A Quote by Al Yankovic
One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.
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My dad was a big Frank Zappa fan, so I remember listening to a lot of Frank Zappa. Girls do not like Frank Zappa.
I was in school with Dweezil Zappa, Frank Zappa's son, and we had a band. Only in L.A. could stuff like that happen. We would hang out in Frank Zappa's studio, and we released a single in 1982 on his label. I was 12, and that was the first recording experience I had. To top it off, Eddie Van Halen produced it.
When you think of diversity, George Duke fits that bill better than a lot of people. He's played a lot of straight-ahead jazz with people like Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley; he's played a lot of fusion with his own groups, with Stanley Clarke; and, you know, he did the rock thing with Frank Zappa. He's written all kinds of big arrangements for people like Burt Bacharach. So, he's covered the board. He's still a great pianist.
Jeff Beck is my idol .. sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar. Frank Zappa's another one .. I loved Frank Zappa ... I do think Van Halen reinvented the guitar ... he's an excellent musician, a shrewd guitarist and as a person he's wonderful.
There was a lot of camaraderie among the bands. I remember a lot of times when I'd be driving up Laurel Canyon and pass by the house where Frank Zappa was living and I'd just see people out on the porch playing guitars.
We are not a Zappa cover band. We only play Frank's songs that were recorded by the Mothers of Invention and I think a lot of those songs were complex.
My father was a studio musician, played for a lot of people like Frank Zappa and a lot of R&B bands, and was always gone doing that. Then when he was home, he was practicing. And so I always saw it, and I always wanted to do what he did.
People need to realize that because black people have been established in the U.S. for a lot longer than in the U.K., the culture's a lot more embedded. We will get there with how comfortable they are with rap in the mainstream, but we're way behind them.
For me, it's important to elevate the hypocrisy with humor. Then you really are using the humor to elevate the problem, saying this is why it matters, and then saying we can combine the work together with laughing and being around joyful people and helping out. So the comedy sometimes can actually full-on expose the issue, but also it's a gathering tool. It serves a lot of purposes.
I never had a problem with social situations. A lot of times, when people are in school, they can have a little hesitancy because people are mean sometimes. I never had that problem because I never had that experience. So, I had a pretty easy transition.
I think there's plenty of room, even in the most serious activist circles, for humor. Humor can be very effective both to inspire, and as a weapon. Just ask Frank Zappa and Charlie Chaplin.
I'm connected with a lot of different paranormal groups out there worldwide, a lot of different spiritual people. My networking over the course of the past 40 years has really grown where I deal with quite a bit. There's a lot of work that I do behind-the-scenes that I just don't ever talk about or things that don't always come to the forefront as far as investigating and getting involved with spiritual people, meaning any type of clergy, because I do work with a lot of them behind-the-scenes.
What I like to do with music is make people feel better. Make people realize that all humans have the same problems, more or less. A lot of people deal with the same thing. A lot of times people think problems are specific to them and they if they hear a song about a problem common to them, they feel good because they know that someone else has gone through it.
More than anything, I wanted to make sure that everybody was a pusher of difference. And they had to be able to do it in a communicative way, not esoterically. Because there are a lot of people who push things forward but sometimes only you and two people out of 500 in the room get it, but you want somebody who has mastered their craft so well that an 8-year-old gets it just like an 80-year-old gets it. They get the same visceral feeling.
I never had a problem with social situations. A lot of times, when people are in school, they can have a little hesitancy because people are mean sometimes. I never had that problem because I never had that experience.
I have this rubber band that I have all the time on my wrist, and sometimes when I get nervous or anxious, I'll do this twiddle thing with my finger and I'll snap the rubber band. A lot of people use rubber bands to cope with things like anxiety and depression and addiction.
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