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"Weird Al" Yankovic

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"Weird Al" Yankovic
"Weird Al" Yankovic
"Weird Al" Yankovic in 2003
Background information
Years active1979–present
Members"Weird Al" Yankovic (1979-present)
Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz (1980 - present)
Steve Jay (1982-present)
Jim West (1982 - present)
Rubén Valtierra (1991-present)
Websitewww.weirdal.com

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic (born October 23, 1959) is an American musician best known for his parodies of contemporary radio hits. His lyrics depend largely on the satirizing of popular culture including television, movies, food, music, and news stories.

Though parodies earned him his fame, Yankovic has recorded a greater number of humorous songs with original tunes. Some of these pieces are pastiches (or style parodies), where he chooses a band's entire body of work to emulate rather than any single hit. Most of his albums include a medley which juxtaposes the choruses of various songs in a polka style to accordion music.

Biography

Yankovic, the only child of Nikolas Louis Yankovic (a Serb-American) and Mary Elizabeth Vivalda (of Italian descent), was born in Downey, California, but raised in the nearby town of Lynwood. He 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), Yankovic sent the Doctor a tape of a song entitled "Belvedere Cruising" in 1976. He 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, Yankovic was an architecture student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a disc jockey at the university's radio station (KCPR). His air name was Weird Al, and he has used it since. Since "My Sharona" by The Knack was on the charts and The Knack was scheduled to play at Cal Poly, he took his accordion into the bathroom across the hall from the radio station 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 Yankovic a six-month contract. Dr. Demento's listeners put this track atop his "Funny Five" list.

In 1980, Yankovic 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, he ran into Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, who told him he was a drummer and agreed to bang on Yankovic's accordion case to keep a good steady beat to the song. "Another One Rides The Bus" became so popular that it got Yankovic his first television appearance, The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. On the show, he 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", an unusually (for Yankovic) dark 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 sarcastic suggestion that denial is the natural solution ("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!"). The Placebo EP recording of that song was recently remixed into stereo by Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz for inclusion on the Hurricane Katrina charity compilation Laughter is a Powerful Weapon Volume 2: Funny Musicians for a Serious Cause.

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 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.

1981 brought Yankovic 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 Yankovic's manager. Levey insisted that the act would sound better if he had a full band, so he held auditions. Steve Jay became Yankovic's bass player, and Jim West played guitar. With Bermuda Schwartz on drums, the band was complete. In 1992, Rubén Valtierra joined the band on keyboards, to allow Yankovic to concentrate more on singing during concerts. Rick Derringer would produce all of his albums until the 1992 release Off the Deep End. After Derringer's departure, Yankovic began to produce his own albums. So far he has produced five albums, with a sixth on its way in early 2006.

In 1985, Yankovic 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.

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

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

On April 9, 2004, Yankovic's parents, Nick Louis Yankovic, 86, and Mary, 81, were found dead in their Fallbrook, California home, apparently the victims of carbon monoxide poisoning from a fire that had been burning. The night after their bodies were found, Yankovic 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.

Yankovic's songs

While 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". His work depends largely on the satirizing of popular culture, including television ("I Can't Watch This"), movies ("The Saga Begins"), food ("Eat It"), popular music (the polkas), and sometimes issues in contemporary news ("Headline 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 clichés. 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 George Thorogood ("Albuquerque"), 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"), Nirvana ("Callin' In Sick"), The Police ("Velvet Elvis"), Skid Row/Slaughter ("Young, Dumb And Ugly"), James Taylor ("Good Old Days"), The Beastie Boys ("Twister"), Aerosmith ("Stuck in a Closet with Vanna White"), They Might Be Giants ("Everything You Know is Wrong"), Elvis Costello ("I'm So Sick of You"), Bob Dylan ("Bob"), Peter Gabriel ("Waffle King"), The Kinks ("Don't Wear Those Shoes"), R.E.M ("Frank's 2000" TV"), and Harry Chapin and Gordon Lightfoot ("The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota"). In the case of "Why Does This Always Happen to Me?", it was not only a Ben Folds "style parody", but Ben Folds actually played piano on the song. In the case of "Your Horoscope For Today", Yankovic himself stated that it was in the style of "a generic 90's third-wave ska tune," including bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish. [1]

Album cover from Poodle Hat (2003)

In addition to his parodies, Yankovic also includes a medley of various songs on most albums, each one reinterpreted as a polka, with the choruses of various songs juxtaposed for humorous effect. Examples include "The 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." Also unusual is "The Hot Rocks Polka" in that it is made up of songs by only one artist, in this case The Rolling Stones.

One of his most controversial parodies was "Amish Paradise", based on "Gangsta's Paradise" which, ironically, hip-hop artist Coolio had created using the music of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise" from 1976's Songs in the Key of Life. Coolio's label gave Yankovic permission to parody his work and gave the impression that Coolio had as well, but he maintains that he never did. Coolio claimed he was upset, but legal action never materialized, and Coolio accepted royalty payments for the song. After this happened, Yankovic always made sure to speak directly with the artist of every song he parodied. A series of photos taken at the XM Satellite Radio booth at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show suggests that he and Coolio may have made amends. [2]

Yankovic has contributed songs to several films, including his own UHF, "This Is The Life", from Johnny Dangerously and a parody of the James Bond title sequence in Spy Hard. 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. "Dare to be Stupid" and "This is the Life" are also both on Yankovic's own Dare to be Stupid album.

Yankovic rerecorded the theme song from the 1967 animated show George of the Jungle in 1985. Although his version wasn't used in the 1997 movie of the same name, it was included on the soundtrack, and his song "Bedrock Anthem" from the 1993 album Alapalooza appeared in the movie.

Directing career

"Weird Al" Yankovic has directed many of his own music videos, the first being "Bedrock Anthem" (a parody of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Give It Away" and "Under the Bridge") 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, Jeff Foxworthy, and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. He also directed the title sequence to Spy Hard, in which he sang the title song.

Misattribution and imitators

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Yankovic is an icon among users of Internet file sharing networks. Songs posted to these networks are often misattributed to him due to their humorous subject matter, including songs that are racist, sexually explicit, or otherwise offensive.

A list of songs not by Yankovic can be found at The Not Al List. Alternatively, a list of all songs recorded by Yankovic can be found on his website's Recording Dates Page.

Awards and album certification

  • Eat It — Grammy Best Comedy Recording (1984)
  • Fat — Grammy Best Concept Video (1988)
  • Poodle Hat — Grammy for Best Comedy Album (2003)
  • Six other Grammy nominations
U.S. gold records
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic
  • The Food Album
  • Alapalooza
U.S. platinum records
U.S. gold long form videos
  • The "Weird Al" Yankovic Video Library
  • Alapalooza: The Videos
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic - Live!
  • Bad Hair Day: The Videos
U.S. platinum long form videos
  • The Ultimate Video Collection
Canadian gold records
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic in 3-D
  • Even Worse
  • Greatest Hits
  • Greatest Hits - Volume II
  • Running with Scissors
Canadian platinum records
  • Off the Deep End
  • Bad Hair Day
Canadian double platinum records
  • Alapalooza
Gold singles
  • Eat It (U.S., Canada, & Australia)


[3]

Works

UHF original theatrical poster

Other projects

  • UHF - 1989: A satire of the television industry, starring Yankovic, Michael Richards, Fran Drescher and Victoria Jackson. Unsuccessful in theaters, it has since become a cult classic, and was an extremely popular DVD. Yankovic 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 music from and related to the television sitcom I Love Lucy. Yankovic's contribution as producer seems not 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. Yankovic'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 in part a homage to The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, with Yankovic taking the role of Edward Lear in writing humorous poems about the snail, the shark, etc.

Television appearances

File:WeirdAlShow Complete.jpg
DVD cover for The Weird Al Show

Yankovic 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 his adult fans. The entire series has been officially announced to be released on DVD in August 2006.

Yankovic has hosted AL-TV on MTV and Al Music on MuchMusic many times, generally coinciding with the release of each new album. For Poodle Hat, AL-TV appeared on VH1. The most popular part of AL-TV is Yankovic manipulating interviews for comic effect, by inserting himself into a previously conducted interview with a musician, and asking absurd questions.

VH1 produced a Behind the Music episode on Yankovic. He is so clean-cut that the producers could not find any of the typical angst-laced problems that make many rock stars' stories compelling (as Yankovic noted in an interview with BTM), so they stretched many smaller disappointments and skirmishes during his career into major downfalls to fit the program's formula. His two commercial failures, his film UHF and his 1986 album Polka Party! were presented as having a larger impact on the direction of his career and Coolio's later disapproval of "Amish Paradise" was played up as a large feud. Despite the dramatic angles given to these events, the special was accurate in discussing Yankovic's life and career and received heavy playtime well after its initial airing.

Yankovic has also made a number of cameo film appearances, including all three Naked Gun films. He makes a cameo appearance in the "Haunted Lighthouse 4-D" film at the Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Busch Gardens Tampa Bay theme parks. He has also appeared in cartoons such as the feature length Transformers the Movie,EEK! The Cat, The Simpsons, The Brak Show, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, 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.

He made a celebrity cameo appearance on an episode of The Simpsons that originally aired on April 13, 2003, singing "The Ballad Of Homer And Marge" (a parody of John Mellencamp's "Jack & Diane") with his band. The episode, "Three Gays of the Condo", later won an Emmy for "Outstanding Animated Program (For Programming Less Than One Hour)".

Yankovic appeared on Solid Gold in 1985 performing "Like A Surgeon", where television viewers first saw his now-famous parody of Madonna's "virgin dance".

He played a green, "broccoli-headed" talent agent for the Earth's solar system in "Miss Stardust", an episode of Amazing Stories. He made it to the final round on Win Ben Stein's Money.

In the early 90's Yankovic appeared in a "training video" segment for the Virtual World Entertainment corporation's Red Planet racing game. He played the part of Freeman Jack, a subversive purveyor of vectored thrust vehicle (VTV) death races on Mars in an alternate universe.

He also appeared on the 1998 FX series, Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular, performing "The Night Santa Went Crazy" on an episode of the short-lived Penn & Teller variety show that aired in March 1999.

Yankovic has appeared on numerous talk shows, most notably The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, (performing "Yoda" and "Hooked On Polkas"). In August 2005 he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, backing friend Ben Folds on the tambourine.

In 2005, Yankovic made his appearance in the segment "Movies that Should've Been Made in 3D" on VH1's I Love the 80s 3-D.

Trivia

  • Yankovic has put two backwards messages into his songs: 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." [4]
  • Yankovic's signature food is a Twinkie-wiener sandwich which consists of an overturned Twinkie split open as a bun, hot dog, and Easy Cheese. Recently in several interviews, he has stated that he has switched to using vegetarian hot dogs due to becoming a vegetarian, but still enjoys them as his favorite snack. (He also likes to dip them in milk.) This can be seen in UHF.
  • Yankovic often includes the number 27 somewhere in his songs, videos, album art, and memorabilia. For example, he wears a 27 on the cover of the Running with Scissors album, and 27 photos are included in the photo gallery on the "Weird Al" Yankovic Live! DVD. This trademark began as several coincidental appearances of the number, but Yankovic began intentionally using it after the original incidents were pointed out to him.
  • On November 10, 2004, The Onion published Larry Groznic's editorial "I Must Take Issue With The Wikipedia Entry For 'Weird Al' Yankovic".[5]
  • While artists are generally pleased with Yankovic, there are three notable exceptions. In addition to Coolio, Prince has refused to allow parodies, though Yankovic has stated in interviews that he continues to "check back with him to see if he has developed a sense of humor". Yankovic was also requested to change the video for his parody of Eminem's "Lose Yourself": "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..."
  • Despite such cases of Yankovic apparently backing down, parody is recognized as fair use under copyright laws, so he is actually free to parody any artist's work without permission. He apparently asks the permission of artists in order to maintain good relationships and avoid pointless lawsuits. In some cases, parodies for which the artist did not give permission are performed in concert while remaining unreleased in any recorded form. Yankovic also often performs a medley of song segments at some point during a concert. The content of the medley varies, and has sometimes contained partial parodies that, for whatever reason, did not reach the length of a full song and were never released on any recorded work.
  • Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page is a self-proclaimed Yankovic fan, but when Yankovic wished to create a Led Zeppelin polka he refused.
  • Like Page, Michael Jackson is also a big fan of Yankovic. Jackson has allowed him to parody his songs. When he learned that Yankovic was going to do a parody of "Bad" ("Fat"), Jackson allowed him to use the same set he built for his own "Bad" parody from the Moonwalker video.
  • Paul McCartney refused Yankovic permission to record a parody of Wings' "Live and Let Die", entitled "Chicken Pot Pie", because McCartney is a vegetarian (Yankovic is too now). It has been performed numerous times in concert, however.
  • Licensing issues for Yankovic's works are some of the most complicated in the music industry. Largely because of his polka-medleys, he sometimes performs works by dozens of artists on a single album. Because of the potentially crippling amount of royalties required for this, his record labels are required to engage in much negotiation and diplomacy.
  • Yankovic is of no relation to the famous accordionist Frankie Yankovic, but "Weird Al" did play accordion for "Who Stole the Kishka" on one of Frankie's final records, Songs of the Polka King, Vol. 1. Frankie Yankovic also made a cameo appearance in a special by "Weird Al" for the 1986 Grammys. When the accordionist died in 1998, a woman he knew on the east coast called him and errantly told him, "I'm sorry your dad died", and was understandably jarring to Yankovic at the time.
  • Surprisingly, Yankovic is considered to be one of the top accordionists in the world, having played at a virtuoso level since childhood.
  • Yankovic's song "The Saga Begins" (a parody of Don McLean's "American Pie") is notable because it nearly accurately states the entire plot of The Phantom Menace, despite being written before the film was released. Yankovic got everything he needed from rumor websites. He was slightly unsure about Anakin proposing to Amidala, so he attended a $500 screening to make sure. [6] Additionally, rumors persist that Don McLean performs in the video.
  • While Yankovic has never had a #1 single in the United States, "Eat It" reached the #1 position in Australia in 1984.
  • Yankovic says that his favorite car is the Nash Metropolitan, and he tends to feature a brown and white Metropolitan in his films and music videos.

Discography

Since Yankovic secured a record contract in 1983, he has released many albums and parodies. The following is a comprehensive list of his albums to date, with release date, and highest Billboard Chart position:

Compilation albums (international)

Special projects

Compilation albums (imports, other)

File:Sagabegins.jpg
Album cover from the Japanese compilation album, The Saga Begins (1999)
  • Eat It - May 1, 1984 (Japanese LP)
  • The Official Music of "Weird Al" Yankovic - June 1984 (Japanese LP)
  • The Best Of Yankovic - 1992 (Korean LP)
  • The Saga Begins - December 1, 1999 (Japanese CD)

Videography

The following is a comprehensive list of his long form videos to date, with release date.

Cameos and special appearances

See also

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