The "heartbreaking" songwriter Jack Black calls a genius (2024)

Many actors seem to dabble in music as an ancillary creative outlet. Russell Crowe, Kiefer Sutherland, Bruce Willis, Jared Leto and Keanu Reeves are among our Hollywood heroes who have made their mark in the music industry. However, no actor represents the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll in cinema quite like Jack Black, one half of the comedy duo Tenacious D.

Outside of his heavy metal exploits with Kyle Gass in Tenacious D, Black invariably brings his musical alignment to his acting roles. Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny speaks for itself, but Black is also famous for his roles as rock ‘n’ roll music teacher Dewey Finn in Richard Linklater’s School of Rock and the soundtrack composer Miles in The Holiday.

In Tenacious D and School of Rock, Black essentially exhibits his own character, conveying his longstanding passion for heavy rock through bands like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Deep Purple. Speaking to Planet Rock in 2017, Black revealed that Black Sabbath was his all-time favourite metal band and that Ronnie James Dio, who replaced Ozzy Osbourne in 1979, was his favourite heavy metal singer of all.

Alongside his taste for heavy metal, Black is a fan of the grungey offshoots of the post-punk era that emerged in the late 1980s and ‘90s. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2000, he revealed that Pixies’ debut album Surfer Rosa and Radiohead’s The Bends were two of his more recent favourites, alongside Sabbath’s We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n’ Roll and AC/DC’s Back in Black.

If Black’s long, unkempt hair outs him as a headbanging rock fan, he also has affections for slower, more melodic, introspective music. Some of the music on The Bends would attest to this side of Black. Following a similar trajectory was the 1990s cult icon Eliott Smith. After beginning his career in the Portland post-hardcore rock band Heatmiser, Smith entered into a singer-songwriter chapter highlighted by tragic acoustic ballads that spread his name worldwide.

Tragically, Smith died in 2003 at the age of 34 from two stab wounds to the chest. Authorities working on the case could not determine whether the wounds were self-inflicted or not, but the singer had struggled with depression for much of his life. He was mourned by a vast fanbase around the world and seemed to be particularly popular among the Hollywood elite following his Academy Award nomination for ‘Miss Misery’, his song featured in the closing credits of Good Will Hunting.

Speaking to Off Camera in 2015, Black remembered Smith as “one of my favourite musicians of all time”. Continuing, the actor noted the musician’s eye for melodic melancholia. “He just wrote the most heartbreaking, beautiful songs… the melodies… genius, he was a genius,” Black added.

Usually, Black deals in hard rock and comedic delivery. However, when asked to perform ‘Say Yes’ at an Elliott Smith tribute concert in 2013, he made an exception. “I rehearsed for hours and hours in my car trying to memorise it,” Black told host Sam Jones. “I wrote it down, I did everything in my power to get it right.”

Slow, melodic music doesn’t come so naturally to Black, and the performance proved to be difficult to get right. “We got there, and it was my turn. And my brain just froze. I got to a line and my mind thought ‘What if I don’t remember the next line?’ and so I beefed it and said ‘Sorry everyone, we’re going to start from the beginning. I know no one else has f*cked up their songs, I f*cked up mine, though. But that’s OK, take it from the top.”

Black was used to big crowds at his Tenacious D shows, but singer-songwriter music is much more intimate and affecting, especially when VIPs are present. “Elliott Smith’s sister was there, I think he had some other family members there. It was like, ‘No, you have to get it right.’ It was almost like a memorial service,” Black continued. Ultimately, it took Black nine attempts to get the song down perfectly on stage with all the right words in the right places. “Everyone just erupted with applause and cheering because I made it through. It was such a catastrophe. It was a fiasco,” he admitted.

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