

“Kage realized he could exploit me, and then I realized I needed a mentor,” Black retorts. “I wanted some of what Jack had,” Gass says. Gass admits he was intimidated by Black’s vocal chops, but soon took the classic stance of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” You think you can just bust in and be the musician of the group.’ It started off a little prickly.” He was like, ‘You’re not ready for prime time. “There was a little bit of resistance from Kyle. “I could tell it ruffled some feathers,” Black says of his a cappella tapes.

The self-described new kid on the block, Black brought recordings of jingles to be used in a stage production. In November, to celebrate the anniversary, the band will release Super Power Party Pack, complete with original demos and never-before-heard nuggets.īlack and Gass met in the late ’80s as members of Tim Robbins’s Actors’ Gang theater company in Los Angeles. “That’s what they say about that first album,” Black says.
#Tenacious d music full#
Gass calls the 21-track collection the band’s “greatest hits up to that time.” Black agrees that they cherry-picked from years’ worth of all-night writing sessions that were full of pot smoke and fast-food runs to Jack in the Box. Still, the duo looks fondly on their debut, which turns 20 this month. The crawl toward the achievement wasn’t without its headaches, as Black and Gass battled file sharing whether to go on the road so soon after 9/11 album recalls due to the “inappropriate nature” of the album’s back cover, which depicted Satan standing above two babies and a controversial animated video for “Fuck Her Gently” that Sony Music instantly buried. However, it spent 43 weeks on the chart, going gold in July 2002 and platinum by November 2005. Released on September 25, 2001, Tenacious D peaked at no.

Produced by the Dust Brothers (Beck’s Odelay, Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique) and featuring an array of guests, including Dave Grohl on drums, Tenacious D cemented Jack Black and Kyle Gass as kick-ass musicians who could make you flash devil horns while cry-laughing in under two minutes. Though Tenacious D is full of hilarious acoustic heavy metal about mythic heroes (“Wonderboy”) and tasteful love-making (“Fuck Her Gently”), the album and band’s cult status is no joke.
