Tenacious D
Ten minutes of fun and frivolity
Jack Black and Kyle Gass, collectively known as Tenacious D are busy guys. They have a new album, Tenacious D The Pick Of Destiny out, a movie of the same name on its way and an upcoming Australian tour that kicks off this month. I caught up with both of them by phone at an undisclosed location somewhere in the heart of Los Angeles. I had ten minutes with the lads, so the clock was ticking.

How did you two meet?
KG You’ll be learning about that when the film comes out, we don’t want to spoil it.
JB It will tell the whole story.
Both albums have a very theatrical vibe to them; do you write songs with the live performance in mind?
KG You know sometimes I like to think of something fun to play cause you know you’re going to have to play them a lot, I think there’s that element, what do you think?
JB I’m not really thinking about live or anything, just thinking about what’s funny to me right then when we’re recording.
So you don’t necessarily see the band as a live entity or a studio project, just a form of expression and a way of having a good time?
KG Wow, it sounds like you put some thought into that.
I did my homework.
JB I see the band as taking our live show to the next level and there’s no way we could have played these songs, a lot of the songs from the new album, without the band so we didn’t really have a choice.
So the songs wrote you instead of you writing the songs?
JB & KG Exactly
What kind of music did you guys grow up on?
KG Well I’ve always liked rock and also had a kind of weakness for the kind of gentle singer song writer kind of stuff.
To throw darts at them or to actually listen to them?
KG Actually, Well you know like your James Taylor types and Simon and Garfunkel sort of stuff.
You have to love those harmonies.
JB I’ve always liked some devil music.
You like to throw the horns.
JB Yeah, the head banging metal that sings about the devil, I like most of it but there’s a lot of it that I don’t like.
So you draw the line at human sacrifices?
JB No, eh when did I stop liking it, who was the last devil band I liked… ah shit I guess I like them all. I also like Kyle have a fondness for the sad beautiful songs like Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds Of Silence.
So is Kyle your heterosexual life partner?
JB Um, I’m going to say yes.
With greatness comes responsibility, what daily routines do you have to keep the greatest band on earth limber and ready to rock?
JB Um that’s a good question. I do some stomach exercises.
You’ve stopped doing the cock push-ups?
JB Yeah those are long gone but I do flex the cock every now and then though.
What was having Ronnie James Dio in the studio like?
JB It was smooth like butter.
He’s an amazing guy, where that big of a voice comes out of that small of a package.
JB It’s true. I mean he’s really just a very sweet man strangely. He comes in; he’s got a real strong presence but real grounded with a real positive attitude and good energy. I like the guy a lot.
You’ve got to give him props too because he was the first person to come up with throwing the horns.
KG That’s true.
JB He claims his grandma started it but he was the first person to do it on stage at a heavy metal concert.
I thought your HBO show was underrated, why were there so few episodes made, was that all that was contracted?
JB Yeah that was it and then there was an offer to do more except the offer also included us doing nothing but acting and we had enjoyed doing a lot of the writing so we said no, we don’t want to be the monkeys but I wouldn’t say it was underrated.
When I say that I’m taking it from the prospective of being in Australia, when you live here you get American culture in drips and drabs and you get what the scene makers think is cool which is hardly ever cool but most of it comes from friends and I hipped more people to it than they did to me.
KG It did have a really good word of mouth; almost every musician I’ve bumped into has seen it.
It’s up there with Spinal Tap.
JB Well thank you, you’re very kind indeed. We’ve had a good response from Australia in general; I mean we had a hit single with Tribute, which we never had in the states. It never really got much radio play at all here, so in a lot of ways we are more popular in Australia than in the states.
I think Australians can pick and choose the culture that they want as opposed to having it shoved down their throats 24/7.
JB Agreed.
Hey Jack I have a question for you, in School Of Rock, one of my favorite parts was the rock family tree, it was spot on, who put that one together?
JB That was actually everybody on the crew who were invited to come and add anything they thought was missing from the tree. Linklater started it off and most of the seventies and eighties punk rock was him putting stuff on there.
What was your contribution?
JB Well, obviously I took care of the metal.
I just thought that most movies that try to present an overview of popular music always miss the boat and that was pretty accurate.
JB Yeah but you really would have had to pause the screen to get all that stuff cause it went by pretty fast.
I did. I remember seeing it on the big screen and thinking I can’t wait to see the DVD and to pause that shot.
JB Ha Ha yeah.
KG Yeah I wanted to do that on Men In Black when they showed all the celebrities who were aliens like Roseanne Barr.
JB That’s definitely why they sold extra DVDs, everybody wanted to do that.
What can the Australian audiences expect from the upcoming tour?
JB Did you ever see Pink Floyd’s The Wall?
Yes
JB It’s kind of like that. We sing songs but we also tell a story. It will be an hour and forty-five minutes of pure fantasy and frolic mixed in with some horror.
The horror, the horror. So is the ghost of Brando going to be there?
JB Will Marlon Brando be there?
No the ghost of Brando, I think he’s kind of dead.
JB I don’t understand why he would be.
KG He might be there feasting on my rider.
JB So what does the ghost of Brando have to do with anything?
When you said the horror I was thinking of his scene in Apocalypse Now, sorry I guess that was an obscure film geek reference.
KG Not really.
JB No it’s not. I should have gotten that.
I guess I could say I stumped you.
JB You did.
Rob Hudson
www.tenaciousd.com