AL YANKOVIC: (Singing) How come you're always such a fussy young man? Don't want no Captain Crunch, don't want no Raisin Bran. Well, don't you know that other kids are starving in Japan? So eat it. Just eat it. Don't want to argue. I don't want to debate. Don't want to hear about what kind of food you hate. You won't get no dessert till you clean up your plate. So eat it. Don't you tell me you're full.
i just want it all by kid ink
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GROSS: So we just heard "Eat It." How did you decide to do that Michael Jackson song? Why did you choose that one? And I should mention, this was the era where, like, music videos were really big. And Michael Jackson's videos, including "Beat It," were, like, huge at the time. And, of course, you did a video of "Eat It," too.
YANKOVIC: Well, I mean, in 1983, '84, Michael Jackson was the most popular human being in the universe. And you know, the "Beat It" video was getting played a dozen times a day on MTV. And this is at a time when people were obsessed with MTV. It was a fairly new phenomenon, and people watched it continually. It was like video wallpaper. They just had it on in the house. And people were familiar with every little detail of that music video. So it was very easy to parody because people were already familiar with the source material. And all I had to do was tweak things just a little bit, just make it a little askew to make it funny. So it was just - frankly, just the obvious thing to do.
GROSS: You really capture what some music biopics are like and how they distort certain facts and the turning points that you have to have in a music biopic. In a lot of biopics, the parent doesn't want the child to go into music because it's too much of a gamble, or they think their child isn't really talented enough. Or music is too frivolous. It's not real work, and it won't support you because you're not good enough.
So in your parody of music biopics, when the young version of Al Yankovic gets interested in writing song parodies, his father thinks, like, that's ridiculous. That's terrible. He should work in the factory with the father. I want to play a scene from "Weird" in which the father's been trying to convince him to work at the factory. And this is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I just think it so captures a trope of music biopics. So let's hear it. And Young Al Yankovic's mother speaks first. How old is Young Al in this scene?
TOBY HUSS: (As Nick) What, how was my day? We had another fatality down at the factory. Oh, God, a real grisly one this time. It was that McKinley kid that started last week. Kept telling him to stop messing around by that industrial shredder, but he just wouldn't listen. I would've reached out and grabbed him, but I already lost one hand to that cursed machine. Well, anyway, there's an opening down on the factory floor. Maybe I could pull a few strings, and you can spend the summer working with your old man. How's that sound?
NICHOLSON: (As Mary) Honey, I know it's hard to hear this. But your dad and I had a long talk, and we agreed it would be best for all of us if you just stop being who you are and doing the things you love.
YANKOVIC: No, I think he was glad that I was a nerdy kid. I was a smart child, you know, valedictorian, straight A's and all that. And he was very proud of that. And he wanted me to do something where I could, you know, earn my living by thinking rather than, you know, by doing hard labor.
YANKOVIC: I think they were very supportive. I mean, in the very beginning, I think my mother was a little reluctant because she was extremely protective. And when I first started, like, knocking on doors and trying to get something going with a recording career, she was, I have to say, maybe a little apprehensive, because she told me more than once that there are evil people in Hollywood. And I should be very careful. And she's not wrong (laughter). But she was just a little leery about me doing anything involving showbusiness. But I was always very adult-minded. It's not like I ran away to LA to become a rock star or anything like that. I went to college. I got my degree in architecture. I remained a fairly good student. And I was pretty adult-minded. And I actually didn't quit my day job until I was on the Billboard charts.
GROSS: Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Al Yankovic. And his new movie, "Weird," is a parody of biopics depicting a very funny, untrue version of Al Yankovic's life. We'll be right back after a short break. This is FRESH AIR.
YANKOVIC: It happens pretty rarely. I mean, that's the thing with almost all of the biopics - musical biopics - is they want to show the moment of epiphany. Like, where did this idea come from? And usually, the truth of the matter is it's not a cinematic moment. You know, it's something very internal...
GROSS: Or gangster rap, maybe it's dangerous. Like, you were so in a different world. Even as a child, like, playing accordion, you just weren't a part of, like, the danger and sexual thrill that, like, pop and rock was supposed to be, and rhythm and blues and soul music.
YANKOVIC: Yeah. Accordion music was always considered extremely safe to the point of being corny. It was - people thought of "Lawrence Welk Show" and Myron Floren. It didn't have a very hip reputation in the '60s, which was when I started taking my accordion lessons. And - yeah, and there was humor to be gleaned from the juxtaposition of accordion music and rock 'n' roll because they just felt like such disparate genres, you know? And I toyed with the whole satanic thing a couple times because I used some backwards masking in some of my songs, just because at the time, people were all up in arms like, oh, he said something backwards on this song. That must be satanic.
GROSS: Accordion is, I think, a great instrument. And if you listen to, like, you know, zydeco or polka or things like "The Threepenny Opera" or, like, some avant-garde, jazz, tango, like, accordion is just, like, a mainstay of that. And it's really such an interesting instrument. What did you learn when you were taking accordion lessons? Like, what did you grow up on?
YANKOVIC: You know, rock 'n' roll wasn't something that was part of the daily lesson. So I got a little bit bored after age 10 and decided I would just kind of learn on my own. So I learned to play by ear a lot of rock 'n' roll songs on the accordion. And getting back to what you said, yeah, it's - the accordion is actually a beautiful instrument. It's a very sensual instrument. And a lot of indie bands have discovered that in the last couple of decades and incorporating it into their arrangements and instrumentation. And even back in the '50s with Dick Contino, I mean, he was kind of a sex symbol playing the accordion back then. So, you know, I'm just trying to bring sexy back to the accordion.
YANKOVIC: It was hard to join my friends' rock bands 'cause when I was in my early teens, you know, that was my goal was, like, oh, I just want to jam with some, you know, like-minded musicians. Let's - you know, let's play some rock 'n' roll. And for some reason, nobody wanted to have an accordion player in their band. And that's one of the few things in the biopic that's actually true because Daniel Radcliffe as me just cannot seem to fit in anywhere in mainstream with rock bands. But yeah, so I figured out that I just kind of had to go my own direction and just, you know, follow my own muse if I wanted to have any kind of career whatsoever.
YANKOVIC: I'm not entirely sure. I know that nickname was given to me in my dorms in my freshman year in college. It was a nickname that I think a couple of people were calling me because they found me to be weird. You know, I did not fit in, and they just thought I was this, like, strange guy wandering the halls of the dorm. And they said, oh, there goes Weird Al. And, you know, again, it was kind of derogatory at the time, but I decided to take it on professionally when I started doing college radio because everybody on the air needed some kind of wacky nickname. And I thought, oh, I've already got a wacky nickname. It's Weird Al. So it was "The Weird Al Show" every Saturday night, and it just stuck.
GROSS: So let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Al Yankovic, and his new movie "Weird" is a parody of biopics depicting a very funny, untrue version of Al Yankovic's life. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross. And this is FRESH AIR.
YANKOVIC: Yeah, I can understand why some people might think that that's problematic, but I think the fact that I respect the music so much goes a long way towards, you know, making people feel better about that because, you know, I'm not making fun of rap music or hip hop music. I'm really taking pains to emulate the sound and the intonations. And in fact, you know, I got a lot of nice compliments, like from Chamillionaire when I did "White And Nerdy." He was really impressed by my rapping skills. So I think the fact that I'm not, like, being, like, white guy doing rap music, ha-ha - that's not the joke. I'm just using the music to do my comedy like I have for any other music I've ever done in my life.
And I love doing rap music for a number of reasons, one of which being that there are a lot of words to play with because for a lot of pop songs it's limiting because it's either repetitive or there aren't that many syllables. And I have to be very concise in my humor and jokes because I only have, you know, a finite amount of space to be funny in. But in rap music, there are a lot of words, and it just opens it up and gives me more breathing room. So that's one of the reasons why I've always enjoyed doing the rap songs.
GROSS: Well, I want to play "White & Nerdy," and this is a parody, as you said, of Chamillionaire's "Ridin'." And the lyrics originally are about how the cops are trying to catch him riding dirty, riding with weapons or drugs. And so "White & Nerdy" is like a nerdy white guy talking about, you know, mowing his lawn and things like that. So do you want to say anything about your approach to parodying this specific song? 2ff7e9595c
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