Every Beatles album that isn’t worth listening to, according to Jack Black: “I don’t think you need to”
It’s treated as sacrilege in many musical circles to speak ill of The Beatles, and even though he’s a self-professed superfan, Jack Black doesn’t think the band’s entire discography is essential listening.
That alone is more than enough to have veins popping in foreheads all over the internet, where saying something even remotely negative about the Fab Four is enough to mobilise an army of furious trolls in your direction, decrying anyone who dares to say they didn’t, or couldn’t, walk on water.
Of course, his connection to The Beatles runs much deeper than spending his life immersed in their countless classic tracks, with Paul Mescal facing a nigh-on insurmountable task of displacing Black’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story cameo as the finest portrayal of Paul McCartney ever committed to the screen.
He might have played a few in his time, but the Tenacious D frontman isn’t an idiot. His personal preferences hew much closer to classic rock than they do The Beatles, but he’s had music in his veins for as long as he can remember, so he’s fully aware of the seismic, inimitable contribution that John, Paul, George, and Ringo made not only to music, but pop culture as a whole.
The portly funnyman wouldn’t dare say that the four lads from Liverpool are anything other than one of the most important, influential, and iconic groups to ever step foot in a recording booth, but of all the times they did step foot in a recording booth, he’s adamant that it’s fine to skip a few of their albums.
When asked if he preferred their later stuff to their earlier output, Black answered with a succinct, “Yes,” before dropping a bombshell that’s sure to leave many diehards up in arms. “I don’t think you really need to listen to anything before Revolver,” he suggested, which is nothing if not a scalding hot take.
After all, by instantly eliminating Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale, Help!, and Rubber Soul from consideration, the easiest inference to make is that he doesn’t think any of those albums, or the tracks contained therein, are in the same stratosphere as everything that came post-Revolver.
That’s his opinion, as contentious as it may be, but it’s also one that places ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘Help!’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Norwegian Wood’, and countless others on a level below the rest of the titanic tunes The Beatles laid down post-1965, which are as close to fighting words as you’ll hear from someone who calls themselves a massive fan.
As far as Black is concerned, though, Revolver was the genesis point for the version of The Beatles that he fell in love with, and he couldn’t give two shits about anything that came before. Again, he can say what he wants, but at the same time, you wouldn’t have to travel too far to find someone willing to throttle him for saying it.
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