The Charles Nelson Reilly of the Accordion

Every instrument has its virtuosos. Piano currently has Lang Lang. Cello, Yo Yo Ma. Tuba, Patrick Sheridan. The idea of a virtuoso also extends beyond the classical realm. In rock, guitar virtuosos span from Eddie Van Halen to Eric Clapton to Yngwie Malmsteen. Bass has Cliff Burton, Victor Wooten, and the funkmaster himself, Bootsy Collins. Any rock drummer would be remiss if they didn’t worship at the alter of Neil Peart.

And for the lowly accordion, there’s “Weird Al” Yankovic.

The Rock Hall considers superior technique and skills among its criteria to be inducted for obvious reasons. Anyone who ascends to any HOF status should not only be competent in their craft, but excel in the discipline to the point somebody 50 years later sits back and says “damn, that person was good.” Sometimes the lines for performance greatness are very clear, like in baseball. But even then, it’s not always cut and dry. For example, why hasn’t Todd Helton (no relation) been inducted yet?!?!?!?!

But musicianship is often more ethereal and squishy. Consider David Gilmour’s monster guitar solo in Comfortably Numb compared to any guitar work in Dragonforce’s Through the Fire and Flames. Both performances can be considered virtuosic, but Gilmour’s solo is much more legendary because it suggests that he could endlessly burn through scales, but chooses not to. This type of restraint represents Weird Al’s approach to the accordion and why he ascends beyond technical proficiency and exemplifies superior musical ability.

But, before diving into any particular performance factor, I want to emphasize that the accordion is a really tough instrument to play. Just look at the picture of “Weird Al’s” axe below. I won’t go into too many specifics on the basics of accordion playing, but I’ll tell you this: There are usually three things happening simultaneously. The musician uses the right hand keyboard similarly to a piano while moving the bellows in an out to push air through the reeds, similar to blowing into a melodica. In addition to achieving the limb independence to work a keyboard with their right hand while moving their left arm smoothly and perpendicular to the keyboard, the musician must also manipulate up to 120 “bass” buttons with their left hand. 

From a physical perspective, that’s quite a bit happening simultaneously in the same brain, particularly as the musician must coordinate both fine and gross motor skills. But what’s more impressive is the music theory that has to happen in both hands on two different keyboards. The right hand keyboard is identical to a piano keyboard, but the left hand is a whole system of major, minor, and diminished chords. The coordination of melody and harmony takes both a keen ear and a fluent understanding of music theory. So, it takes an immense amount of study to even perform deceptively simple genres like Zydeco, which Weird Al mimicked in My Baby’s In Love With Eddie Vedder.

Similar to David Gilmour, Yankovic saves the scale-jogging for when it’s stylistically appropriate. If you’re interested in Weird Al’s technical prowess, his accordion solo in Everything You Know is Wrong as well as much of the accordion work in his polka medleys both feature plenty of technical scale-jogging. He also contrasts the more garish parts of accordion playing with simpler, more intimate accompaniments like in this demo version of Yoda or the main chordal accompaniment to Stop Dragging My Car Around.

Weird Al’s accordion skills shine brightest when he combines the two techniques in a parody and creates a unique musical experience that sometimes outshines the original work. The accordion intro and solo in Lasagna (based on Los Lobos’ La Bamba) maintains the spirit of the original’s guitar work, but transforms it into something truly new by changing the accompaniment to more typical Italian timbres, like the addition of the mandolin. The solo at the bridge masterfully combines the original’s flamenco-style (Spanish) guitar solo with Italian folk-music tropes, which fits well due to the similarities between the Italian and Spanish languages and how rhythms and inflections inherent in speech can also be found in that language's folk music.

Even in one his more forgettable parodies, Weird Al’s enthusiasm for and skill at the accordion shows he’s tapped into something few musicians can imagine. Syndicated Inc., a parody of "Misery" by Soul Asylum that doubles as yet another list of late-night TV reruns, features the accordion in an unlikely, but very appropriate place. The accordion slides seamlessly into the bridge from the mopey guitar sounds of mid-1990s grunge and proceeds to be more technical, melodic, and interesting than the original guitar solo. As I was researching this article, I was struck as to how I’d forgotten about this particular accordion feature because it fit so well in the overall feel of the song, as if it belonged in the original.

Any remotely competent musician would have a litany of impressive clips floating around the internet. Weird Al definitely does as can be seen here or here or here or here. But I’m not creating a theory of competency, I’m creating a theory of legitimacy and worthiness. What separates Yankovic from any number of leading musicians is how, similar to David Gilmour, his technique is definitely there, but it’s of secondary concern compared to the emotive qualities of the music being played.

As a counter-example, rock & roll lead guitar players are the most common offenders in the imbalance of technique and musicality. This point is best summed up by Chris Dahlen who described the “breaking point” in rock music as the place where:

… a performance crosses from impressive to pretentious…when you can smell the artist thinking, "I am f#&@ing wicked." And in the 20th century, nothing was more pretentious than the electric guitar.

Possibly the greatest instrument of our time, the electric guitar also lures impressionable young players into losing themselves in musical masturbation: furiously, unproductively stroking the neck of their instrument for hours as they slump into the league of longhaired, overbearing gearheads studying Joe Satriani and Allan Holdsworth instructional tapes in a basement. And when they're done woodshedding on "Cliffs Of Dover," they don't wait for an artistic reason to show it off: they crank the amps to 11 and force the whole world to listen in a totalitarian display of "might makes right," as if their technique-for-technique's-sake scale-jogging is the word of God. (And by God, we mean Yngwie Malmsteen, of course.)

Yankovic avoids this trap by consciously choosing where to show off and only doing so to share his music. Regardless of your feelings about the accordion, it’s clear that “Weird Al” Yankovic stands out as an exemplar musician with both the technique and skill to play in almost any style. To put it succinctly and to quote John Oliver, Weird Al “plays [the accordion] like a f$%*ing angel.”