite. That’s not to say he abandoned every band that had taken his fancy beforehand, but being steered towards the heavier side of the equation was a moment that ended up having a profound effect on the star as both a music lover, aspiring musician, and ultimately cinematic superstar.
