A legendary songwriter gave Jack Black his favourite guitar: “He and I hit it off”
Anyone being gifted a guitar in the music industry is about the equivalent of presenting a warrior with a sword in most contexts, and whether it’s Joe Walsh handing over a Les Paul to Pete Townshend or Noel Gallagher being gifted Johnny Marr’s legendary axe, any guitar with that much history should be treated with reverence. No matter how you slice it, it’s almost like having a piece of history in your hands, and Jack Black managed to live out some of his rock and roll fantasies before he had even hit it big with Tenacious D.
But as much as the comedic duo aren’t taken nearly as seriously as many other rock bands, they have the kind of credentials any other band would be envious of. No one writing songs exclusively about sex jokes and the occasional goofy tune about metal would be expected to have people like Ken Andrews and the Dust Brothers behind the scenes on their records or be able to ask everyone from Ronnie James Dio to Dave Grohl to guest spot on their songs, but ‘The D’ truly are that powerful.
It also helps that both of them are still incredibly competent at what they do. Outside of his stellar comedic timing, Kyle Gass is a fantastic guitar player in his own right, and while Black’s vocal style is certainly an acquired taste, it takes a lot of talent to pull off what he does. Sure, it sounds goofy when listening to him in School of Rock, but it’s not easy for someone to maintain breath control like he can on his cover of ‘Baby One More Time’ or, yes, ‘Peaches’ from The Super Mario Movie.
And it’s not like the biggest names in music weren’t taking notice. There have been many actors Black has collaborated with who have asked him why Tenacious D doesn’t take themselves seriously, but when looking at the pedigree of people that the band have rubbed elbows with, it almost doesn’t matter what kind of music they play.
Beyond being a fantastic singer, Black also managed to acquire one of his prized guitars from Neil Diamond, saying, “I got to spend some time with Neil and he and I hit it off. In the end, I was blown away, because he was gone and someone said ‘Neil had left this for you’ and it was a guitar. I knew this was a guitar that Gibson had given to him. It’s got that beautiful inlay. That doesn’t make it sound better, but it actually does mean that they probably put the good butter in the guts.”
But, really, someone of Diamond’s calibre probably doesn’t need to worry about what kind of guitars he plays every night. The second that everyone hears songs like ‘Cherry Chery’ or ‘Sweet Caroline’ in the right context, he could be playing on those beautiful red sequinned guitars or the equivalent of a children’s instrument, and it would still sound absolutely magnificent if the rest of the crowd is singing along with him.
It may have been an acoustic guitar, but as far as Black was concerned, that didn’t really matter. The best guitarists of all time have trained for years on the acoustic before picking up the electric and grabbing their distortion pedals. Even if it isn’t the most extreme-sounding thing in the world, people like Keith Richards have always come back to the acoustic as one of the most honest ways of playing the instrument.
And if ‘The D’ could make a song like ‘Tribute’ sound amazing with only a couple of acoustic chords, there was no reason to think they couldn’t squeeze something incredible out of Diamond’s instrument. He had the potential to write a few more hits with it, but in Black’s hands, the “greatest band in the world” were about to get that much more epic.
