Jack(Ass) Of All Trades

It's taken Bam Margera less than 24 hours to get up to no good. The perennial prankster, who's a part of the notorious Jackass crew, has just been kicked out of his hotel in the Melbourne CBD, sans luggage and girlfriend. “A year ago at Soundwave [with CKY] I was at that very same hotel and I decided to do a few paintings in my room; I spilled a little bit of paint [so] they decided to charge me $5,000,” he croaks, filling in the blanks. “I paid the bill, [but] when I checked into the same hotel a year later, which was last night, I wasn't too fond of that.”

It's 8am. Margera is obviously drunk and immediately talkative. He laughs with a smoker's rasp when it's reasoned that things can only go up from here. After all, the Fuckface Unstoppable tour technically hasn't even started yet. Although most of his travelling party are in the country, the 33-year-old is still waiting on “best friend and walking television set” Brandon Novak, a body critical to the Fuckface experience, if only to act as Margera's human punching bag.

“I tell people I'll deduct $10 for every punch they give him, because he wrecked my car when I wasn't even home – he stole it. So I say in order to pay that back, because I know he never will, if everybody punches him that's $10 deducted from his bill. So here's Novak casually just chilling at the bar, trying to sip on a drink and he just keeps getting punched in the back of the head. And by the tenth time he's like, 'Y'know Bam, fuck this shit, I can't take it any more',” he cackles remorselessly. “He just wants to [come] to Australia – he doesn't care. He's been in jail for a year and he ruined his whole skateboard career by discovering what heroin was all about. But hopefully he made this flight.”

Scheduled for a whole bunch of dates right up the east coast, these Fuckface Unstoppable shows combine all of Margera's entertaining outlets, from gross-out gags and ridiculous stunts to skateboarding demonstrations and live music (his touring band includes members of CKY and Guttermouth).

“I do original songs. One of them is called I Wanna Bend My Dick To The Back Of My Arse So I Can Fuck Myself. I also do Turbonegro covers, I do Clutch and I do GG Allin. Basically all the good punk rock songs that I want to hear. And the crowd gets pumped because it's pretty much the most unoriginal original thing that has ever been done, y'know, because there [are] cover bands but they all play shit like Third Eye Blind at a college. No one has a cover band that plays mountain rock or punk rock, so it kinda works out...”

I Wanna Bend My Dick... deserves a bit of a mention here, not only for its polarising nature (Margera mixing rap and wild beats), but also for the company that brought it about. 

“One of my best friends, Kat Von D, her fiancé is Deadmau5, and he shows me how to do dubstep type sounds – things that sound cool. He'll show me how to [push] a button of a big device and that's kind of how [the song] started. And when I did my first show everyone liked it so much that I kind of just kept continuing it.”

So be prepared for that. And also, spare one last thought for ol' Novak. “His job on this trip is to just get punched in the face every single night for 15 days straight,” Margera reiterates callously, “and I have rings on.”

Bam Margera will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 24 January - Selina's, Coogee NSW
Saturday 26 January - Parkwood Tavern, Gold Coast QLD
Sunday 27 January - Hotel Tempo, Brisbane QLD
Friday 1 February - Downunder Bar, Airlie Beach QLD
Saturday 2 February - Downunder Bar, Magnetic Island QLD