The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Weird Al Yankovic

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

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

You're listening to DraftKings Network. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard? When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill? When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer, so download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees exclusions and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. deliver. I'm sure this man hears this a lot. Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm Dan Lebatard and this is weird Al Yankovic, somebody I have feel, 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. You're also. Don't shut up about it. The biggest selling comedy recording artist in history. That still has to be crazy for you to hear. That's impressive. I'm impressed by that. Thank you for being with us. We do a lot of parody songs on our, what used to be a radio

show that is now a podcast, and all of those are homage to you because it feels like you're the inventor of these things. Do you feel like you're the inventor of these things? No. You're more famous for it than anybody else. That's nice of you to say, but obviously they 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 pretty much the 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 his 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. And I listened and I was immediately spitting. I thought, oh, you know, these are my people. This is my music. Like, you know, these are my people. This is my music. Like, you know, who is this guy? And I would listen religiously every single

Sunday night. And some of the songs we played were a little risque, had some double entendres, and my parents were very protective, and my mother particularly did not like me listening to that kind of music. And once she heard one of those songs on the radio, she forbade me from listening to the Dr. D'Amanto show. And it turned out I had to continue listening in bed with a little alarm clock radio next to my ear with the covers pulled up over my head.

So that was my Sunday night. Well, you were otherwise a good kid, right? Oh yeah, sure. But this, what was she walking in on that was so scandalous that it had to be banned? I think the one that really got her offended, there was a song called Baby Let Me Bang Your Box, but it was about playing the piano.

Right? Yeah. And she thought, that was horrible, and like, her young innocent child should never listen to this kind of music. How would you explain your childhood to a stranger? My childhood, it was a lovely childhood. My parents were very supportive and loving. I was sort of, my dad used to call me their miracle child because they were trying to

have a child for a very long time. And I just kind of got in under the wire. So I'm an only child and probably because of that they were very protective. I told a story that got used on behind the music and has been repeated a few times about how my high school was directly across the street from our house. And during PE class, my mother used to watch me through binoculars out the window to make sure the other kids weren't playing too rough with me. That kind of thing. And I was not allowed to really go to friends' houses to hang out if they wanted to see me they had to come to me or come to my house because I don't know my mother had some sort of like fantasy that I'd be kidnapped or something

horrible would happen to me if I was ever out of her sight. So and again very loving but I wish the leash had been just a little longer. Well I was going to say when you say very protective, too protective probably right and sheltered? Yeah, I would say in a way. I mean, again, the thing, like my mother, we'd subscribe to TV Guide magazine back in the time. And I remember whenever the magazine would come in

and my mother would go through it with a felt marker. And if there were any like ads for women in bikinis, she would like cross out the naughty bits and just sort of like censor them. So my innocent eyes wouldn't see more flesh than I was supposed to see, I guess, I don't know, but it just felt a little repressive, yeah. And what sort of things did you realize in adulthood?

Oh wait, that's a part of making me how I am here because that the only child of this or the watching with binoculars or all that stuff was a little too much. And now I wasn't paying quite attention and here it is in adulthood. Yeah. I, you know, I don't know. I've never gone through therapy or psychoanalysis and I don't know how much of my career or

my current personality I can attribute to that. And I didn't rebel in any kind of major way. I didn't lash out. I think at the most I got a little sullen during my teenage years because I was basically confined in my bedroom and I was there with my mad magazines and listening to music on my eight track player. But yeah, I'm sure it warped me in some ways and I'm sure it contributed to whatever kind of weirdness

is happening in my brain to this day. Well, I would think though that perhaps music or performance or these things were, I would think, let your imagination go, there's freedom in it. If it's not rebellion against restrictions, you were looking for some sort of escape, that would be plausible.

Yeah, I mean, it became very much an inner world kind of thing where I relied on my imagination a lot, and that probably was helpful in terms of songwriting and creativity. And yeah, I would think that a lot of my work, you know, back then and probably to this day as a result of, you know, just kind of being confined to my head. Well, you were also two years behind all the other kids,

right, so you had to be something of an outsider, I would imagine, or didn't. Kids of that age are always just trying to fit in, I suppose, and that could have been difficult. Yeah, I don't know how much I want to blame the age difference on it, because no matter what my age was, I think as a verifiable nerd, I would not have really fit in with my classmates.

But the fact that I was two years younger certainly didn't help. I started high school when I was 12 years old, graduated when I was 16. I was too young to drive. I couldn't, my folks wouldn't let me hang out with other kids for the most part. And yeah, socially it was not a pleasant experience.

12 years old high school, that's tough. Yeah. That's rough. Yeah. Like that'll leave some marks, I would imagine. Oh yeah. And at this point, are you already into the accordion? Because 12 years old and the accordion,

that's not gonna help either. You know, it just keeps piling on, doesn't it? Yeah, the accordion started much earlier than that. I think my first music lesson, my first accordion lesson was the day before my seventh birthday so I started very young. I took three years of accordion lessons and after that I stopped I guess and just kind of picked this plate on my own just you know because I could play by ear pretty well I could read music for the most part but I thought it was fun to just listen to the radio

and just try to emulate what I was hearing. And my dad liked to sing around the house. He would sing these old World War II Army songs and I would play along with him. We'd tear it up that way. But I obviously never fit in. Like when I got to be 12, 13 years old, I would try to get together with friends and say,

hey, you want me to play in your rock band? And they would say, no. So I learned pretty early on that if I wanted to stay with that instrument, I would kind of have to go my own way. You mentioned that Dr. Demento is still doing it. You are still doing it. You have had, made your first album in how long? Well my last album was 2014, Mandatory Fun. Okay, so that's, and now you're touring, bigger and weirder, it's a giant tour, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's how many cities? I think it's like, I'm not sure about how many, I think it's 75, either 75 cities or 75 dates, but it's a pretty, you know, mid-June to the end of September, and it's a jam-packed tour, and there's no breaks. And what is the process of, well I haven't done anything in 10 years and I want to do this again, I want to start, of September, and it's a jam-packed tour, there's no breaks. And what is the process of,

well I haven't done anything in 10 years, and I want to do this again, I want to start, I want to do it over. Yeah, well every tour that we do, we try to make a little different or have some kind of hook to it, and it's not like I haven't been recording any music since my last album.

I decided I wasn't gonna be putting out traditional albums anymore, but I've written songs for movies, I've had my own movie, which I contributed to. I did a Polka Mania, which was a Polka Medley, which you put out last summer. So there's a lot of different things that I've done in the meantime. So we want to incorporate, we're going to play some songs that we've never played before, and we're also going to be playing all the greatest hits. So it's sort of the best of both worlds, because for the casual fan we're playing,

Edith in Amish Paradise and Yoda and White and Nerdy and everything that a casual fan would like to hear. And for all the hardcore fans that want to hear the deep cuts, we've got that too. And we've got some stuff that we were never able to play live before, but because of this tour, we're doubling the size of the band, which is one of the reasons it's bigger and weirder it's it's a

bigger show a bigger production and It's probably you know, I'd like to think it's the best tour we've done yet when you mentioned Polka Mania Polka Mania it was the first comedy album ever to hit number one mandatory fun on On the billboard 200 right by Polka menu was it there was a single I released after your manager and fun with forgive me forgive me when you see things like that happen like what are the items that you look at and you're like you got to be kidding me like you're you're you're pinching yourself yeah because you're just amazed that was that was something if I had to pick

maybe one moment in my life where my mind was the most blown it would probably be that because I grew up with Billboard magazine. I did college radio and we had the charts pinned on the walls and it was sort of like, you know, our radio bibles, like we looked at that and I dreamed that one day maybe, maybe I would make it onto the Billboard chart.

But I never dreamed I'd be number one because that was historically nearly impossible. Before me, the last person that had a number one comedy album was Alan Sherman, which would have been over 50 years prior. And nobody in history had ever debuted at number one on the album chart with a comedy album. So the fact that I did just threw me for a loop. It was very emotional for me. It was just one of those things that I didn't even dream or try to manifest because I just thought

it was out of the realm of possibility. When you mentioned Mad Magazine in terms of the items that would classify as this kind of thing, being the guest editor, you were the first? Yeah, first and so far only, it looks like. So how does that come to be and what does that mean to you when you link it to what an escape this was in your childhood? Well, that's definitely another pinch me moment

because I was weaned on Mad Magazine. That, you know, that along with Dr. D'Amato, those two things are responsible for the lion's share of my sense of humor, I think. I mean, I collected old Mad Magazines, and you know, this is pre-internet, so there wasn't really a way to see, or to read back issues,

other than to literally go around town to like used book and magazine stores and try to go through the stacks and find old copies of Mad Magazine. And thankfully, I had very loving and supportive parents who made that happen. My mom would drive me all around Greater Los Angeles and we'd try to find these old magazines. And yeah, and that was just a window into a world that I didn't know existed at the time because I got to see parodies of movies that I was too young to see and TV shows that I couldn't stay up late enough to watch.

And the whole sensibility of MAD, that the anti-authority, like be skeptical of everything you read, like the advertisers are lying to you. This was a lot of information that was important for a young humorist slash satirist to be aware of. So that was definitely a huge part of my early education. Were your parents funny?

I mean, not in a real traditional sense. I think my dad maybe was funnier than my mom. My mom was very quiet and withdrawn, and my dad was certainly more gregarious and loud and more likely to talk to strangers on the street. I suppose he was funny in his own way, but I wouldn't say that he was like a class clown, life of the party kind of guy. But where does yours come from? Were you trying to entertain anybody? I was pretty quiet and withdrawn myself. I didn't have like a

big personality but the fact that I could create these you know silly songs and put myself out there in performance, I mean that was that got I got to extend a part of my personality that didn't come through in everyday life so I found that kind of appealing to be able to present a different version of me that way. That's pretty cool. It's sort of a character. It's not, but it's... you're not innately a performer. This is something that you want. You're clever on display and then you must perform it. Yeah. I mean I'm not one of those people that loves being the center of attention.

I actually don't, which seems kind of odd for a person who makes a career out of performing on stage. But I'm not one of these people. I mean, I knew people in high school that were dying to be famous and that was very important to them. And it's not important to me. I mean, I like it. It's nice.

But I just enjoy doing what I do. And the fact that other people enjoy that too. That's great, but I was never like somebody that had to make it or had to, you know, had to be the guy. For how long was Weird Al an insult? The phrase when you were getting hit with Weird Al. Well, they probably said it to me in high school as well, but I mean, I remember distinctly in college, my freshman year, I became known around my dorm as Weird Al, just because I suppose they thought I was weird.

When you're way ahead of the other kids, you're very young. Yeah, so, you know, and they probably had reason to think that too. I mean, I probably was very odd and stood out from everybody else. But I thought, you know, I'm just gonna take that on as my college radio name.

Because my sophomore year, I got into college radio and everybody had some kind of stupid nickname. And I thought, oh, they're already calling me Weird Al. I'm gonna take it on as an empowering name. Like, all right, I'm Weird Al. I'm gonna own my madness. How cool is that though? So was there a second option

on what your DJ name was going to be or you just took an insult and turned it into, you know, giant comedy success? Yeah. You showed them by the way, anybody calling you Weird Al, you really took power over your own family. Oh, they're sorry now.

It's pretty cool though, like to take the power from them. Oh sure, sure, yeah. And what's really nice is that now, I hear from all these kids over the last couple generations, kids that were ostracized in school, that were considered freaks or weirdos or whatever, that didn't fit in, and they looked at me as somebody that owned my weirdness and was okay with it and

they find that very empowering. So it means a lot to me to hear from them and to get letters to that effect. What are the greatest compliments you get that make it all seem slightly less silly? I work in sports for a living. There are times I can question the worth of what it is that I'm doing because it can be silly but then you meet people that you've actually moved or been medicine for and then you can feel a little better about maybe it's an elaborate Rationalization, but you could feel a little bit better about whatever it is that you're doing that brings you such happiness I think about something that I read about Tex Avery the famous

Warner Brothers cartoonist from the the 40s who did, you know, the Droopy Dog, and a lot of Tom and Jerry, and a lot of amazing, amazing animation. And apparently in his deathbed, he was just grumbling that he'd wasted his entire life doing stupid cartoons. And I just thought that was so insane. I mean, I don't know if he ever like read fan mail

or anything like that, but I mean, humor brings so much to people's lives. I mean, even if what you're doing is kind of ridiculous and it affects people. And I've read so many letters from people, I've read probably a couple dozen letters from people saying they were on the brink of suicide and they started listening to my albums

and it kind of snapped them out of it and it got them feeling better. And that's no small thing to make people feel better. So, you know, even even sometimes when I think that what I do in life is not got much important, I just think that it really does seem to affect people. Well, you guys have listened to oral history and you know that the origins of the show were once just a dream for Dan and for Stu Gatsen. That dream turned into the show and now the business of MetalArk Media The origins of this show were once just a dream for Dan and for Stu Gottson.

That dream turned into the show and now the business of MetalArk Media and the show that you're listening to today. But starting your own business is a dream that lots of us share. Too many of us let it remain just a dream. So don't hold yourself back thinking, what if I don't have the skills? What if I can't do it alone? Turn those what-ifs into why-nots with Shopify by your side. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, including 10% of all US e-commerce. Whether

you're Mattel or you're just getting started, Shopify's got your back. Not a web designer? No problem at all. Shopify has beautiful ready-to-go templates. Need help with the details? Their AI tools can enhance product images, write descriptions, and even generate discount codes. Worried about finding customers? Shopify makes marketing easy with email and social media tools. And if I ever get stuck, Shopify's award-winning 24-7 support is always there. Turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash B'Tard.

Go to Shopify.com slash B'Tard. Shopify.com slash butard. Go to shopify.com slash butard shopify.com slash butard. The NBA playoffs are in full swing and the intensity just keeps rising. Every game is packed with clutch moments, wild comebacks, and playoff legends in the making. If you're looking to take the action to the next level, DraftKings Sportsbook has you covered as an official sports betting partner of the NBA. Make it a playoff run to remember with DraftKings. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now and use code BEACH. That's code B-E-A-C-H for new customers to get $200 in bonus bets when you bet just five bucks. Only on DraftKings. The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. In New York, call 877-8HOPENY or text HOPENY467369. When did you

realize it could actually be a career? When did it stop being something that was just fun or that you were interested in being and you were like no wait a minute I can I can do this and have it be my livelihood? I think it was about two weeks ago when, no. I guess when I signed my record deal, because I graduated from college with a degree in architecture, which I've never really used. And I thought, well, you know, I'm very young. I've got some options before me.

You know, let's, and at that time I had some minor hits on the Dr. D'Amento show because I'd sent him tapes of my balona and another one rides the bus and they'd gone viral and had been big hits on his show. And I thought, well, you know, let's see if I can get a record deal. So for a couple of years while I was working at a day job for minimum wage, I would go around knocking on doors and sending in tapes and trying to solicit a deal. And finally, a couple years, I think 1982 is when I signed my record contract with Scotty Brothers Records.

And it wasn't a great deal because record companies aren't gonna offer some kid with an accordion a lot of money. It was basically this draconian contract where they had me for 10 albums. And now they, I'm sure they didn't in their wildest imagination think they're gonna do 10 albums with me.

That's one of those things you put into a contract on the extremely off chance that this kid makes it, we've got you for this amount of time. So, you know, at that point, I'll tell you the exact moment when it occurred to me, because slightly after I signed my record deal and I put out my first single, I mean, they didn't give me any money upfront. It was just sort of like, you know, here's your contract.

So I was still working for minimum wage, you know, at a mailroom for a radio syndication company. And I remember I went to the mail post office box one day and picked up the mail and the billboard magazine was sticking out of the mail bag. And I opened it up and I'm there on the Hot 100 chart. And I thought, oh, I should probably give notice. I should probably get serious about this weirdo thing.

Can you take me through the details of going door to door? Like what did the failures look like? What did the disappointments look like? There couldn't have been too many of them, right? Because you arrived pretty early. Yeah, I mean, I don't think a lot of it was literally going door to door. I might have done that when I was much younger and naive,

but it was a lot of sending cassette tapes in the mail to various record companies and getting blank letters of rejection. And then my manager, Jay Levy, he was Dr. Demento's manager back in the early 80s, and he saw me perform with Dr. Demento on stage and thought, this kid might have some potential. So he decided to work with me,

and he kind of got my name around town, and we got, again again turned down by virtually everybody uh but Scotty Brothers at the time uh wanted to give it a shot because uh I think the the president of the record company used to play the accordion when he was a kid and he so he has he had a soft spot for accordion players so he said I'll give the Yankee Kid a shot. Did they keep you locked in for the 10 albums? Well, it wound up being 14 albums actually, because at some point in the middle of the contract, I was becoming so popular that we were able

to renegotiate the contract for better terms. But part of the renegotiation was, well, okay, we'll give you better terms, but you've got to give us two more albums. And then we renegotiated again a little later for even better terms, give us two more albums. And then we renegotiated again a little later for even better terms, but then two more albums. So it wound up being a 14 album deal, which took me just 32 years to fulfill.

But we fulfilled it. So Mandatory Fun, which came out 10 years ago, was, I guess, 11 years ago. That was my last album, and ostensibly will be my last album. But yeah, it's just, and they wanted to resign me obviously. At that point, Scotty Brothers had sold my contract to another company and they wanted to resign me, but I just liked the idea of not being beholden to anybody, not owing anybody

anything. When I was under contract, I always felt like three more albums to go. I just, my house is paid off, I don't pay, everything that I have I own. I just don't like the idea of somebody waiting for me to do something. Yeah, that's a responsibility. It's sort of the opposite of freedom.

But what have the 10 years between albums been like as someone who's always been a creator, right? Like what, how much uncertainty has there been in there? How much searching or is it just, is it peaceful because you've arrived at the things that you wanted? It's pretty peaceful. I mean, I'm at a point in my life where I don't have as much of a fire in my belly as I had in my 20s. I don't, you know, I'm okay not working and just waiting till I get inspired to do something. I certainly haven't, you know, people,

I haven't retired, I still am making music. I'm being more involved in TV shows and movies. I got to put out my, we're the Yalyank of Xturi a couple years ago. So, you know, I've still been very busy. It's just that, you know, it's kind of on my own terms. I don't feel like I need to continue creating like I did in the 80s. Like in the 80s, I was like, I can't believe I got a record deal. And I felt like I had to put out an album every single year because otherwise it would all go away.

Like you got to grab that brass ring every time it comes around. And it took me a while before I realized that, you know, I've had some hit albums, some albums that didn't do so well, but I was doing well enough that people still wanted to hear from me and I had an actual career. And once I realized that I could calm down a little bit, I was just kind of putting out things whenever I felt like it and my fan base you know basically stayed with me so that's a nice place to be. But when did you realize that you can calm down a little bit because that's not something I usually find with successful people they tend to feel like they're being chased.

Yeah it's a small it was a you know, I think. It maybe started sometime in the mid-90s, which you probably can see because the span between albums got longer and longer. And in a big way, since my last album, I kind of feel like I'll continue to be creative, but I'm just not going to have to like come up with 12 songs and put them all out at once. I can just do songs whenever they occur to me. Architecture? Yeah that came about when I was 12 years old. I had a

meeting with my my high school guidance counselor and I told him, he said, what do you wanna do for a living? And I said, well, you know, I'd really like to be a contributor to MAD Magazine. I'd like to write and illustrate for MAD Magazine. And he kind of looked at me and said, yeah, no, that's not really a job for a grownup. You wanna have a real job, you know?

Because I think, I don't know what it's like now, but certainly back in the 70s, job for a grown up. You wanna have a real job. Cause I think, I don't know what it's like now, but certainly back in the 70s, I don't think anybody would encourage you to do, go into show business or go into the arts. And- Certainly not parody songs. Yeah, but I mean, you know, it just seemed like an unreasonable thing

for a kid to wanna be when he grew up. And he said, well, look, you like design, you're good in math, you love this drafting class you just had, you should be an architect. And I kind of said, well, if you think so, okay. So it seemed like it was like the adult choice. It was something that it made sense for me to do, to you know grow up and be an architect. As somebody who wanted to be a creative person, I remember on the University of Miami campus, I'd always be walking past these very bright, etching places where people were working

at one o'clock in the morning as architects, and it just seemed like it had a rigidity to it that wasn't quite, I'm not saying it's not creative, because it is, but when you're applying math and stuff, it's not exactly the creativity that you ended up gravitating toward. Yeah, and it's not an easy major. I went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo,

and they have a great architecture school. But I mean, they called it, the students called it architorture, because I mean, they worked us hard. You know, we'd be up in those labs literally all night long you know before a big project was due we probably you know we didn't sleep you know it was a lot of work. And I'm no stranger to hard work but to be that involved

in something that I didn't really have a passion for it was tough on me because other people in my class they lived and breathed it and they loved the form following the function and it was just something that meant a lot to them. And it didn't mean a lot to me I mean I had a I had more fun like every Saturday night doing the Weird Al show on my campus radio show that's that's that was you know I looked forward to that that's what I lived for and the rest of the week in the architecture lab

that was just like just get me to Saturday night. Where'd the hard work come from? Where'd the work ethic come from? I don't know. I was always good in school. I worked really hard at my studies. That meant a lot to me. I was the valedictorian in my high school, straight A's all the way through. And you know, I think my parents appreciated that, but it was a personal point of pride. I just, you know, I knew I was good at it and I kinda wanted to be the best at it. So I did whatever I could to make that happen. Lot of discipline in the house or?

I mean, I was never spanked. I was never, there's no corporal punishment. Wow, I didn't mean to go there. I'm just saying like, I'm saying this is a form of personal pride, but you're achieving faster than most. You're obviously, you're achieving faster than most. You're obviously sheltered, your mother's keeping a close eye on you, so they want to make sure everything's okay. Something is forming there that's making you want, straight A's aren't coming easily, right? You have to work for

it. I certainly have to work for it. I don't know. I mean, I think it's a universal desire to want to please your parents and make them proud of you and I'm sure that was a big part of it. And also, it was me trying to be the best version of me that I could and express that through being a good student. You personally go to the artists who you're parodying and you ask all of their permission, correct? Yeah, I mean, if they wrote the song,

if they didn't write the song, we don't always approach the artist, but that's usually the case. Do you have any good stories there, either of you being like, how is this even happening, or somebody running you out of room because they don't appreciate what it is that you do?

Well, when I first started out, I mean, literally I was just a kid sending songs to Dr. D'Amento. As a teenager, I didn't think, oh, I should call up Queen and see what they think of this parody. And in fact, that got us into a little bit of trouble, because after another one rides the bus, became a big hit on the Dr. D'Amento show,

we got a call from Queen's lawyer saying, you know, you probably should ask us about this or run this bias. And thankfully they had a good enough sense of humor that they didn't sue me or anything like that. They just, you know, finished up the paperwork and said, okay, now it's legal. So it was a little shaky in the beginning

because I just didn't know how to do it. And then by the time I was doing my second album, I wanted to do Eat It, but I thought, you know, Michael Jackson's the biggest artist in the universe and there's no way he's gonna agree to co-writing a song with this idiot kid. But word got to him and he approved it. And so now there's a contract with my signatures

next to his saying that we're the co-writers of Eat It. That's the most surprising of the approvals that you've gotten? Well it was, yeah, I mean especially because that was early on and that really turned the key because after Michael Jackson gave his permission then it was a lot easier to get permission from everybody else. It was ammunition, you know, it's like well Michael Jackson was okay with it so what's your problem? What are the things that people don't know about what were the difficulties in achieving what you've achieved? What they don't know? You know, people just

think, you know, a lot of people have the misconception that just because it's funny music that it's effortless, that like, oh my six-year-old kid changes the words to songs, and like, well, I don't disbelieve you, but I can't imagine it's very good, you know, and it requires, to do it well requires a lot of effort. That's probably what, you know, a lot of people don't realize, like if you go through my notebooks, well, like another one Rides a Bus, I probably wrote that in like less than half an hour because I just thought, oh, here's this silly song I'm going to put on the Dr. D'Ameno show. But after I started realizing that people actually cared about what I did,

about my art, and that I would have to maybe play some of these songs on stage for decades to come, I started spending a lot more time on it. So, you know, if you look at some of my notebooks, for every line in a song, I've got a dozen variations, like either it's a different joke or it's a slightly different way to phrase a line or the accents on a different syllable, something like that. But it's something that I really take pains to perfect. You know, even though it seemed like it's just this ridiculous song, there's a lot of effort that goes into it. Even the most ridiculous song has probably spent a week or two just fine-tuning it.

What's your relationship with writing? Do you enjoy doing it or having done it? More having done it, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say that there's no pleasure in writing. Certainly there's, especially moments where I come up with an idea or a rhyme that works really well and I have a small moment of pride. But the writing process is in general not that fun.

My wife will describe when I'm in a writing process and I just wander through the house like a zombie with a thousand yard stare, you know, just because I'm so in my own head trying to think of things. But I feel a tremendous amount of accomplishment having written something. So that's definitely the best part,

the idea of like, oh, I have a body of work now and I did that, a former version of me is responsible for that. You have a great ear for what's good. Like, if it meets your standard, is it likely to meet the standard of others? I think so. You know, I'm a pretty good editor of my own ideas.

You know, there are some songwriters that will write 10 songs before they have breakfast in the morning. They'll write 100 songs and record 40 of them, and 12 will wind up on the album. I've never done that. I maybe come up with a hundred ideas, but I'm pretty good at looking at those ideas and saying,

well, I think this would merit a three and a half minute pop song. I see what the hook is. I see where the jokes would be. I think there's enough here that I can make that into a good song. So I'll come up with 12 ideas. I will write those 12 songs and I will write those 12 songs and

I'll record those 12 songs and I'm done. There's no like hidden weird-al songs in the vault that we just had left over. Like everything I've ever done is out there. Another one rides the bus. Is that the one that's come to you quickest? Like what is the easiest success story of something that just flowed from you, it was done, it arrived and you're like, oh what a blessing, I don't have to work that hard at this one. Everything I did in the very beginning, certainly another one Rides the Bus and probably My Bologna as well, I mean that was just a dumb song about lunch meat basically that I came up with because my Sharona happened to be the song of the summer so I recorded that

in the bathroom across the hall from my campus radio station. And I can't imagine I spent a lot of time on that. And it probably shows. I like those songs because they're historical. They're a part of my story, but I wouldn't hold them up and say, these are great pieces of art or something that I really struggled with. They were just like some goofy songs

that I wrote when I was very young. But did you say that you said that my Sharona was the one that broke for you, right? That's the one that Dr. Demento played first? My Balona was the first. Forgive me. It was the first one that, yeah, was big on the Demento show.

It wasn't the first thing of mine he played, but in the early days I would send him tapes in the mail and he played them on the radio and I would call up the request line and try to disguise my voice and request my own songs and have people from my high school do the same. But my balona was the first time when it was a big hit without any input from me.

Like all of a sudden people from all over the world were requesting my balona and I thought, wow, this is unusual. Like other people like my stuff. You were going everywhere with an accordion when you were young, like what, or was this something that you were just doing at seven years old, seven?

Yeah, I started when I was about seven, yeah. And are you going places with it, making childhood even more awkward because you're someone who's taking something with you that is, you know is a musical pacifier? Well, I didn't take it to parties or anything like that. Maybe I would play it in the school talent show. But it wasn't something, I mean, I joke about that

being the life of the party, but I didn't really force it on people. Sometimes if people came over and they wanted to hear me play, I would play for them. But it wasn't something that I forced on people too often. Was there something else that was this kind of obsession for you, something that in childhood grabs you and you just realize, because it just sounds

from the way that you're talking about it, like what a wonderful imagination escape hatch from whatever was sheltered or whatever unhappiness there was in, and I'd like to go out and be a child. I don't need my mom watching me all the time, nor do I necessarily understand why my mom is watching me all the time. Yeah, well I took my comfort in comedy and music.

I mean, I was inspired by Monty Python and SCTV and musically all the songs I was hearing on the Dr. D'Amato show and on rock radio and those two things were always my passions. And I just always feel so blessed because somehow I was able to turn those two passions and make a living out of it. So, my dad used to say that the only real sign of success

is being able to make a living doing the thing you love. So if I didn't have a 40 year career, I still feel like a success, because I've just been able to make a living doing specifically the things I love. So I always am so thankful for that. How would it have been different if you'd been Al the architect?

Extremely different, and that came close to happening. There was a couple years there after college where I kind of didn't know how my life was gonna go. And I guess in retrospect it was a pretty scary time because my whole future was ahead of me. But yeah, there's definitely an alternate route where I would have been just like Al the architect and probably have been somewhat miserable my whole life.

I mean the guy that is my stage manager on tour and has been for many years, he's an architect and he still works every now and then. He'll go on the road with me for several months then go back to his firm and it just reminds me like, okay, here's a guy that is doing quite well and even he needs to get out on the road. I would think that advice from your father, you know, a lot of people spend a lot of time daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly doing jobs,

trudging to jobs they do not like. So I think on the pie chart, you have a reputation of being an exceedingly nice and decent man, you give off a happy energy, I would think, at least in part, because you have gotten for 40 years to feel like a little bit like you're stealing money. Well, you know, I, I, I.

And I'm not saying you don't earn it. I'm not saying you don't earn it, but being able to love, be passionate about something that you're doing all the time, like it really does change the math on happiness if you're carrying yourself with gratitude all the time. I'm generally a very happy person. I really can't complain.

I can't complain. We live in a world that's full of a lot of not so nice things, but I try not to be overwhelmed by that and I try not to be overwhelmed by that, and I try not to focus, or be hypersensitive about the things that I personally can't fix. I try to make the world a better place in my own small way, and I keep my sanity by just trying to focus on the small pieces of joy

that I can find in life. Is there something about doing this tour at this age that you think will carry with it more appreciation than all of the other things that you have done? You know, every time I do a tour, it exposes my act to a new generation. When you look out into the audience, it's really multi-generational

because it's the people that have been there since the 80s and now they're bringing their kids and sometimes their grandkids. So it's just the fact that I've shown to NASA that I'm still doing it and I'm bringing something different every time I go out, which I guess that's appealing to people that it's nice to be able to just put myself in front of people.

I hear all the time about parents that have kids that came up to them and said, you know, I just heard about this weird out guy. Have you ever heard of him? And they're like, yeah, we've heard of him. You wanna listen to some records? It's, I mean, 40 years. You couldn't have imagined, right?

How is it that you're looking back now in adulthood and saying, well, I suppose I was scared but you don't remember it as two years of scared at the time because you didn't know what path you were going to take? You know, I was just young and naive and I probably didn't even know at that time that I should be scared. You know, only with the, you know, this decades of time to have retrospection do I look back and say, wow, I should have been scared.

That was a pretty scary moment in my life. But at the time, you're just too young to know any better? Kinda, yeah, cause I didn't know really what my future held for me, and I was just, you know, looking at my options. I mean, I remember I graduated from college with a degree, but I didn't want to be an architect. I wanted to get as far away from that as I could. And I applied for anywhere that would take me. I think I applied to a phone company. I

think I applied for janitorial work and they wouldn't take me because like, you got a college degree, what do you want to do this for? And I had to explain that I needed to eat food on occasion. And I got very lucky because the job that I got at a college was working for a radio syndication company called Westwood One, and they syndicated the Dr. D'Amento show. So not only did I get to hang out with Dr. D'Amento when he did his weekly broadcast, but all these rock stars were coming into the studio to be interviewed. So I got to meet Frank Zappa, you know, I got him to

autograph my copy of Freak Out. I got to like meet all these cool people and even though I was working in the mailroom literally for like five dollars an hour at the time, which I guess was minimum wage, it was a pretty cool job. So I again, I can't really complain. You didn't know what you wanted to do But I guess it was a pretty strong feeling that you didn't want to be an architect that you had largely Wasted a college education because it was what you were supposed to do. Yeah, I wouldn't say it was a wasted college education, but But yeah, I it made me learn that That I that that wasn't my passion.

I had to remember that my passion was music and my passion was comedy. And I didn't know that I could make a living doing that, but I thought, hey, I'm young, I gotta try. Maybe the entirety wasn't a waste, Al, but if you're applying for a janitor's job with an architect's degree, you have tossed aside the want to be an architect.

Well, I think I was my third year into college when I really had the epiphany of like, okay, I'm definitely not gonna do this the rest of my life. But I didn't wanna drop out because to me that was failure. I just wanted to, I'm gonna stick it out, I'm gonna spend another year and a half and get my degree and it'll look good on the wall or whatever.

And, you know, cause I didn't know, I didn't have a plan B because I couldn't tell my parents yes I'm going to be a rock star now you know that one doesn't really work that way when you look at the moment you mentioned being emotional on on certain occasions the landmarks of your life that are achievement that are filled with the sort of snapshots that are your mental scrapbook? Like, where are you? Where are you performing? What are the notes being hit in both performance or just achievement because a phone call has arrived that gives you security? Like, what are the moving moments that are the landmarks? Yeah, hearing from people that are my heroes,

that means a lot to me. My Python was such a seminal influence to me growing up, and Eric Idle came to one of my shows, and he loved it, and we actually become fairly close friends at this point, which kind of blows my mind, because he's a hero and a friend. And it's just amazing to me, the people that inspired me now,

that they like what I do, and that just means a whole lot to me. Are there crowds or performances that you think of? Are there places? Are there, and there may not be. I'm not for it. Sure. I don't know if there are times that, there are times that my life sort of slows down and some things that I wanted become present and I can't, you know, I have to stop and

acknowledge them because, you know, it'll catch in my throat. Yeah, I've definitely done some venues where it was pretty daunting at the time. I remember, you know, sometimes, I don't know if there are anxiety attacks, but my wife remembers when she came to see me backstage at one of my shows and I was curled up in a fetal position on the floor because I was so nervous. But I've played the Hollywood Bowl a few times. I played Carnegie Hall fairly recently. You know, Red Rocks is always a huge thrill to play. And on this upcoming tour, we're playing Madison Square Garden, which blows my mind.

And we're also playing the Los Angeles Forum, which means a lot to me because it's my local gig. And it's the first place I ever saw a rock show. And I remember in the mid 70s, I went to see Elton John there. And it was a big ordeal for me to go to a rock show because again, my parents were very protective and they just were so worried about me going to a rock show.

So I almost had to run away from home to be able to go to that show. But I just remember watching Elton John from the nosebleed seats with my binoculars and just having the best time. And it's such a nice bookend to like, you know, 40, 50 years later, be actually on stage playing the form. Curled in the fetal position, is that literal?

Probably. Why would you be nervous like that? I would, and forgive me, I'm ignorant here, but I would just think that at some point you wouldn't be quite that nervous that you would have. And I may have this wrong because performers do speak to, you have to respect what you're doing. You can embarrass yourself very quickly

so that can be fuel, you can get used to it, it can become your friend. I'm just surprised we went to fetal position. You could be nervous without falling apart. Yeah, no, I mean, I wasn't completely falling apart, but I was definitely, definitely nervous. You know, and it's just for certain shows and certain occasions.

Like, I get nervous at the beginning of tours because, you know, we don't have it locked in yet. The muscle memory hasn't kicked in yet. And you know you're going to make mistakes, and you're just like not enjoying the thought of you forgetting words or hitting the wrong cue. So I get much less nervous after a week or two into the tour not enjoying the thought of you forgetting words or hitting the wrong cue. So I get much less nervous after a week or two into the tour

and everybody's going in all cylinders. And there are a few big shows where the pressure's on. I get very nervous. Any kind of live television, I get very nervous. And I try not to, but it's just such a part of my personality to feel that way. And I really admire performers that don't have that. I like to tell the story about Donny Osmond.

I went to see him in Las Vegas a couple of years ago at his residency, and I was hanging with him backstage, and we're just chatting, chatting, chatting. And I realized, you go on stage in like five minutes don't you have to prepare don't you have to get ready don't you have to warm up and he looked at me and said Al I've been warming up for 60 years like oh man you are the man and I wish I could be that I wish I could be so confident in myself that I just was never nervous about anything but that's not the way I'm built. What other anxieties?

Like, are you an anxious person? Are you somebody, or is this performance-based? It's more performance-based, because otherwise I'm pretty mellow and I don't live my life in a state of anxiety. I'm sure we all have a certain amount of it, but I think my level's pretty low. This is a reasonable thing to be anxious about. Yeah.

So I'm not assigning a reasonable thing to be anxious about. Yeah. So I'm not assigning a weirdness to it. I would just think that after 40 years, you've got, it might not be your friend, but you're familiar enough with it that your wife is unsurprised when you're in the fetal position. Yeah, and it's just such a different life

to be on the road as opposed to at home because sometimes I'll take a quick break from being on the road and be at home and it's back to life as normal and I'll be taking out the trash and thinking like, oh tomorrow night I'm going to be on stage in front of 20,000 people, you know? Yeah. It's just, it feels like such a different world and that's kind of what it is. It's like you have, you know, it's like such a different world. And that's kind of what it is. It's like you have, you know, it's home world and tour world.

Are you putting on a bit of a costume? Like is, when you're on stage, it's not, it's your work, but it's not actually you. Once you get off of stage, you're a different person. Yeah, in a literal sense, I put on about a dozen costumes because it's a very costume-heavy show. But you know, I am myself on stage. It's not like Weird Al is a character per se,

but certainly the version of me on stage is a lot louder and more entertaining than me walking down the street. Well, do people expect it from you? I don't know what the burden of expectation with you is in public when someone is meeting you, if it has to be, you know, jazz hands. If there's, if someone's expecting something from you other than, oh, he's kind and nice,

that they're expecting wacky. Yeah, I probably fed into that expectation more in the 80s, cause I thought, oh, I've got to live up to the name, you know? And I probably put on a bit more of a show where I was a little bit more smart-alecky than I normally am. But I've kind of calmed down, and now I think people realize

that I'm not bouncing off the walls all the time. I'm just kind of like a regular guy. I don't know how much you know about sports, but I have a friend, Ricky Ricky Williams who is considered and has been considered very weird since he came into the public eye and He's taken great pride in both and freedom in both embracing the weird and in giving others Permission to embrace the weird Did you have any sort of breakthroughs here as you were growing up where you were

like, no, I can be most myself and here are the rewards that prove it? Yeah, I mean as a teenager, once I realized that I was a social outcast, it was sort of like I had nothing to lose. Like I didn't care like, oh I'm gonna look silly doing this. Like oh people think I'm an idiot anyway. Like's that gonna hurt so it sort of gave me gave me freedom it gave me a license to let my freak flag fly a bit so I didn't have any qualms about being weird or caring really what people thought of me because you know it didn't matter at that point and college was a bit of a restart because people in college didn't know who I was

and I thought, oh, I can maybe redefine myself. In fact, I think that's when I started going by Al because all through high school, I was Alfred Yankovic, my full name. And I thought, oh, Alfred sounds like, you know, what is, like Alfred E. Newman, it sounds like the butler on Batman. It sounded like, you know, Poindexter.

It sounded geeky. I thought, Al, Al sounds cool. That's a good masculine firm name. I thought, Al, Al sounds cool. That's a good masculine firm name, I'll be Al. It's better than Al. Yeah, and then within a year I was weird Al. So. So.

When you think about playing Madison Square Garden, what does that do? Well, when my manager first told me that over the phone, I thought he was joking. Cause in the early 80s, we had tour T-shirts with fake bogus dates on the back. And like, oh, I'll be doing a residency at Madison Square Garden.

It was one of those things we joked about. And now it's actually happening for real. So it's a bit mind blowing. It's, you know, hopefully I won't be in the fetal position on the floor, but I did like to have a small bit of anxiety. Like the second he told me like, oh, that's a big show. I've got to go do this. Now, if they're selling tickets, I'm going to actually have to go do it.

And last time I was in New York, I went to Madison Square Garden and I walked around the perimeter of it and there's all these posters of, you know, Elton John and Eddie Vedder and all these quotes from people, Bruce Springsteen saying, you're nothing until you played Madison Square Garden. And like, oh, don't make me more nervous, okay. What would pass as the second place venue to that one? I mean, you mentioned a few of them, but just another place like that where you're like, this can't be. Probably the Forum.

The same tour in LA. Yeah, hit nearby, right? Yeah, yeah. Like you're thinking of Lakers games and you're thinking. And what a majestic tribute though What a what a great thing to be able to celebrate 40 years into this to be able to still do it Like I don't I was reading something I think there there's some musical class where you exist over four decades with only Madonna and Michael Jackson. Like it's three names and you're one of them

because of the enduring legacy of what it is that you do and the happiness that it brings. I think we're the only three acts to have our own top 40 singles in the last four decades. Yeah, so that's crazy. Like you can't, I mean, when we sit in the middle of that, you think what of that? That's total lunacy.

And it's not to say that you're not incredibly talented, but we're talking about eternal artists and eternal artists who perpetually reinvented themselves. It is pretty crazy. I have to admit. I mean, part of me feels like this whole thing is like, everybody's playing a joke. I mean, like, yeah, like, it's sort of like who is the

make-a-wish kid, the bat kid, like well we'll just pretend that he's Superman, you know. And we'll just let Al think he's a rock star, you know. I mean five, so you've won five Grammys, right? Yes. And 17 nominations. That sounds right. Not that we're counting. That landed how?

The first one of those, how did that land? It was crazy. I mean, I was up against, gosh, I think I was up against Richard Pryor and Rodney Dangerfield and all these icons and somehow I won. And every single Grammy is as wonderful of an experience. It never gets old. I never get jaded from those kind of honors because it's my peers showing their appreciation

for what I do. So that's still mind blowing to me. You have mentioned a couple of times now sort of some version of parents holding on to you tight. What are the examples that are coming to mind when you're thinking of? Here is where my childhood was really unusual. Perhaps I didn't know it was Unusual but looking back on it. This was not normal

Well there was because I was encouraged to stay at home Well, there was, because I was encouraged to stay at home pretty much all the time, my dad would try to think of ways that I could be amused. So at one point, we had a, it was a small house in Linwood, California, and they had a basement, which I don't know, it was like a holdover from the Cold War. I don't know why we had a basement, but we did. And at one point, my dad knocked down the walls in the basement and he let me make tunnels under the house. So they called it the mole hole. And we would just bring buckets and buckets of dirt out and I would make my own like little, you know,

like ant farm kind of trails underneath the house. He said, as long as you don't dig underneath the foundation, have fun. Right? It was such an odd thing, but but but my friends would come over and we'd like spend like the day Under the house digging digging tunnels. So that was seems more dangerous than being outside the house I gotta be honest. I don't know what they were trying to protect you from but being under the house seems dangerous I never collapsed the house, but uh, they knew they knew where at least. Could you feel the fear in the house? I grew up in a small exile family and only in retrospect do I understand how parent,

how, well I can't even understand it because I can't understand being a political exile, but only in retrospect do I understand that there was a great deal of fear in my childhood and I could have felt it if I'd sort of been aware that that was not a normal thing to have around the house Did could you feel it in your house fear? Well, just the idea if they're always if they're that protective they're afraid of something happening to you If you're the only child you don't have simply the siblings There's yeah, there's there's some stuff happening there that is going to they could carry into into adulthood or carry into Growth it has in my experience. It might not be in yours

My I remember my mom telling me once that she when I was a young kid On the on the playground. She saw a woman Approaching me and she said that she had a vision that this woman was growing devil horns and that she was gonna do some harm to me. So she ran and picked me up and took me home immediately. So that had to be a manifestation of some kind of paranoia or fear. I mean, she was very concerned with people,

you know, harming me in some way. So she basically, my entire childhood was doing her best to protect me. And it was all well-meaning and again came from a place of pure love. But as a child and especially as a teenager, it felt very restrictive. And it was, you know, I kind of had a lot of bitterness about it. In fact, when I went up, I remember when I was going into my fresh, into my senior year in high school, you know, I was like 15 years old,

and she wouldn't let me go visit a friend's house or whatever. I asked her to do something that seemed quite harmless, and she said no. And here was my big clap back. I said, oh, it's okay, next year I'll be in college, and I can do anything I want. And you could see the wheels turning under his head,

like, oh, oh no. Yeah, yeah, well I mean. I better transition him a little bit into this. But you were a good kid, right? Oh yeah. So you're saying to yourself, I'm valedictorian, why can't I code? Bitter Al's a totally different character than Weird Al.

That would have gone much different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you found that, you look back on it and it's something that was religious? Like was there a lot of, like devil horns? Was there a lot of? It was a religious upbringing, yeah. Like we were a church going family

and yeah, that was part of it. And when do you sort of break free? You said you weren't rebellious, but you break free into is it going to college so that I'm going to be something closer to my own man. Yeah yeah so that my senior year they loosen the reins a little bit just because I realized you know we better like not let him like rebel in college we'll just kind of like gradually give him his freedom. But I remember when,

they, I had a, the old family car and they had an old Lincoln Conant and all that shit like that. And they were gonna follow me to college and it was like a four hour drive. And I thought, well, they don't need to follow me to college but all right. And I just remember as soon as we hit the 101 freeway,

I gunned it. I lost them on the freeway. So that was sort of like my final act of rebellion. That is tremendous. You performed, I mean, I don't, you lost your parents on the same day, which I cannot even imagine what the shock of that was, but you performed shortly thereafter, right?

It was the same night, yeah. How? Yeah, it was, it wouldn't have been my decision. It was a lot of denial. It was unfathomable and obviously the hardest moment in my life. I just didn't want to let people down because, and I didn't want people

to even know about it, because I didn't want people walking on eggshells around me, because it's a comedy show, I didn't want to like, you know, make people feel bad, and I had an army of people working for me, and people had made plans to come there, so even though I was falling apart emotionally, I thought I gotta pull it together and do this show.

And obviously it wasn't easy, you know? I just, you know, I'm a real the show must go on kind of guy and I spent the whole night just trying to pretend like, you know, I hadn't just suffered the worst, you know, horror of my life. And how did you perform? Is there any recollection of anything from? No, I mean I just tried to get through this show. I mean every now and then I'd sing a lyric

referencing like my mother or whatever and all of a sudden it would like snap back and like oh no. And then reality would hit for a second and I had to like regain my composure and keep on with the show. But it was, you know, I guess I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing because I was able to, you know,

do my show, pretend like I was okay, smile on stage, do comedy, and then go back to the bus and fall apart. Is responsibility a burden for you? Have you always been responsible? Pretty responsible. I mean, I like to think I'm a responsible guy and I do things on time and I do what I'm supposed to do.

I'm saying the idea of having to perform for others in that circumstance, the idea of having to take care of the economy of people around you. Yeah, I guess mostly I just don't want to disappoint people. I don't want to cause hardships for others. I mean, that's like a big thing for me. It's like, you know, whatever you do, don't make things worse.

And I figured if I canceled a bunch of shows, I mean, a lot of people would be upset and a lot of people make their plans in life and I didn't want to ruin thousands of people's plans. I didn't want to take people's livelihoods away from them, the people that work for me. So I just figured the best way to do it would be to just kind of trudge through and do the shows. What I did do is I canceled all my interviews,

I canceled all the meet and greets because I kind of didn't want to be around people. I just, all I wanted to do was do what I was supposed to do and then, you know, and then grieve privately. And were you able to do that? Because I lost my brother over a little over a year ago and we do a daily show and there was something about the first six months of

that that that feel like what it is that you're talking about which is you're there but you're not there and you're there because you're sort of doing the muscle memory of it and and and then later on I'm I'm still sort of parsing through all the things that I pushed down. It's very much that I mean thankfully this was like well into the tour so we we weren't just kind of getting our sea legs. It was muscle memory because the show was established. We were used to doing it. And my body was on stage performing,

whereas my mind was somewhere else. It was, you know, I felt like it was like levitating above the sky on stage doing this comedy routine. A weird space to be trying to do comedy. And like those juxtapositions don't really, as I recall, not that I recall much from this time, but there wasn't, I didn't quite have jovial in me. It didn't exactly exist at that time.

He brings joy with him everywhere he goes, joy and laughter. And the tour is he goes, joy and laughter, and the tour is 65 cities, bigger and weirder. I've got 65 here. Did you add 10 tours? Oh, you know what? It probably is 65 cities, 75 shows. That was it. You figured it out. Okay, thank you. I'm right again. Bigger and weirder is the name of the tour, and it's WeirdAl.com slash tour. Yeah. WeirdAl.com, a pleasure to be around his weirdness at all times. Thank you, sir.

Thank you. I just made him royalty, his weirdness.