“Weird Al” Yankovic just got his first Billboard No. 1 album this week with “Mandatory Fun.”
But Yankovic has been making hit parody songs for more than three decades, most notably his shot at Michael Jackson with “Fat” instead of “Bad,” and “Eat It” in favor of “Beat It.”
Yankovic, 54, spoke to Access Hollywood today about the icon and revealed that Jackson even asked the funnyman to go on tour with him and open for him in Europe, but he had to decline.
“That’s a very odd thing for me to say no to, but he asked me to do it the summer I was shooting my movie ‘UHF,’ which would have been the summer of 1988,” he said. “It was a big deal to me to have my own movie and it was odd for me to be in a position where I was like, ‘Sorry, Michael Jackson, I can’t be your opening act.’ … If I wasn’t doing a movie at the time, I’m sure I would have taken him up on it.”
As for their relationship over the years, Yankovic said he and MJ got along very well.
“I met him a few times. In fact, one time I met him backstage at one of his concerts and my album “Even Worse” had just gone gold, so I brought him a gold album and he was very gracious,” the Grammy winner said.
Yankovic also told Access what his daughter Nina, who’s in sixth-grade, thinks of him and his antics.
“She’s not rolling her eyes,” he said. “She’s also not all gaga about it. She’s very grounded and it’s just part of her reality. It’s like, ‘Weird Al’s my dad’ and everything’s fine.”
He joked, “I spend every day trying to convince my daughter that I’m not terrible.”
SOURCE: ABC
