Weird Al Yankovic Biography

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic (born October 23, 1959 in Downey, California) 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. Yankovic's work earned him three gold and five platinum records in the U.S., one platinum DVD of music videos, and three Grammy awards.

Though parodies earned him his fame, Al 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. Yankovic's diversity as a performer causes many comedy songs to be incorrectly identified as "Weird Al" tracks, especially on Internet file sharing networks.

Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic, the only son 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), 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). 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, Al 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 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!"). 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 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.

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 played guitar. With Bermuda Schwartz on drums, the band was complete. In 1992, Rubén Valtierra joined the band on keyboards, to allow Al to concentrate more on singing during concerts. Rick Derringer would produce all of Al's albums until the 1992 release Off the Deep End. After Derringer's departure, Al began to produce his own albums. Al has since produced three albums, with a fourth on its way in early 2006.

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.

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 from a fire that had been burning. 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.

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 ("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 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"), AC/DC ("Young, Dumb And Ugly"), James Taylor ("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" 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.

Album cover from Poodle Hat (2003)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 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."

One of his most controversial parodies was "Amish Paradise", a parody 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 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, Al 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 Al and Coolio may have made amends.

He has contributed songs to several films, including the original song "This Is The Life", featured on the soundtrack for Johnny Dangerously; every song in his 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. "Dare to be Stupid" and "This is the Life" are also both on Al's own Dare to be Stupid album.

WEIRD AL YANKOVIC PICTURES

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6

WEIRD AL YANKOVIC BIOGRAPHY