The soundtrack to your childhood… and probably everyone else’s, too… it’s “Weird Al” Yankovic. Al joins Dan for a chat about his legendary 40 year career (he’s one of the best-charting musicians of all time), from how he became “Weird” to his 5 Grammy Award wins to embarking on his latest tour around the country. Al, a consummate performer, also opens up about performing immediately after the loss of his parents, what it was like growing up incredibly sheltered, and how he maintains his sterling reputation and sparkling attitude through it all. Weird Al’s “Bigger & Weirder” Tour is on sale now - visiting 65 cities across North America from June through September. For tour dates and tickets, visit weirdal.com/tour Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
Kings Network. I'm sure this man hears this a lot. Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm Dan Levitard, and this is Weird Al Yankovic, somebody I feel like has been in my life since childhood. You get a lot of that, I imagine, right? From you, yes, all the time, yeah.
Don't shut up about it.
The biggest selling comedy recording artist in history. That still has to be crazy for you to hear.
I'm impressed by that.
No. You're more famous for it than anybody else.
That's nice of you to say, but obviously I didn't invent the concept of song parody. That's been around since, I mean, our national anthem is basically a song parody. It's, you know, it's an old English drinking song with different words. So the concept of song parody has a rich history. But I guess I helped bring that back in a way when I started out in the early 80s and popularized it.
But no, I grew up on Alan Sherman and all these people that, you know, that song parody was their bread and butter.
Well, the thing, though, that sort of grabbed you by the claws was radio, right? Sure. Was the idea of radio, and it was... What can you tell us about the original Dr. Demento show and where and how it grabbed you?
Dr. Demento, he's still doing a show, by the way. It's just not on terrestrial radio anymore. He's online behind a paywall, but he's still doing the show every single week. But when I was... 11, 12 years old, one of my friends in school turned me on to the Dr. Demento show. Hey, there's this guy on KMET Los Angeles every Sunday night that plays all these crazy records.
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