Jack Black: Nirvana Was the Last Great Rock Band

Jack Blac speaks with Peter Travers during an episode of 'Off The Cuff' . Videostill: Max Tiberi/Rollingstone.com

Jack Black was moved to write “Rock Is Dead,” a song on his new Rize of the Fenix album with Tenacious D, by a lack of what he considers to be truly great rock bands in the world today. Though the tune, like most other Tenacious D songs, is meant to be funny, Black laments the passing of bands that could make people flip out completely.

“When you think about rock at its origin, and you think of the Beatles and millions of kids screaming as loud as they can and running as fast as they can towards the Beatles, there’s no one who is that kind of lightning rod, who commands that kind of power and has that kind of creative magma,” Black tells Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers in a new episode of Off the Cuff.

“I contend that the last band to really have that kind of power, I’m gonna say, was Nirvana,” Black adds. “Who since Nirvana has been as big as Nirvana, in that way?”

Black does like some contemporaries rockers, though. “My counterpart Jack White, whatever he does is always worth checking out ”“ and his archnemesis, the Black Keys, are also tremendous,” says Black. “The Foo Fighters. I loves me some Foos. But it does get thin after that.”