In 2002, Tenacious D stars Jack Black and Kyle Gass appeared on the Australian TV show, The Panel, ready to stun fans with their brand new and soon-to-be legendary single, “Tribute.” However, it wasn’t their song which stole the show, but the moment Jack Black risked permanent medical disaster after an unexpected musical accident occurred during the song’s rambunctious outro…
Music Man readers can check out the moment in the recently resurfaced performance below. It’s already left more than 104,000 YouTube viewers stunned!
It all begins as any Tenacious D set would: a young Jack Black wowing the live audience with his personality-rich vocals, while Kyle Gass holds down the track with his acoustic guitar licks.
Jack attacks the rock ballad like any great actor would: hilariously focused on setting an atmosphere infused with deep suspense, delivering spoken word verses as if telling a ghost story or revealing secrets from an ancient book of myths.
As the devil appears in his lyrics, Jack embodies the creature, raising devil horns to his head as he snorts and recreates those iconic snarling tones that set this Tenacious D hit far apart from the rest.
And as their lyrical tale unravels, Tenacious D join in atmospheric harmony, amping up the pace and crafting tension using nothing but their two acoustic guitars. They cut the electric solo from their track, letting a brand new, folksy mood emerge in its midst. But just as the song is about to reach its peak, Jack magically averts a disaster which could have run his career into the ground…
Kyle Gass is busy strumming his guitar like the devil himself, with such speed and supernatural force that one of his strings snaps and pings back before the outro has reached its end.
Jack Black, who is kneeling right before Kyle’s guitar, has his eyes wide open as he acts out the fury of the song, egging on the rock ‘n’ roll mayhem as he mimics licking Kyle’s guitar.
As YouTube viewers have pointed out, Jack Black could have been blinded at the moment Kyle’s string breaks mere inches from his frenzied, open eyes. But, thankfully, the star was saved from this freak accident which could have left him permanently injured, at best.
Just like one top commenter pointed out, “Let’s hear it for Jack not losing an eye due to a string breaking. Seriously, this is actually incredibly dangerous and too risky. With that kind of aggressive strumming a string could easily snap and hit him right in the eye.”