From his early days as an accordion-playing teenager to his huge success as America's
king of parody, Weird Al Yankovic has been cracking audiences up for decades.
But his path to stardom was a bit of a rocky road.
Al Yankovic was raised an only child in the L.A. suburb of Lynwood, California, and it
may not surprise you to know that his parents were a little on the eccentric side.
His father, Nick, and mother, Mary, were slightly overprotective types who doted on their son,
even keeping a framed picture of him above their mantel.
Al was a slight, scrawny kid with no friends, but he didn't seem to care much — most of
his free time was spent in his bedroom, doing suitably weird things.
For example, young Al had hanging on his wall a collection of license plates from all over
the country.
He also rigged up an elaborate pulley system so that he could flip his light on or off
without getting out of bed.
At the young age of seven, though, such frivolous pursuits gave way to one which would prove
to serve him astonishingly well in his adult life — he took up a musical instrument,
one which he would quickly master.
According to the National Cleveland Style Polka Hall of Fame, one man was ruling over
the polka genre in the 1960s: Accordionist Frankie "America's Polka King" Yankovic.
No, oddly enough, there was no relation.
But when a traveling salesman came to young Al's door peddling lessons at a local music
school, he was offering a choice between exactly two instruments — guitar and accordion.
Nick and Mary figured that there might as well be more than one accordion-playing Yankovic
in the world, so they signed Al up for lessons on the latter.
Al spent hours in his room getting down a variety of polka standards, but by the time
he was in high school, his musical interests began to expand.
In particular, he became laser-focused on the work of piano maestro Elton John, whose
classic double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road he improbably memorized, in its entirety,
on his squeezebox.
"I was a big Elton John fan in my teenage years."
For any average high school student, this could be seen as eccentric, to say the least.
For Al, however, it was a loud and clear declaration of his future career choice.
As it happened, around this same time, Al Yankovic discovered musical comedy by way
of Barret "Dr. Demento" Hansen.
Dr. Demento's syndicated radio show had become a haven for quirky novelty tunes, twisted
holiday classics, and absurd tunes sent in by aspiring humorists from across the nation.
In the liner notes to Weird Al's box set Permanent Record, the good doctor described how his
relationship with Al began when he was invited to speak at the youngster's school.
Only 13 at the time, Al slipped him a demo tape — and while no songs made the cut,
Al was nothing if not persistent.
Three years later, Al sent in another solicited tape, and its lead track was a wholesome,
zany ode to his family's enormous jalopy of a car.
This is how, at 16, Al got his first spin on the radio with "Belvedere Cruising."
In the liner notes to Permanent Record, Demento described how, while it wasn't the greatest
submission he'd ever had, the accordion stood out.
Just weeks later, Demento received another submission from Al with a song titled "School
Cafeteria," and when the tune quickly made his Top 10 most requested list, he figured
he might have a budding star on his hands.
"Well, I know how to play.
I'm sure there are like 13 year olds in Ukraine that play better than me but I do okay."
Al Yankovic graduated high school at 16, and speaking with the New York Times, he described
how his parents were just a bit reluctant to let him go off to California Polytechnic
State University, San Luis Obispo.
When his folks attempted to tail him on the road to college, Al stomped on the gas as
soon as he hit the freeway, giving them the slip like a hero in an action movie.
It was at Cal Poly that "Alfred" became "Al," a shortened moniker that he felt would make
him more relatable.
Unfortunately, being an accordion-toting loner who rarely opened his mouth, the rechristening
instead resulted in his cool dorm mates slapping him with the label that he would carry into
his professional life.
One day, as Al was mock-scowling at a pack of kids in his dorm's common area, one of
them uttered the words that would change the music world forever, looking at the young
musician and saying "Hey, it's Weird Al!"
The name, of course, promptly stuck.
One night, one of those cool kids by the name of Joel Miller asked Al if he actually knew
how to play that accordion.
Al responded by breaking out a note-for-note performance of Elton John's "Funeral for a
Friend/Love Lies Bleeding", which led to an all-night jam session, with Miller on bongos,
that lit a spark under Al's musical aspirations.
It was at a small open mic night at Cal Poly in 1977 that this spark became a raging bonfire.
Al Yankovic and Joel Miller, accordion and bongos in tow, showed up to the event populated
by earnest, guitar-slinging singer-songwriters, ready to give folks something they were not
ready for.
Thus, the select few in attendance that night were treated to the first-ever public display
of Weird Al's livewire zaniness.
The pair tore through a set that included "Wipeout," the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey,
and a 10-minute medley of Al's creation that he claimed included literally every song ever written.
"What can I say?
It's just the product of a sick mind."
As it happened, the crowd was not just ready for Weird Al — they were positively enraptured
by him, giving him and Miller a standing ovation and screaming for more as the pair left the stage.
Al admitted that this was the moment that a light came on in his head, and for Miller's
part, he knew immediately that this is what Weird Al had been born for.
Weird Al continued with his submissions to Dr. Demento's show while attending college,
and one of those tunes — "My Bologna," a parody of The Knack's "My Sharona" — got
a strong enough reaction that Knack lead singer Doug Fieger convinced Capitol Records boss
Rupert Perry to sign Al and release it as a single.
With "School Cafeteria" on the B-side, the single was released — but went nowhere,
prompting Al to decide to go ahead and finish school after briefly flirting with dropping out.
He didn't give up on his comedy aspirations, though, and his continued submissions to Dr.
Demento proved popular enough that the doctor invited Al to perform a new parody, "Another
One Rides the Bus," a takeoff on Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust," live on his show.
Backstage, Al met drummer Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, whose group was also there to perform.
The two struck up an immediate friendship, and Schwartz agreed to "drum" on Al's accordion
case and provide wacky sound effects for his performance.
Thus, the first piece of Weird Al's airtight, ridiculously versatile backing band fell into
place, and has remained ever since.
Weird Al's string of hits with Dr. Demento's listeners ensured that he wasn't without a
label for long.
He was picked up by Scotti Bros., which included all of those hits and more on his self-titled
1982 debut album.
As fate would have it, MTV had made its debut the summer of the previous year, and it wasn't
long before Al rightly figured that the fledgling music video medium just might be good for
his zany schtick.
While still toiling away at his day job in the mailroom at Westwood One, Al shot the
video for "Ricky," an I Love Lucy-based parody of the current smash hit "Mickey" by Toni Basil.
Funnily enough, it was his first and only '80s video effort in which he did not sport
his signature frizzy hair, pencil mustache, and glasses.
Instead, he morphed into Lucy's husband Ricky Ricardo in the video.
MTV gave the spoof enough exposure that the song cracked the Billboard Hot 100, and Al
wisely decided that he'd had enough of working in the mailroom.
Suddenly, he was on his way to TV stardom — and that rise would happen a lot more
quickly than anyone would have suspected.
For his sophomore album In 3-D, Weird Al served up a batch of future classics, including a
few soon-to-be beloved originals like "Midnight Star" and the slasher movie advertisement
"Nature Trail to Hell."
But his parody game was seriously on point by this time, and along with spoofs on current
hitmakers Men Without Hats and The Police, Al included a tune that would become a signature
of sorts: "Eat It," a takeoff on Michael Jackson's "Beat It."
That the tune sent up a #1 single from the biggest hit album of the '80s didn't hurt,
but the factor that really sent the song over the edge was the video — an ingenious, near-shot-for-shot
recreation of Jackson's video, which MTV quickly plugged into its heavy rotation.
The tune detonated across the land like a comedy bomb, and when the dust settled, Yankovic
had scored a #12 Billboard single, a platinum album, and his first Grammy Award for Best
Comedy Recording.
Weird Al would return to the Jackson parody well in the future, but it was that first
trip to the well that transformed him overnight from a quirky MTV novelty to a genuine, bona
fide star.
Throughout the '90s and into the '00s, Weird Al seemed to keep popping up with a new and
hilarious single every time the public at large threatened to forget about him.
1996's Bad Hair Day yielded the classic "Amish Paradise" and its hysterical video.
1999's Running with Scissors, which finally saw Al ditch the frizzy hair and glasses for
long locks and contacts, gave us the epic Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace recap
"The Saga Begins," done to the tune of Don McLean's "American Pie".
And 2003's Poodle Hat scored with "Couch Potato," a TV-focused spoof of Eminem's "Lose Yourself."
But it wasn't until 2006, with the release of the brilliant, platinum-selling White and
Nerdy, a spin on Chamillionaire's "Ridin," that Weird Al finally scored himself a Top
10 single.
Al had to wait even longer for an even more distinguished honor.
In 2014, his album Mandatory Fun became his first LP release to top the Billboard chart
— and what's more, it debuted in that position.
As of 2022, it's Al's final full-length album, although the one-off singles have kept coming
in the intervening years.
He may have begun as an interloper in the world of popular music, eager to throw a big
fat pie in the face of whoever happened to be topping the charts at the moment, but Weird
Al has become more than that — much more.
He's not just respected by his musical peers, he's beloved, with a list of accolades far
too long to list here.
Chamillionaire may have summed it up best when he told The Houston Chronicle,
Weird Al's concerts, as noted by The New York Times, have become the stuff of legend — usually
running two-plus hours and chock full of every hit the fans could reasonably expect to hear,
with Al frequently spending just as much time rubbing elbows with fans after the show.
For all of his success, he's never failed to remain good-natured, polite, and of course,
wacky — all reasons why Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which reinvents his entire career as
a typical ego- and drug-fueled rock 'n roll roller coaster, serves as the ultimate send-up.
It seems unlikely that there will ever be another artist quite like "Weird Al" Yankovic.
But maybe they're out there somewhere, playing on an accordion while gazing wistfully out
the window, and wondering what it'd be like if Harry Styles wrote a song about his love
for black olive and mushroom calzones.