How Dave Grohl, Maynard James Keenan And Friends Helped Tenacious D Create ‘Tribute’

Writing a comedy song that lasts longer than a cheap laugh is hard enough, but writing one that openly dares to stand shoulder to shoulder with Metallica and Led Zeppelin, while claiming to honour the greatest song in the world, should’ve been impossible.

As reported by Stephen Hill of Louder/Metal Hammer, Tenacious D managed to somehow pull that off and just on their second song.

That song was of course ‘Tribute’:

Jack Black and Kyle Gass first bonded over music in the late ’80s while performing with LA theatre collective The Actor’s Gang, by the mid ’90s, their late night conversations about heavy music began turning into songs, even if the first attempt ended up “in the bin”.

The breakthrough came after listening to Metallica’s ‘One’.

“We had the idea late at night listening to Metallica in Jack’s car,” Gass recalled.

“He said ‘Dude, check this song out, it’s the greatest song in the world.’ … I said, ‘I think we should write the best song in the world,’ and Jack said ‘You can’t do that, you can’t just write the greatest song in the world!’”

That impossibility sparked the joke

“Jack put his twist on it,” Gass said. “He said ‘We could write a tribute to the greatest song in the world?’ and that was it.”

“There’s just something very funny about that to me,” Black later said. “The idea of ‘the greatest song’ was so absurd…”

The song evolved into an epic pastiche, borrowing the emotional scale of rock’s biggest giants, “At the time there were parts of Stairway to Heaven in it,” Gass admitted. “It was this long, crazy epic jam.”

Early performances were chaotic and under attended, but when the song landed, Tenacious D soon found themselves supported by unlikely champions, including Maynard James Keenan, Bob Odenkirk, and David Cross. The real turning point though? When Dave Grohl joined them in the studio.

“It was kind of mind-blowing just to have Dave playing on our songs,” Gass said. “It was like your hero walking through the door.”

Released as a single in 2002, ‘Tribute’ exploded thanks to its unhinged video, demon cameo from Grohl, and a blink and you’ll miss it appearance by Ben Stiller, it’s sold over 600,000 copies, cracked the UK charts and turned a joke into a rock staple.

“It may not be the greatest song in the world,” Black once joked, “but it’s a tribute.”, twenty three years on, that feels about right.