The band Jack Black said “no one” could compete with: “Commands that kind of power”
Jack Black never once apologised for being a lover of every brand of rock and roll. The teacher from School of Rock isn’t that far off from the person who’s seen singing along to Britney Spears in real life, but Black knew that there were levels of stardom that not even Tenacious D could reach.
And that’s saying something coming from a member of one of the greatest bands in the known universe. Tenacious D always had a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour to their music, but listening back to their records, no other comedy recording needed to go as hard with the production value as they did, especially when bringing in Ronnie James Dio and Dave Grohl. But outside of sex jokes, you could tell that Black was wearing his influences on his sleeve whenever he made a record.
There was always the majesty of Led Zeppelin in the way that he sang, the love of all things metal in the guitar solos, and, judging by how every piece of The Pick of Destiny soundtrack flowed into each other, there was also a little bit of The Who in the way that they sequenced the whole thing like its own mini-prog opera. They may not have had the kind of hysteria around them as Zeppelin or The Who did, but the reason why it worked was because of how passionate they felt about it.
Zeppelin may have been Black’s personal favourite, but looking through rock history, there was something truly special about how The Beatles took over the world. Whereas Zeppelin was a staple for every teenage boy circa 1972, the Fab Four were for everyone, and when they first descended upon America and left everyone with a serious case of Beatlemania, Black couldn’t help but look on in wide-eyed amazement.
There might have been better bands out there, but he figured that none of them could hold a candle to how The Beatles changed the world, saying, “When you think about rock at its origin, and you think of The Beatles and millions of kids screaming as loud as they can and running as fast as they can towards The Beatles, there’s no one who is that kind of lightning rod, who commands that kind of power and has that kind of creative magma.”
It’s not like all of Black’s influences didn’t take their fair share of tricks from The Beatles, either. Led Zeppelin were known to be enormous fans of the group when they started out, and even though Ozzy Osbourne was known as one of the forerunners of heavy metal, he didn’t even have a thought about playing music. He heard ‘She Loves You’ and had his musical DNA altered forever.
That even extends to Black’s bandmates when The D were in their prime. Dave Grohl may have been in charge of all things metal when drumming for them and being the physical incarnation of Satan in their movie, but the best lines that he came up with in Foo Fighters always came from listening to every great lick that came out of the Fabs when he was learning their tunes out of a songbook back in the day.
So while Black has his favourites and might even reference heavier acts a lot more when making his own music, every musician knows that there’s no true way to top what The Beatles did. Anyone can try their best to match that kind of track record, but the quality of the songs proves that those screaming fans chasing them down corridors in A Hard Day’s Night weren’t there by accident.
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