- Our next guest is a comedy and music legend.
Fun fact, as a kid,
he collected license plates from across the country.
And now he collects Grammys,
platinum albums and Hawaiian shirts.
Here's a look back at an early hit that put him on the map.
Ugh. I love this.
♪ I was last in the class ♪
♪ Barely passed at the institute ♪
♪ Now I'm trying to avoid ♪
♪ Yeah, I'm trying to avoid ♪
♪ A malpractice suit ♪
♪ Hey, like a surgeon ♪
(audience applauding)
Okay, I've gotta talk to him about the lion.
Please welcome Weird Al Yankovic!
♪ Like a surgeon ♪
♪ Cuttin' for the very first time ♪
(audience applauding)
- [Weird Al] Good to see you.
- Oh my gosh.
I'm so excited.
- Me too!
- That was such an iconic song and music video.
Back in that moment, being at that video,
are there any things that jump out in your mind
of like shooting that day?
- Well, looking at the clip,
I saw the lion.
And that that was a big part of it,
because there was a lion in the original
Like A Virgin video by Madonna.
And we figured, well, there should be a lion
in the hospital for no apparent reason.
(Drew laughing)
And I remember very well,
you know, we had a lot of extras in the video.
Just, you know, random people,
doctors and nurses in the hallway.
And when the lion appeared they said,
"Oh, this is not worth $50 a day.
"No, I'm outta here."
(laughing) They left.
- All right, well,
you know, everybody sees Weird Al
as a rite of passage
if you will do their song and make it your own.
Has there ever been anyone who said no?
- It is very rare.
Most artists look at it as a, like you said,
a rite of passage.
It's like they've reached a certain plateau
in their career.
Like, you've got your Grammy, and you got your gold album.
Like, where's the Weird Al parody?
It was like, you know,
you need the whole trifecta.
The one person-
- Yeah, add that to the EGOT.
- (laughing) The WEGOT.
- The WEGOT! - Yes!
Boom!
- Better, better. - Boom!
- Yes!
WEGOT!
We just came up with it and I'm never looking back.
- We got the beat, yeah.
- We got it.
- But yeah, the one person
that consistently said no was Prince.
And I, you know, he just was very protective of his music
and I can understand that.
But it was a bummer for me,
'cause I had a lot of what I thought were pretty good ideas,
and he never was into it.
And people were like, well, you know,
you could probably ask his estate now.
And I don't wanna do that
because I've always respected the artist's wishes,
and Prince made his wishes pretty clear.
So I still respect that.
- If you could cover a Prince song,
like if say he,
like what was your vision,
or audible vision?
- There were several.
There was one for When Dove's Cry.
And my movie UHF,
it wound up being a Dire Straits parody,
but it was originally a parody of Let's Go Crazy.
I had a parody of 1999 where it was about like,
you know, some like Mr. Popeil kind of guy
selling things on TV, "For only 19.99!"
You know, that kind of thing.
So I had several ideas, but it didn't pan out.
- I wanted to ask you a question,
because the hopeless romantic in me freaked out
when I heard a story about you and your now wife.
How did you guys meet?
- We met through our mutual friend Bill Mumy,
who played Little Will Robinson on Lost in Space
back in the day, do you remember?
- [Drew] Yeah.
- A mutual friend,
and she worked for 20th Century Fox as an executive.
And I was me.
And he said, "Oh, you guys would probably really get along."
And he kind of, you know, set us up.
But we were both really busy.
I had an album coming out,
she was like super busy at work.
And we didn't have time to like
actually get together for a date.
But we would call each other late at night
and have these phone conversations.
And this is pre-social media.
I wasn't like looking her up, you know,
on Instagram or something.
I had no idea what she looked like.
But we had these conversations late at night,
and talked for hours and hours.
And I was, you know,
I kind of fell in love with her just over the phone.
And we finally had an evening
both of us had free,
so we went on our first date.
And walking up to the door
I still had no idea what she looked like.
And I was thinking, well,
I kind of hope she's cute
'cause I'm probably gonna marry her.
(audience awing)
I would've married her is she was homely, of course,
but I mean I treated her like she was a knockout.
So, you know, added bonus. (laughing)
(audience applauding)
(upbeat music)