“The best band in the history of rock and roll”: Jack Black names the only act better than The Beatles
The movie business and rock ‘n’ roll have always been closely linked, and Jack Black has built his career on the back of combining both. He’s always been a rocker at heart, but even when he became a silver screen star, he never turned his back on his first love.
Not that anybody needed reminding when his breakthrough role and arguably defining turn were deeply rooted in that cross-pollination. High Fidelity is a love letter to music in its many shapes and sizes, while Richard Linklater’s School of Rock obviously wears its influences on the sleeve for all to see.
The band may have imploded after controversial comments made onstage led to the abandoning of a tour and a pause button being hit on the duo’s immediate future, but Tenacious D spent three decades allowing Black to indulge his inner frontman, releasing four studio albums and winning a Grammy for ‘Best Metal Performance’ thanks to their cover of Dio’s ‘The Last in Line’.
Rock ‘n’ roll has been ingrained in every fibre of Black’s being for as long as he can remember, and the music style shaped him into the man and performer he became. Nobody could have guessed that the son of two rocket scientists and the brother of a systems engineer would become a wild-haired and wild-eyed showman of stage and screen, but maybe all that talk in the 1970s of rock and metal corrupting the impressional youth has some merit after all looking at how far Black deviated from the family business.
Like most lifelong fans, he’s got a deep-seated appreciation for the behemoths who helped bring rock ‘n’ roll to the next level, and he even got to indulge his inner superfan when he played Paul McCartney in a riotous cameo in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, where he was joined by Paul Rudd’s John Lennon, Jason Schwartzman’s Ringo Starr, and Justin Long’s George Harrison.
He’s a huge fan of the ‘Fab Four’, but he wouldn’t go so far as to call them the greatest band the genre has ever seen. It’s definitely the top two, but there’s only one choice for number one. “I’ve been listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin,” he told Film Scouts. “They are the best band in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. I think they’re even better than The Beatles.”
Black has never been shy in voicing his enthusiasm for Led Zeppelin, a group that hooked him during his formative years and refused to let go, but it’s one step further to place them on a pedestal above The Beatles. Of course, it’s his personal opinion and entirely in the eye of the beholder, but it’s still a statement that remains capable of stirring up debate as it did half a century ago.
Jack Black’s lifelong obsession with Led Zeppelin
Black’s obsession with Led Zeppelin is hardly a secret. Anybody who’s been paying attention to his work, whether that’s in film or music, will have noticed it. While he’s enjoyed a career blurring the lines between rock ‘n’ roll and Hollywood, Led Zeppelin has always been the band that helped to create this metal-heavy grey area.
One of Black’s most iconic vocal performances on screen came from a short segment in School of Rock. During a scene where Black drives the kids to school after an audition for ‘Battle of the Bands’ to celebrate their getting through, he performs his own rendition of ‘Immigrant Song’.
The scene has been viewed by Led Zeppelin and approved by none other than Robert Plant, who praised Black for dispelling the myth behind Led Zeppelin in his comedic (yet well-executed) rendition. “I think it was exactly the right thing to do, with School of Rock, to blow our myth up into the sky for a while,” he said. “Because it’s all myth. It doesn’t matter. I’ve watched the film, and I find it funny.”
Meanwhile, throughout his music career, Black has never been afraid to dabble in the work of Led Zeppelin either. While he has performed covers as a part of his band, Tenacious D, one of his most iconic takes on their music came at a Foo Fighters show in Los Angeles, when he took to the stage with Dave Grohl and Slash to perform another rendition of ‘Immigrant Song’. The track plays like an A-list look at one of the best songs by one of the greatest rock bands ever. Better than The Beatles, though…?
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