(Credits: Far Out / Stefan Brending)
You may underestimate Jack Black as the unerring presence that manages to crop up in what feels like every kids’ film known to man. His music seems even worse – parents, we all know how many times you’ve banged your head off the wall as you hear ‘Steve’s Lava Chicken’ for the 10,000th time.
But the thing about Black is that not only is he a bit of a loose cannon, but put him in front of a microphone and tell him to run wild, and he’s likely to blow the roof off. It’s hardly a well-kept secret that the actor is a heavy metal diehard – in fact, although he may not be winning Oscars or mingling in the top flight of the serious film elite, he has garnered the respect and appreciation of rock legends the world over. That’s a much cooler crowd to be in, anyway.
His involvement in the metal scene can only be described more as a headfirst dive as opposed to mere skirmishes, with his reverence no better epitomised than his own comedy rock band Tenacious D, only rivalling Spinal Tap in terms of world-beating dominance – and one of them is fictional. While there’s a salient argument for this being the most metal Black has ever been, there can be no competition with honouring the man who invented the very cornerstones of the genre itself.
Of course, this could be referencing none other than Ozzy Osbourne, the ‘Prince of Darkness’, who rode into the rock scene in all his hell bending ways and changed it forever. However, in many ways, despite a lifetime of worshipping the hallowed halls of the genre, the peak of heavy metal was only reached, for both Black and Osbourne, relatively recently. It was a moment of go big or go home, and as we all know, it had to go out with a bang.
Mere weeks before Osbourne bid his final farewell to the world, he was up on stage for the very last time, thrashing it out and proving himself to be the definitive king, forever and always. But naturally, he couldn’t have pulled off a feat like Back to the Beginning on his own. A myriad of metal legends joined the ranks to give him a fitting send-off, and Black was one of them.
But in the absence of physically performing on stage, the actor pulled the next best stunt. Appearing via video, he gave a rendition of ‘Mr Crowley’ – yet it wasn’t just that simple. Roping in Roman Morello, Revel Ian, Yoyoka Soma, and Hugo Weiss, each the teenage sons of bona fide metal legends, it was almost as though Black was completing an act of service to the scene in passing on the baton of metal to the next generation.
No one was to predict what would happen next, in that Osbourne passed away just two weeks later. But the fact was, despite how close to the bone it went, everyone who was anyone pulled out all the stops to make the concert far from a weeping goodbye and the epitome of blazing excellence. It may be more subtle and less forthright than some of his previous heavy metal happenings, yet Black proved in that moment that the genre would always be alive and well, even after its leader took his final bow.
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