World of Weird Al Yankovic

Thank you for typing that all out! That's very cool.

Wow, thanks for typing all of that out! It was a really fun read.

Your welcome! CPFOA

DrDecay wrote:"My manager was having a very tough time getting Nirvana's management to return his phone calls, and I very much wanted to do my "Smells Like Teen Spirit" parody. So I called Victoria Jackson, who I'd just done a movie with- she was on Saturday Night Live and Nirvana was performing there. And I said, "If you get Kurt Cobain alone in a room, please put him on the phone with me." And she did. So I talked to Kurt and he said "Is it going to be a song about food?" I said, "Actually, it's going to be about how nobody can understand your lyrics. And he's like "That's great. Go ahead." That was the last video of mine MTV put in heavy rotation."

Really? I thought "Amish Paradise" was in heavy rotation on MTV, for a few weeks in 1996 anyway.

Thanks for transcribing!

I always saw it on The Box, never MTV. Aside from AlTV of course

The Box also played It's All About The Pentiums a lot, and to a lesser extent The Saga Begins as well.

FredHuggins wrote:

DrDecay wrote:"My manager was having a very tough time getting Nirvana's management to return his phone calls, and I very much wanted to do my "Smells Like Teen Spirit" parody. So I called Victoria Jackson, who I'd just done a movie with- she was on Saturday Night Live and Nirvana was performing there. And I said, "If you get Kurt Cobain alone in a room, please put him on the phone with me." And she did. So I talked to Kurt and he said "Is it going to be a song about food?" I said, "Actually, it's going to be about how nobody can understand your lyrics. And he's like "That's great. Go ahead." That was the last video of mine MTV put in heavy rotation."

Really? I thought "Amish Paradise" was in heavy rotation on MTV, for a few weeks in 1996 anyway.

Thanks for transcribing!

You know, I thought the same thing. Maybe MTV played 'Smells like Nirvana' more. As I can recall I remember that video being played all the time. I also remember Al TV in 1996 being on MTV non-stop. However, I was young at the time so please feel free to correct me if I maybe wrong.

I looked at this book very briefly in the store and there is a lot more about Al than has been transcribed here. There are also discussions about him, not just quotes by him. I saw one thing from Harvey Leeds in which he detailed the process of contacting Michael Jackson (not quite like the way it was portrayed in The Compleat Al), and said that the budget for the Eat It video was about $27,000 (seriously).
Like I said, I only looked at the book for a minute but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more comments about Al in there.

Does that include some money that went to MJ?

There were some discussions about Al however, I thought I would only put what he said on the forum. There was mention about some people not liking what Al was doing. Here's a quote from Bob Giraldi whom I am unfamiliar on who he is but here it goes. "I hated that Weird Al video. (beat it) It made fun of something that was serious and valuable to me. I felt it was a put down."
Another notation was by Harvey Leeds "Jay Levey, Weird Al's manager, wanted to make a video for "Eat It," but the president of Epic, Don Dempsey, was scared to as Michael. Walter Yetnikoff had to call Michael, who thought it was hilarious. That video cost someting like $27,000, and launched Al's career. MTV loved Al Because every time he parodied a video it only served to reinforce the power of MTV."