"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.
Biography
Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic, the only son of Nick Louis Yankovic (a Yugoslavian-American) and Mary Elizabeth Vivalda (of Italian descent), 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", an unusually (for Al) 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!").
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 ("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 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 ("Frank's 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 accepted royalty payments for 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 (November 10, 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. Despite the fact that these song were not written or performed by Weird Al, they continue to be associated with him, and thus have given Al a controversal reputation among some because several of these songs were Racist, Explict, or discriminating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic
It's Still Billy Joel To Me :: WEIRD AL YANKOVIC
What's the matter with the songs he's singin'
Can't you tell that they're pretty lame
After listenin' to a couple albums
Well, they all start to sound the same
So he tried to change his musical style
He tossed all his ballads in the circular file
Then he found the punk sound
Breakin' ground all around
It's still Billy Joel to me
What's the matter with the tune he's writin'
Well, you know it's gonna be a smash
It's so nice when you're a big name artist
Doesn't matter if it sounds like trash
Now everybody thinks the new wave is super
Just ask Linda Ronstadt or even Alice Cooper
It's a big hit, isn't it
Even if it's a piece of junk
It's still Billy Joel to me
Woah, it doesn't matter what the critics say about him
'Cause he doesn't worry how they feel
When you're record's sellin' millions and it's goin' triple platinum
You don't worry 'bout your next meal
'Cause money is no big deal
Maybe he should dye his hair bright pink
And stick a safety pin through his cheeks
Then he'd really fit the new wave image
But he couldn't sit down for weeks
Don't you know about the record business, honey
You gotta be trendy if you wanna make some money
Now everybody's sayin' that he sure sounds funny
But it's still Billy Joel to me
All right, Alfred
Oh
I can hardly wait 'til his next album
Well, I'll bet it's gonna be the rage
Buy a ticket to his next big concert
Well, I wonder what he'll do on stage
It might be disco and it might be the blues
Or maybe even somethin' like the B-52's
Just a handclap, finger snap
Even if it's mindless pap
It's still Billy Joel to me
Everybody's sayin' that he sure sounds funny
But it's still Billy Joel to me
