The 1960s band Jack Black called the greatest in hard rock: “Righteousness and deliciousness”
Jack Black was never going to be a snob whenever he listened to rock and roll.
As long as it sounded kickass, that was more than enough for him to put it on the stereo, whether he was listening to Metallica thrash the place to the ground or The Beatles singing ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ every now and again. But even if he wasn’t all that picky, there was no doubt that he had a preference for the heavier side of the musical spectrum whenever he started working on his own music.
Tenacious D didn’t simply claim to be the biggest band in the world because they had a couple of funny tunes. They had studied under some of the best, and while ‘Tribute’ is practically an amalgamation of them trying and failing to reproduce ‘One’ by Metallica and ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the fact that they still pull off a fairly decent rock and roll song is much more respectable than the other typical joke acts.
Most of the comedy bands of the world simply didn’t have the kind of chops that they did, but that came from Black getting into rock and roll just as much as acting. Despite going full ham in every single one of his songs Black is a much more impressive singer than the world really gives him credit for, and a lot of that came from him internalising what people like Robert Plant and Steven Tyler were doing when he was first exposed to hard rock.
But ground zero for the heavier side of music goes well beyond the likes of Led Zeppelin. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page often get cited as one of the originators of heavy metal music, but if you’re talking about a band that made it their mission to be heavier than the rest, The Who were miles ahead of what everyone else was doing when they hit the charts with ‘My Generation’ and ‘I Can See For Miles’.
There were plenty of rock and roll bands that came after them that were heavier, but Black felt that no one else could really touch what The Who did for rock, saying, “It’s an honour to honour who I consider to be the greatest band of all time. You wanna know why they’re the greatest? Because they were one of the first bands to really rock hard, and [all its] righteousness and deliciousness.”
Then again, saying that they were the first true hard rock band is still doing the band a bit of a disservice. The Who were meant to be one of the more thoughtful acts to come out of the 1960s, and when looking at how Pete Townshend constructed all of their operas on records like Tommy and Quadrophenia, there was a certain amount of genius going on within their ranks to come up with a song that had the same size and scope as ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ or ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’.
And if you look at the way that Tenacious D approach their songs, it’s actually remarkably similar to the way that Townshend constructed his tunes. They weren’t going to have the same punch behind every one of their live shows without a Keith Moon behind the drum kit, but since Townshend worked out some of his best hard rock songs on acoustic guitar first it made sense for ‘The D’ to do the same thing whenever they brought out the unplugged material on ‘Wonderboy’.
So while Zeppelin might hold the title of one of the finest rock and roll bands to ever walk the Earth in Black’s mind, The Who should be given their due credit for bringing that sound to the masses first. Townshend had a vision for where rock and roll could go, and in the process of making his masterpieces, he left a blueprint for how the rest of his contemporaries could push themselves.
