Of all the milestones that signify one has "made it" in the musicbusiness -- the first gold record, hosting "Saturday Night Live,"the cover of "Rolling Stone" -- there's one that stands head andshoulders above the rest.
You know you've hit the big time, you know your song has lodgeditself permanently in the public consciousness, when "Weird Al"Yankovic decides to make a parody of it.
His parodies are never mean-spirited, and rarely poke fun at theoriginal song or artist. Usually, they're about something elseentirely -- Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" became "Another OneRides the Bus," and so on. They're just ... weird.
"I always get permission from the original artists when I do myparodies, so there certainly aren't any hard feelings," Yankovicsays. "On the occasions when I've bumped into an artist that I'veparodied, they only have nice things to say. My favorite quote isstill from Kurt Cobain, who said that he didn't realize that Nirvanahad made it until he heard the Weird Al parody."
He might not be the most original musician on the planet, but fewwork harder. On the road almost constantly, Yankovic's concerts aremore wild multimedia circuses, featuring multiple costume changes,video screens, accordion medleys and unreleased, concert-onlyparodies. His special comic stylings hit the Palace Theatre stage inGreensburg on Saturday night.
It all began in the now-legendary, sleepy California town ofLynwood, where a goofy, poofy-haired Serbian-American kid took upthe accordion -- not your usual route to rock stardom.
"I had three years of accordion lessons as a child, and in myearly teens I started sending unsolicited tapes of my songs to Dr.Demento, who played some of my songs on his nationally syndicatedradio show. He called me 'Alfred Yankovic' back then -- I didn'tofficially become 'Weird Al' until I started doing a shift on mycollege campus radio station. I played weird music, so the nameseemed appropriate."
The process for creating a legendary parody of a hit song -- likethe recent "Canadian Idiot" parody of Green Day's "American Idiot" -- isn't as easy as it seems.
"First, I make a list of songs that I think would be goodcandidates for parody," Yankovic says. "Then, I come up with as manyideas or variations on a theme as I possibly can for each one. Mostof the ideas will be incredibly bad, but if I can come up with onegood one, then I'll develop it. I'll begin compiling notes and gagsbased on whatever concept I've committed to. Then I'll come up witha bunch of rhyming couplets and see if I can drop my jokes, 'Tetris'-like, into the pattern of the original song. Sometimes, I'll fine-tune a song lyric for weeks before we go in to record it."
And yes, the polka element still is featured in Yankovic'srepertoire, though maybe not as much as it once was.
"We do one polka in the set -- in fact, we start off the showwith it," Yankovic says. "It's the medley from the latest album,which features polka-fied versions of a dozen or so contemporaryhits -- everything from 50 Cent to Coldplay. It's amazing how manyof those songs sound a little bit better with an accordion solo."
It seems like every few years, there's a song that's just beggingfor the "Weird Al" treatment. Most recently, it was rapperChamillionaire's hit "Ridin'," which became "White & Nerdy." Butothers are a bit of a struggle.
"The hardest parody to write was 'The Saga Begins' (a parody ofDon McLean's 'American Pie,' which tells the story of 'Star Wars:The Phantom Menace') because I had to write that song without havinghad the benefit of actually seeing the movie," Yankovic says. "SinceI needed to have the album in the can before the movie premiered, Iwrote the lyrics based on leaked Internet rumors, which, thankfully,proved to be accurate.
"The easiest parody for me to write might have been 'White &Nerdy' -- just because I had so much personal experience to drawfrom."
Chamillionaire reportedly was impressed with Yankovic's rappingskills.
"He was a terrific sport, and had a great sense of humor aboutit," Yankovic says. "In fact, he told me that he thought my parodywas a big reason why he wound up winning a Grammy for best rap song.He figured he'd already gotten a platinum album, but he needed thatWeird Al parody to make him a bona fide superstar."
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