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"Weird Al" Yankovic

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Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic (born October 23, 1959) is a Grammy award winning American musician, satirist, parodist, accordionist, and television producer.

He is known in particular for humorous songs which satirize popular culture or parody specific songs by contemporary musical acts, or both. His works have earned him four gold and four platinum records.

Album cover from Poodle Hat (2003)

Biography

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic, the son of Nick and Mary Yankovic, first started playing the accordion one day before his seventh birthday, mastering the instrument by age ten.

After hearing Dr. Demento's radio show (a comedy radio program featuring humorous music), Al sent the Doctor a tape of a song entitled "Belvedere Cruising" in 1976. Al was a senior at Lynwood High School in Lynwood, California at the time, but that tape was the start of his eventual career.

Three years later, Al was an architecture student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a disc jockey at the university's radio station (KCPR). Since "My Sharona" by The Knack was on the charts and The Knack was going to play at Cal Poly, Al took his accordion into the bathroom across from the listening booth and recorded a parody entitled "My Bologna", with a B-side called "School Cafeteria". The Knack thought it was funny, and arranged for the song to be released on their label, Capitol Records, which gave Al a six-month contract. Dr. Demento's listeners put this track atop his "Funny Five" list.

In 1980, Al was working the mail room at Westwood One, Dr. Demento's radio network at the time, when he developed another parody called "Another One Rides The Bus", a parody of Queen's hit, "Another One Bites The Dust". While practicing the song outside the sound booth, Al ran into Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz who told Al he was a drummer and agreed to bang on Al's accordion case to keep a good steady beat to the song. "Another One Rides The Bus" became so popular that it got Al his first television appearance, The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. On the show, Al played his accordion and again Jon banged on his accordion case. The rare 1981 Placebo EP release of this song has as its B-side the track "Happy Birthday", a song about the world's problems and imminent destruction ("There's garbage in the water, there's poison in the sky, I guess it won't be long before we're all gonna die"), with the suggestion that these things should be ignored on one's birthday ("So if you think it's scary, if it's more than you can take, just blow out the candles, and have a piece of cake!").

1981 brought Al on tour for the first time as part of Dr. Demento's act. His performances were particularly interesting as few, if any, people at the time were doing parodies of rock and roll songs on accordion. His stage act caught the eye of manager Jay Levey, who loved it and became Al's manager. Jay insisted that the act would sound better if Al had a full band, so he held auditions. Steve Jay became Al's bass player, and Jim West the lead guitarist. With "Bermuda" Schwartz on drums, the band was complete.

The Dr. Demento Society, which issues yearly Christmas re-releases of material from Dr. Demento's Basement Tapes, often includes among these unreleased tracks from Mr. Yankovic's vaults, such as "Pacman", "It's Still Billy Joel To Me", or the demos for "I Love Rocky Road". The live version of "School Cafeteria" is also to be found on Dr. Demento's Basement Tapes.

In 1985, Al co-wrote and starred in a mockumentary of his own life entitled The Compleat Al that intertwined fact and fiction of his life up to that point. The movie was co-directed by Jay Levey, who would direct UHF (see below) four years later.

Al claims to have been inspired by Allan Sherman, whose portrait in miniature (with name) can be found by the observant on the cover of Al's first album.

In January 1998, Yankovic had LASIK eye surgery and shaved off his mustache, radically changing his trademark look.

Al married Suzanne Krajewski on February 10, 2001. Their daughter, Nina, was born February 11, 2003.

On April 9, 2004, Al's parents, Nick Louis Yankovic, 86, and Mary, 81, were found dead in their Fallbrook, California home, apparently the victims of carbon monoxide poisoning. The night after their bodies were found, Al went on with his concert in Mankato, Minnesota, saying that since his music had helped many of his fans through tough times, maybe it would work for him as well.

Al's songs

Though he is best known for his song parodies, Yankovic has recorded a greater number of original humorous songs, such as "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?" and "Hardware Store". Yankovic's work depends largely on the satirizing of popular culture, including television, movies, food, popular music, and sometimes issues in contemporary news. Although many of his songs are parodies of contemporary radio hits, it is rare that the song's primary topic of lampooning is that artist. Yankovic's humor lies more in creating unexpected incongruity between an artist's image and the topic of the song, contrasting the style of the song with its content, or in pointing out trends or works which have become pop culture cliches. Some of his original songs are pastiches or "style parodies," where he chooses a band's entire body of work to honor/parody rather than any single hit by that band; some bands so honored have been Devo ("Dare to Be Stupid"), The B-52's ("Mr. Popeil"), Talking Heads ("Dog Eat Dog"), Nine Inch Nails ("Germs"), The Beach Boys ("Trigger Happy"), Frank Zappa ("Genius in France"), Oingo Boingo ("You Make Me"), The Police ("Velvet Elvis"), Twisted Sister ("Young, Dumb And Ugly"), James Taylor ("The Good Old Days"), The Beastie Boys ("Twister"), They Might Be Giants ("Everything You Know is Wrong"), Bob Dylan ("Bob"), The Kinks ("Don't Wear Those Shoes"), R.E.M ("Franks 2000 Inch TV"), and Harry Chapin ("The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota").

In addition to his parodies, Al also includes a medley of various songs on most albums, each one reinterpreted as a polka, with the choruses of various songs juxtaposed for humourous effect. Examples include "Alternative Polka," "Angry White Boy Polka" and "Polka Power." "Bohemian Polka" is unique in that it is not a medley; rather, it is a full rendition of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody."

One of his most controversial parodies was Amish Paradise, a spoof of the song Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio. Coolio's label gave Weird Al permission to parody his work and gave the impression that Coolio gave his permission as well, but Coolio maintains that he himself never gave permission. Coolio was upset, but legal action never materialized, and Coolio cashes the royalty checks he receives for the the song. After this happened, Al always made sure to speak directly with the artist of every song he parodied.

He has contributed songs to several films, including the original song "This Is The Life", featured on the soundtrack for Johnny Dangerously; the title track to his own movie, UHF; and a parody of the James Bond title sequences in Spy Hard, the title track to a 1996 Leslie Nielsen movie directed by Rick Friedberg. He also contributed the song "Dare to Be Stupid" to Transformers: The Movie, and the song "Polkamon" to Pokémon The Movie 2000 - The Power of One.

Directing career

Weird Al has directed many of his own music videos, the first being 'Bedrock Anthem' in 1993. He has directed all of his own videos since then. Additionally, he has directed several by such artists as Hanson, The Black Crowes, Ben Folds, and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. He also directed the title sequence to Spy Hard, in which he sang the title song.

Recognition

Yankovic has received three Grammy Awards and became eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, although he says, "I think my chances of ever making it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's." Despite that, his fans have been aggressively campaigning for his induction into the Rock Hall and have also begun raising funds to get him considered for another key entertainment honor, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Yankovic has been called a "cultural barometer" by The Onion's recurring fictitious dweeb character Larry Groznic (10 November 2004), who called Weird Al's music "the consummate pastiche of popular songwriting styles for our times." The article also referred to one real-life indication of Yankovic's status: Krist Novoselic of the band Nirvana said they felt they had "made it" after Yankovic recorded "Smells Like Nirvana" (parodying Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit").

The popularity of Al's music among users of Internet file sharing networks has led to many parody or comedy songs shared in this manner being identified as "Weird Al" tracks which in fact have no connection to him. One major victim of this seems to be Bob Rivers, but so many wrongly attributed tracks exist that several fans have set up websites attempting to list such tracks along with their real artists. It has been argued that this not only deprives the real artists involved of credit for their creations, but sometimes associates Al's name with types of music he would never produce and would not want to be known for. A list of songs not performed by Weird Al can be found at The Not Al Page.

Works

Other projects

  • UHF - 1989: A commercially unsuccessful movie satirizing the television industry, starring Yankovic, Michael Richards, Fran Drescher and Victoria Jackson. It has since become a cult favorite, and was an extremely popular DVD. Al previously showed clips at his concerts to the great appreciation of his fans, but this was halted by a cease and desist order from MGM.
  • Babalu Music - 1991: A collection of I Love Lucy music. Al's contribution as producer doesn't seem to extend past the title track.
  • Peter and the Wolf - 1988: "This warped classical children's record featuring narration and poems written by "Weird Al" Yankovic and music arranged, composed and performed by synthesizer whiz Wendy Carlos" - WeirdAl.com. Weird Al's text modifies the original story considerably: "The Grandfather will be played by... Don Ameche! What? He can't make it?", while the music features various innovations by Wendy Carlos over the original by Sergei Prokofiev. Side two of the album is "Carnival of the Animals, Part II" which is a sort of homage to The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, with Weird Al taking the role of Edward Lear in writing humorous poems about the slug, the shark, etc.

Television appearances

Weird Al had a short-lived TV series called The Weird Al Show, which aired from September 1997 to September 1998 on CBS. Though the show appeared to be geared at children, the humor was really more for adult fans of Al.

Al has hosted AL-TV on MTV many years, generally coinciding with the release of each new album. For Poodle Hat, however, AL-TV appeared on VH1. The most popular part of AL-TV is Al manipulating interviews especially commissioned for AL-TV by the network for comic effect.

VH1 produced a Behind the Music episode on Al. Al is so clean-cut that the producers couldn't find any of the typical angst-laced problems that make many rock stars' stories compelling (as Al noted in an interview with BTM), so their angle was on Al's life as a bachelor and (what they presumed was) his loneliness. (Also, the commercial failures of UHF and Polka Party). However, since the taping, Al has married. He and his wife, Suzanne, recently had a daughter, Nina.

Al has also made a number of cameo film appearances, including all three Naked Gun films. He currently plays a role in the "Haunted Lighthouse 4-D" Show at the Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Busch Gardens Tampa Bay theme parks. He has also appeared in cartoons such as EEK! The Cat, The Simpsons, The Brak Show, Johnny Bravo and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, lending his voice to that of the Squid Hat, a parody of the Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter series.

Al also appeared as an alien in an episode of Amazing Stories.

Trivia

  • Al has put two backwards messages into his songs, presumably parodies of the hysteria over backwards messages in pop music that reached their peak in the 1980s: the first, in Nature Trail to Hell, said "Satan Eats Cheez Whiz"; the second, in I Remember Larry, said "Wow, you must have an awful lot of free time on your hands." [1]
  • Al often hides the number 27 somewhere in his songs, album art, and memorabilia. Examples are Al wearing a 27 on the cover of the Running With Scissors album and including 27 photos in the photo gallery on the "Weird Al Yankovic Live!" DVD.
  • On November 10, 2004, The Onion published an editorial titled "I Must Take Issue With The Wikipedia Entry For Weird Al Yankovic."
  • While artists are generally pleased with Weird Al, there are three notable exceptions. Coolio was very displeased since his management told Weird Al to go ahead with the parody allegedly without consulting him, but as stated previously, there has been no legal action and Coolio still cashes royalty checks from the song. Al has taken the high road apologized for the alleged misunderstanding. Also, Prince has refused to allow parodies, though Weird Al has stated that he continues to "check back with him to see if he has developed a sense of humor" in interviews. Al was also requested to change the video for his remake of Eminem's "Lose Yourself." Says Al: "Last year, Eminem forced me to halt production on the video for my 'Lose Yourself' parody because he somehow thought that it would be harmful to his image or career ..."
  • Weird Al has backed down from artists like Prince and Alanis Morissette only out of courtesy and convenience. Because parody is recognized as fair use by copyright laws, Weird Al is actually free to make fun of any artist's work without permission. He only asks for permission to maintain good relationships and avoid nuisance law suits.
  • Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page is actually a self proclaimed Weird Al fan, but when Al tried to create a Led Zeppelin polka he refused.
  • Licensing issues for Weird Al's works are some of the most complicated in the music industry. Because of his polka-medleys, Weird Al can wind up performing works by dozens of artists on a single album. Because of the potentially crippling amount of royalties required for this, Weird Al's record labels have had to engage in endless negotiation and diplomacy.
  • Recently though, the accordion playing parody artist has inspired new parody artists including Matthew Hodgson "That One Guy", Jake Waters, Bob Ricci, The Great Luke Ski, Ruben and the Novelty Shack, and "Weirdo Jace" McLain. These artists are often dubbed "Weird Al Wannabes". UFO Phil has also been a victim of this comparison, though he is famous for original comedy music, not parody covers.
  • Al is no relation to famous accordionist Frankie Yankovic, but Al did play accordion for "Who Stole the Kishka" on one of Frankie's final records, Songs of the Polka King, Vol. 1. Frankie also cameo'd in a special by Al for the 1986 Grammys.
  • Although Yankovic traditionally secures permission from the artists he parodies (even though this is not legally required), and was told by his record label that Coolio had given permission for him to parody Gansta's Paradise, Coolio later claimed that he had not given such permission. This created a minor controversy, as speculation surfaced that Coolio had actually given permission but later claimed he hadn't in the fear that allowing the parody wouldn't be seen as "cool," or that Yankovic's record label lied to Yankovic in the hopes that the song would become popular. Yankovic later stated on VH-1's Behind the Music that he had written a sincere letter of apology to Coolio which was never returned, and that Coolio never complained when he received his royalty check from proceeds of the song.

Discography

Since Al got a record contract in 1983, he has released many albums and parodies. The following is a comprehensive list of his albums to date:

Compilation albums (international)

Special Projects

Compilation albums (imports, other)

See also

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