Rabin Nathan - Weird Al: The Book

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If you had told my eleven-year-old self that he would one day write a book with his hero Weird Al Yankovic, I suspect his fragile mind would have exploded from excitement and anticipation. The thirty-five-year-old me was only slightly less exhilarated to get this assignment. So I would very much like to thank Al for having the questionable judgment and considerable kindness to hire me, and for being so generous with his time, recollections, and praise. Id also like to thank him for having led such an incredible, eventful life that it made my job easy. Id like to thank Jay Levey and, especially, Jon Bermuda Schwartz, drummer extraordinaire and the worlds foremost expert on all things Al. This project wouldnt have been possible without you and your obsessive archiving. I just hope I did justice to all that you, Al, his organization and band have accomplished over the years. I am forever indebted to my agent Daniel Greenberg and to Brant Rumble, who was kind enough to give me the go-ahead to work on this book, as well as the fine folks over at A.V. Club, particularly Keith Phipps, Josh Modell, Scott Tobias, and Tasha Robinson. David Cashion, it was a pleasure working with you and the good folks over at Abrams Image. Thanks for doing such a bang-up job on this bookits super pretty. Props go out to Michelle Welch for transcribing, and to my good friend Matt Lurie for providing excellent company and a couch to crash on during my time in L.A. I would be nothing without my bashert, Danya, who was there for me throughout the craziness of writing two books simultaneously without taking time off from The A.V. Club. You are my everything. Dad, thanks for buying me Weird Al tapes when I was a kid and for taking me to see Al for my very first concert. Lastly, Id like to thank Al fans everywhere: You are among the most passionate, committed, and loyal in existence, and I hope this book honors you and your intense relationship with the greatest parody artist the world has ever known.

Nathan Rabin

Editor: David Cashion

Art Direction: Headcase Design

Designer: Danielle Young

Production Manager: Ankur Ghosh

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rabin, Nathan, 1976

Weird Al : the book / Nathan Rabin ; introduction by Weird Al Yankovic.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4197-0435-2

eISBN 978-1-6131-2383-6

1. Yankovic, Al, 1959- 2. AccordionistsUnited StatesBiography. 3. Rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography. 4. Parody in music.

I. Title.

ML419.Y35R33 2012

792.76092dc23

[B]

2012020735

Text and compilation copyright 2012 Al Yankovic

Published in 2012 by Abrams Image, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Abrams Image books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

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* CONTENTS *

INTRODUCTION

By Al Yankovic

WELCOME TO WEIRD AL: THE BOOK. CATCHY TITLE, RIGHT? BOLD, SIMPLE... PRETTY MUCH SAYS EVERYTHING IT NEEDS TO SAY. ORIGINALLY I WANTED TO CALL IT A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, BUT I WAS INFORMED THAT TITLE HAD ALREADY BEEN TAKEN. OH WELL.

Heres the thingI always thought it would be cool to have my own large-format coffee-table-style book, but I never had any interest at all in writing an autobiography. Ive done the Behind the Musics, the Biography shows... Ive done a brain-melting number of TV appearances, radio interviews, and podcasts over the years... Frankly, I just dont have anything else to say about myself! Most of my semi-amusing anecdotes have become nauseatingly familiar to my hard-core fans. Im not holding back any deep, dark secrets. Plus, 97 percent of celebrity autobiographies seem to devolve into pathetic navel-gazingI didnt like my odds.

So, I asked Abrams Books to hire Nathan Rabin to do the heavy lifting. Id always been a huge fan of The Onion, and always admired Nathans work (he wasand isthe head writer of their A.V. Club). I also enjoyed reading his memoir The Big Rewind... In fact, what probably sealed the deal for me was the fact that Nathan had thanked me in the back of his book, in return for (as he explained to me later) keeping him somewhat sane during a troubled adolescence. I took this as a sign. As a wise man once said (or probably should have), If youre going to hire somebody to write a book about you, its always a good idea to choose somebody who doesnt think you suck.

Nathan did a phenomenal joband he certainly saved me the grueling task of having to personally write hundreds of pages about my own sheer awesomeness. If I did that, how would you know how incredibly humble I really am?

I also have to give an enormous amount of credit to my faithful drummer of more than thirty years, Jon Bermuda Schwartz, who was an integral part of putting this book together. Bermuda, because of his loveably obsessive ways, is the de facto archivist of all things Weird Al. Hes our biggest fan. Im kind of hoping that I die before he does, because hes threatened that if he goes first, Im going to wind up with all of his crap. Anyway, Jon went through tens of thousands of photos during this process, and he managed to dig up some real treasures.

Of course, I want to thank the fans who contributed their own photos to this book, made amazing pieces of art, permanently scarred their flesh with my image, or were just generally supportive of me doing what I do. I really and truly appreciate it.

And most of all, I want to thank... me. I think its pretty obvious that without me, this book would be severely lacking in subject matter. Also, I wound up doing a fair amount of special material for the book, including all the captions for the photographs, ten ridiculous lists of random things, thirty-eight of my favorite tweets, the lyrics from my most popular songs, and the introduction thatI have to assumeyou are reading right now.

We all had a lot of fun making this book. Hope you enjoy it!