Wade: Anyway, we're backstage with Al - "Weird Al" Yankovic - he's going to
play the concert here at the Murat Theatre in Indianapolis, and you might
want to mention where you're going next on tour. What's you next tour dates?
Al: Well, next I'm goin' home. This is the last stop on the tour.
Wade: This is an extra extension to the tour, isn't it? You weren't planning
on coming here?
Al: Uh, heh heh. I wouldn't say that. But, we were on the road all summer
long - we did the three month tour over the summer - and this is kind of like
the addenda to the tour. This is just a one week little quick hop. We did
four dates, and this is the fourth one, and now we're going home.
Wade: Well, I guess it's back to rest, or new material coming out soon?
Al: After Thanksgiving we're going back in the studio and start recording
the next album.
Wade: Great! Any highlights, any preview of what that might be in detail? Any
songs you're looking at?
Al: Well, I shouldn't really say right now. We're not doing the parodies yet.
We're gonna go in and record all the originals first, and probably record the
parodies sometime after the beginning of the year.
Wade: One thing I wanted to talk about is your college radio experience. We're
a college radio station, Indiana University. I was wondering...some
experiences you might have had with college radio. Any stories you might tell
that we don't know about?
Jeff: Of course, there's the bathroom sessions!
Al: Um, yeah, the bathroom sessions where I recorded "My Bologna", across the
hall from my campus radio station. That was my first record ever.
Jeff: What happened to your contract with Capitol?
Al: Well, I think they pretty much looked at me as like a one-joke wonder.
They bought the rights to "My Bologna" for 500 bucks, and I basically had to
pay them $1000 for the right to re-record it on my first album. So they really
kind of put the screws in. But anyway, hey what else? Yeah, college radio's
where I first got the name "Weird Al". The name "Weird Al" seemed appropriate
because it was kind of like a Dr. Demento-inspired show, and it just kind of
stuck.
Wade: You named yourself or did someone name you?
Al: You know, I'm not really sure. I think probably somebody was calling me
"Weird Al" before I took it on professionally, but I couldn't swear to that.
One thing that happened in college radio was, like the fourth time I was on the
air, which almost made me give up radio forever: I was doing the midnight to
three in the morning shift and it was raining really heavily that night, and
somebody called up and said they were from the housing office and said that
school was cancelled the next day because of the torrential rains. And,
because I was so gullible, I announced it on the radio, and attendance was
down, oh, 70% the next day. And of course it was a prank phone call, and it
was all my fault, and the campus police came and tried to arrest me, and it
was...at the time it wasn't so funny; I'm just starting to laugh about it now.
Wade: What were the call letters - what station were you at?
Al: It was KCPR, San Luis Obispo.
Wade: Are they still around now?
Al: Yeah they are. They're much more like a college radio station now than
they were back when I was there. Then they were trying to be like a real radio
station and play the hits, you know, follow format, and all the things that are
anathema to real hard core college radio stations.
Wade: You ever visited back there, your alma mater, and make an appearance?
Al: Yeah, well, a couple times. I've dropped by to see how they were doing,
and it was fun, it was like a little homecoming.
Wade: That's great. What about, let's see...One question I'm gonna ask, now,
Rick Derringer, what happened to him? He didn't have anything to do with your
last album, I was wondering did you beat him up or something?
Al: No, no, no, we didn't have a falling out or anything, no creative
differences. It just got to the point where, you know, Rick produced my first
six albums, and did a wonderful job, and I just got to the point where I felt
like I could capably produce on my own, and now Rick's doing his own thing and
I'm doing my own thing. I'd love to work with him at some point in the future,
but for the time being, I think we're doing okay.
Wade: And another thing, I've heard that you wanted to do a parody of "Black or
White" by Michael Jackson, but he wouldn't let you do it this time, is that
true? What I heard was you were waiting for the Michael Jackson album to come
out just so you could pick one of the songs and then...is that what happened?
Al: Yeah, well, yes and no, I mean, I was, at one point, waiting for the
Michael Jackson album to come out, and it just kept getting postponed and
postponed, and by the time it came out, you know, I wasn't sure if that was the
right thing to do or not. Michael was having second thoughts about it, and I
was having second thoughts about it. Part of me didn't want to do Michael for
a third time and go back to the "Well, once again..." And shortly thereafter,
Nirvana came out, and that seemed just a lot more hip and different and a whole
different direction. It just seemed fresher, so I decided to go that way.
Jeff: Did you actually write the parody of "Black or White", and then he turned
it down, or...?
Al: Um, yeah, yeah I did.
Wade: Can you tell us what it was going to be?
Al: Oh, I could, but I'd rather not.
Jeff: Oh, okay. And I heard that Prince turned you down, too. Have you
written several songs, or was that just one time and you just...?
Al: Well we keep calling him back every couple years to ask if he has a sense
of humor yet, and he hasn't so far.
Jeff: So have you written several Prince songs?
Al: Well, I wrote one a long time ago, and since then I've come up with ideas.
I learned long ago that you...
Jeff: ...check first.
Al: Yeah, you check first. You don't go through all the trouble of writing a
song if they don't have a sense of humor in the first place.
Jeff: Well, "Buckingham Blues", is that supposed to be a parody of "Jack and
Diane"?
Al: You know, you're really digging deep on this, uh...
Wade: Feel free not to...
Al: No no no, that's refreshing because...
Wade: We're trying to give you questions you haven't been asked before.
Al: Very good, I'm impressed. That actually used to be a parody of "Jack and
Diane", and I changed it substantially to make it into an original. But, yeah,
the original incarnation of that was a parody of "Jack and Diane". And at the
time, John Cougar Mellencamp told me that they were making a movie out of "Jack
and Diane", and he thought there'd be some kind of legal complications if he
let me do a parody of it, and I said, well, okay. And of course the "Jack and
Diane" movie went on to be a big box office hit, and, you know... But yeah, it
wound up being an original, and it was one of my favorite originals back at the
time. I don't do it anymore in concert because obviously it's a bit dated at
this point.
Wade: One question I had: You have like a small cult following now because of
the type of music you do and things like that. You're either a really big
"Weird Al" Yankovic fan, you have every album, you listen to them over and over
again, and when it comes to a concert, how do you decide what songs you think
your public wants to hear, and how do you deal with the amazing gender gap, I
mean, not gender gap, age gap, because you have guys like me who listened to
you when I was ten, and are now still listening to you, and then you've
got...so you got twenty year olds in the audience, eight year olds in the
audience, how do you, how do you pick songs that you want to play and how do
you, do you rely on old stuff quite a bit, or what's your target audience?
Al: Could you repeat the question? No, no I got it.
Wade: What's your theory of doing a show?
Al: Well, you know, a lot of people ask me how I decide what to play in
concert, and basically what I do is I look at the set list. It is kind of
difficult because at this point I've got seven or eight albums of material out
there, and there's a lot of songs that I just can't play because we don't have
enough time. I mean, I'd love to do an all-day all-night concert like the
Grateful Dead or something, but I'd get a little tired. Basically I try to do
all the hits, or as many of them as I can, and sprinkle in a few of my own
personal favorites, and a few obscure things, and we also do a few things in
concert that aren't on any records. Just little snippets, you know, just for
the hard core fans who have something new to listen to.
Wade: Do you do the same show every night, or try to change it around?
Al: It's pretty similar. It'll change very slightly, in subtle ways, but it's
basically the same show, except, you know, we change it every tour, obviosuly,
but if you saw us last night, tonight's show is not going to be that much
different. And as far as appealing to a bunch of different age groups, that's
not something I consciously try to do. I basically do what I think is funny,
and it appeals to whoever it appeals to. I don't know how to answer that other
than that, I mean it's...
Wade: Well, it seems that you must have a diverse crowd in your concerts,
because, like I say, you got me, you got eight-year olds, then you got your
parents with them, you know. So you really gotta, it seems, try to cater to
almost all of that, and I just wondered how you do it.
Al: Yeah, it's everybody from embryos to dead people, pretty much. I mean, I
don't consciously try to cater to anybody, I mean, I just do what I think
works.
Jeff: (pointing to man bringing in food) That's his job, catering.
Al: Yeah, that's right.
Jeff: Are you gonna do anything from the Peter and the Wolf album?
Al: No. Ha ha. That, that was a fun side project, but, no, we don't do that
in concert. I don't know that I'll be doing anything like that again. It was
fun for, you know, for what it was.
Wade: Any new movies you're kicking around, or...?
Al: Um, no. I would like to do more movies, it's just more of a
crapshot when you're doing movies, because I could spend half a year and write
another script, but there's no guarantee it would ever get made, and I'm just
not really motivated to do it at this point. I mean, if a movie fell into my
lap, and they said, "Hey! We want you to be in this movie," and it was funny
and it made sense and all that, I'd love to do it. I mean, I feel like doing
the records and the videos and the tours is more of a sure thing, and it's more
like instant gratification, and I know that if I record an album,
it's going to come out, so that's what I'm putting all my energy into right
now.
Jeff: Well, speaking of that, are there any tracks that you have, like,
beforehand that have never been released, in the studio or anything?
Al: Ah, not at this point, no. I'm not one of those artists like Bruce
Springsteen or Guns n' Roses who will record like forty cuts and then put ten
on the album, and they have these thirty unreleased songs that they're like
juggling around. So, no, not really. I'll basically put everything on album
that I've got in the vaults.
Jeff: Well, I heard that some of the stuff on UHF had previously not been
released, like "Fun Zone", and something else, but I don't remember what.
Al: Well, those weren't things that had previously been unreleased, that was a
matter of, we wanted to put out a soundtrack to the movie, but there
weren't enough songs in the movie for a whole album. So, basically half the
album was just new material that I came up with.
Jeff: There wasn't any, like, older stuff on there?
Al: Well, the "Fun Zone" thing, it was an older song, but it had never been
recorded before. I was in a special that my manager produced back in, I think,
'84, called "Welcome to the Fun Zone".
Jeff: I've just heard of it.
Al: Yeah. And he asked me to write a theme song for the show. And I did, and
then he decided, "Naah, I don't like it. I'm gonna use this other one
instead." So I said, "Okay...All right..."
Jeff: Were there ever any words to it, or was it...
Al: No. Just a instrumental. So I figured, well, you know, I wrote it, and
I'm gonna put it on a record. So, it came out five years later.
Wade: Well, we better let you go. Thanks a lot, and, uh, by the way, could you
loan me five dollars?
Al: Ah, no. Thanks a lot.
Jeff: Okay.