Which Metallica song did Jack Black write Tenacious D’s ‘Tribute’ about?
Jack Black’s comedy rock act with Kyle Gass has run alongside his acting career for the past three decades, transforming his love of classic rock music into a passion project worthy of its own legions of fans. Black’s musical credentials have regularly played a part in his roles as an actor, but Tenacious D stands as a testament to the career he could have had regardless of his main gig in Hollywood.
At a time when the future of the duo looks uncertain following Black’s decision to cancel the remainder of their current tour due to controversy surrounding a joke Gass made, it’s worth reflecting on the song that launched them. A tribute to the greatest song in the world.
It was Tenacious D’s first hit single, ‘Tribute’, which was initially released on their debut album in 2001. The song actually has its origins much further back in time, during an early-1990s writing session while Black and Gass were both part of the Actors’ Gang comedy troupe in Los Angeles. Black happened to be listening to a metal song that completely blew his mind. “This is the best song in the world,“ he told Gass before jokingly suggesting the two write a tribute to it.
The idea took off, and the song ‘Tribute’ became a hit with early Tenacious D audiences before launching the act into the mainstream. Ironically, the track actually performed better in certain singles charts than the one it was paying tribute to, with fans in the UK, Australia and New Zealand taking a special liking to the comedic send-up of bombastic guitar anthems.
But which song is it paying tribute to?
If the answer to this question were purely based on the sound of the song ‘Tribute’, we’d have to conclude that the song which Black calls “the greatest song in the world” is Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’. ‘Tribute’ shares a chord progression with the 1971 classic, particularly the third section of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ beginning with the line “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow”.
But Gass is the one responsible for borrowing Zeppelin’s chords for his best-known song with Black. No, Black himself had another song in mind when he came up with the idea and the lyrics for ‘Tribute’. Namely, Metallica’s 1989 anti-war chronicle ‘One’, which itself spans almost eight minutes and several sections, just as ‘Stairway to Heaven’ does.
‘One’ tells the story of a soldier left in a perilous state during the First World War, whose injuries make him “wish for death”. In an interview with JimmyO in 2006, Gass concurred with Black that Metallica’s track was indeed the best song in history, “It had an epic quality,” he explained. “As long as you’re doing it, you might as well try to go for the greatest song ever.”
Lofty praise for James Hetfield and the band, but the sheer scale and ambition of their single certainly warrants this kind of attention.
