This past summer, Bam Margera came down to Tremaine’s lake house and spent a few days lake lifing. During that time, Kosick asked him if he’d be up for an interview and here’s the final answer: an interview! Consider this an hors d’oeuvre to the forthcoming Epicly Later’d featuring a life in skateboarding with Bam (September 6 on Viceland).

Kosick: Where are you at this moment with your life?

Bam: Well, I went to Spain for about six months to relearn how to skate, because I let maybe four years go by without skating. I was injured and just in the rock 'n' roll scene, so like when you’re on a tour, you know, your bandmates are waking up at 11am drinking a beer, so I’d follow their lead. Then, slowly but surely, I put myself on a scale and realized I was well over 200 pounds. I was like, “Oh my god, I gotta start skating again.” So I went to Spain. I figured that was the best place to get unrecognized. I wasn’t in Barcelona, I was in like the smallest town but one that still had skating—like their skate parks and all this crazy architecture with perfect banks made out of marble. And then on that trip Nikki found out she was pregnant, so she’s about four months into it now. Due December 25 on Christmas.

Do you feel like you’ve grown as a person now?

I guess I’m forced to kinda grow up now… if I have to take care of someone else, then I have to take care of me first. I’ve definitely cooled it on drinking and everything, especially from the help—believe it or not—of Brandon Novak, who has been a heroin addict for well over 15 years. He’s now almost three years sober and he’s working with the rehabilitation center, putting people in rehab. So he’s really into it and it kinda inspired me. I was like, “Man, if that motherfucker could do it, anyone can.”

Are you surprised by Brandon’s turnaround? He made a big 180 degree turn in his life.

One-hundred percent. I never thought he could even have money or a credit card or just be responsible at all as a person. I didn’t see him for a year when I was in Europe—I spent five months in Estonia and then six months in Spain—and when I came back, this guy has five credit cards now, he’s buying me lunch—which has been the first time ever—and then I got a parking ticket when I visited him and he paid that. Then he picked up his girlfriend from the airport, and I was like, “Well, who’s this?” and it’s some Grammy award-winning singer chick from Los Angeles, her name is Sirah. She did that song “Bangarang” with Skrillex. I’m like, “What’s going on with you?! Jesus Christ, you have everything put together.” You know, he has his schedule. He takes it day by day. Now his addiction is like flavored teas.

The last few years you’ve been on a pretty dark path of self-destruction. Has the dust finally settled or are you still working through some stuff? What changes did you have to make?

Yeah, here’s the thing about rock ‘n’ roll: anybody who can play guitar or drums or sing can always rock like fuck while they’re wasted. Skaters can’t do that. So when I’m trying to follow the lead of all these rock stars who show up shit-faced and still kill it on guitar, like with skating you can’t do that and the skating part of me just fizzled away… I guess I was having too much fun sipping drinks, cracking jokes, and going on stage. But one day, I guess I hadn’t stepped on a scale for a year, but I gained well over thirty to forty pounds and I was like, “Oh my god, is this scale broken or is it real?” I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but it said like 230, and I was like, “Holy shit.” So, I just cancelled the tour and stopped drinking. I went to Estonia to exercise and hike and bike ’cause I didn’t want to go to Spain all fat and try to skate. I was doing 300 push-ups and 300 sit-ups a day, then after five months of that I went to Barcelona to meet up with my buddy Winkle who films and we just took a five-month road trip to each and every town in Spain. We hit up every one of them.

That sounds like fun.

Yeah, it was. At the beginning it was a bit frustrating just because my go-to tricks weren’t exactly my go-to tricks anymore. It was more like taking 30 tries to do a 360-flip on a bank that you know some little kid could probably learn in four days. But after I was skating every day, the soreness started to go away and my legs started to get a bit more flexible. Then it started to become fun. But when I saw the doctor after that tour of yearlong partying, he looked at my legs and he was like, “Your legs are like dry-rotted rubber bands. You could stretch a little bit too far and your muscle would just pop.” And that happened. I started doing yoga and I leaned too much toward my toes trying to stretch and my whole back hamstring on my left ass-cheek just popped. I was super dehydrated and unhealthy.

Well, it’s good you’re on a better path right now.

Yeah. You know, it’s the type of thing where the people I look up to, like watching MTV and seeing Mötley Crüe, you know, they have all these hot chicks in limos in their rock ‘n’ roll music videos, sipping on Jack Daniels and throwing it out the window, I was like, “Hell yeah! I want to be that.” It’s cool when you’re in your twenties, but if Nikki Sixx at 50 was still doing that, I would be like, “Man, that’s pathetic.”

Yeah, but Nikki’s doing all kinds of real cool, positive things with his life now, you know? Like he’s an amazing photographer.

He chose the right thing to do. When you’re 20 and doing that, it’s like, “This guy’s the man!” but as soon as you start getting older, you’re not the man anymore because it looks pathetic. So good move on Nikki Sixx. He understands.

Sobriety has a lot of good things to offer. It’s just up to us to recognize that and run with it because the world is your oyster and you can do whatever you want, you know?

There’s been a lot of flukes, like where I'd see the doctor and it still wouldn’t stop me. They did bloodwork on me and they were like, “You have this thing called acute pancreatitis from drinking too much. Your liver is fucked.” When I left, he was like, “You need to stop drinking,” and at the time I had a vodka and Gatorade in my hand. I fucking finished it without hesitation and went right to the bar and kept drinking. I didn’t care. Then after that, I cooled it and got bloodwork done from the same place about a month later and it went away. So I guess it fixed itself, but like I said, I was on such a path of destruction that I didn’t give a fuck.

Do you have any personal regrets?

Yeah, a lot. I would spend a full day at the bar just sipping on drinks, cracking jokes with friends, thinking I was having the greatest time when, but when you look at it like at it, it’s like I just spent a year drinking at the bar cracking jokes. Like, what did I do? Nothing. I didn’t do anything. I wasted so much time just being at a fucking bar. Everyone’s like, “Holy shit, Bam’s here! You want a shot?” I was like, “Yeah, whatever, I’ll do a shot.” Like, “Yay, I’m having a grand old time,” but really I just spent that whole summer taking shots with random strangers. My main regret is just how I slowly stopped skating. Now I have dreams of tricks that I know that I could do that no one’s done before in my head, but I know it’s going to take skating every single day for a year to even get to that level of trying a new trick that I haven’t done yet. Right now, I’m just having fun skating FDR, but all I’m basically doing is all the tricks I’ve already done. There’s no progression of me getting ready to try some new trick that I’ve never done yet. If I would’ve kept skating, I would’ve never had this problem.

Since you’ve been back on your board, what have you noticed that’s changed in skateboarding?

It’s honestly unbelievable what I see on skate videos. When I used to watch skate videos I was like, “Hell yeah, that dude looks rad, he just did a front-board down a five-stair rail that’s insane,” and now it’s like a kick-flip front-board switch down ten stairs is a warm up trick for some people. For instance, Nyjah Houston had a DC ad doing a backside nose-blunt slide down the big side of Hollywood High. That is fucking insane to me. If you gave me a suitcase of a million dollars and said try that, I would be like, “Hell no!” because I would just fall right on my back and head and probably die. People get gnarly these days. It’s crazy.

I’ve been filming on the King of the Road TV show and seeing the abilities some of these guys have it’s just unbelievable how good they are now.

When I was in Spain, I would meet people on the road and start following their Instagrams. This one dude had an entire video part of just flat ground tricks and you would think that would be the most boring thing ever, but they’re all tricks that I could never even fathom. Stuff I never thought could even be possible to do, like what the fuck is this?

What do you think about the return of CKY? Is there a song you really like off their new album?

I heard the new album when I flew to England to see them on tour, like before the big Warped Tour that they’re still on—I think it’s like 90 days or something ridiculous like that—but I heard the album and it was amazing. Their first song is called, “Replaceable” and the whole album is really catchy. I’m just super proud of Chad and the band, because it’s been seven years since they got back together. They had so many problems with the original singer. Darren's attitude was just really negative, like if he would do an interview and they’d ask, “So you’re on the Warped Tour with Linkin Park and Slayer, how do you feel about that?” he would say, “Slayer is the worst metal band ever and Linkin Park—I don’t even know how they’re signed, they suck so bad.” It’s like, why talk all this shit on these bands, dude? It’s the dumbest thing ever and now you’re just making enemies. If you don’t like them just say no comment or it’s not my cup of tea. He burned so many bridges that no nobody wanted to work with CKY anymore, so when people found out that the band was back together, the ones with the good attitudes, they started to get shows booked. And they don’t drink before the shows, Chad takes it super seriously and that’s why it always sounds good. When I saw them play in London I was blown away with how tight they sounded. After the show they would have two or three drinks, but everybody’s grown up now and it’s not how it used to be, you know?

They say idle hands are the devil’s play thing. What are you working on at this moment?

I’ve been shooting at FDR. All my editing equipment is still in Spain, so I need to go get that in order to work on putting anything out. Other than that, I’ve just been skating and working out if I’m in Philly. I’ve been doing a lot of hiking and camping lately, it’s fun. When I left South Carolina it took me until yesterday to get home because I’ve been camping in North Carolina, then Virginia, then West Virginia, then Maryland.

You’ve done just about everything from being a professional skateboarder and having your own TV show, to making your own movies, being an artist, and making music. If you had to choose one to focus all your attention on, which would it be?

The big problem with me is that I can’t stand the internet and YouTube. It gives me no motivation whatsoever to film anything, because all that’s going to happen is it’s going to wind up on YouTube and you’re going to have to call up and tell them to take it down and then two seconds later some fuckhead from Ohio will put it up. Then you have to call again. You spend an entire day calling up YouTube. What’s the point of doing anything funny, or to hurt yourself or do some cool skate trick, if it’s just going to end up for free online? That’s my major issue, but I guess if I had to choose it would be doing comedy shit and skating. But I’m at the point where my skating wouldn’t be at a pro level. It would just be for fun.

How does it feel knowing you have a baby on the way? Do you feel like you’re ready to become a father?

I’m excited, but I’m also nervous. I know I’ll have a lot of help from my mom and dad, ’cause they love that. They’re like, “Yay!! Whenever I get too frustrated or just want to take a couple day vacation, I know they’d be more than happy to take care. But yeah, it’s a boy, so now there’s going to be a little shit just like me. What am I going to do? I’m sure that it’ll be tough, but I’m at this point now, I’m 37-years-old, it’s now or never.

You’ve lived a pretty extravagant lifestyle. What’s the most ridiculous situation you’ve ever found yourself in where you thought, “I can’t believe I’m doing this right now”?

I think when we went to Finland. Joe Frantz had tickets for me and all my friends to go to Finland for a surprise and he wouldn’t tell us what it was. So, we’re like all right let’s go. Turns out I’m hosting a sex convention thing. It was me and Belladonna the porn star hosting. People are walking around with hard-ons getting ready to fuck on stage and shit. We’re in the dressing room and as I’m getting ready to go out and intro, “Welcome to sex stuff in Finland!” I look to my left and there’s this dude just jacking off in the mirror because after I was done he was going out on stage to go fuck somebody. I looked at Ryan Dunn and he’s like, “Frantz, first of all, you’re the biggest asshole in the world. Second of all, this is the lowest of all low. We’ve had a number one hit movie with jackass, we had Viva La Bam for 15 episodes, and now we’ve resorted to dudes jerking off in the corner getting ready to fuck and we’re intro-ing that. Thanks, Frantz.”

What were some of your favorite memories while making the jackass TV show and movies?

I think just being on set. The downtime waiting for a shot to be set up, because usually we have two or three bits to film a day and it would take a while to set up the props and everything, but the best footage we would get was sitting around waiting. That’s when something like the “Rocky” would happen. You know, those things that happen when we’re just bored and waiting, but besides seeing you, Wee-Man, Pontius, and Tremaine in South Carolina, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody. So it made me really miss everybody and I want to film something again.

By the way, I owe you one.

You do owe me one. Yeah, you, Preston, and Steve-O—I broke his nose doing it. I felt terrible about that, but I was trying to get everybody. And I think Knoxville was so nervous and on point, he couldn’t even pay attention to what anyone was saying because he was always looking behind him to see if I was sneaking up with the boxing glove. So I never got Knoxville.

Well, hopefully one day it’ll happen again, but if there was ever to be a final jackass installment do you think your body could take the physical and mental abuse?

I would like to… see, this is my idea and I don’t want to tell too much of it, but it should just be called “Hotel Jackass” where everybody is checking into this hotel thinking they’re going to film jackass 4, but everybody gets fucked with in every way. Before they know it we just film the movie without anyone’s knowledge. We fuck with everybody. Every room is rigged, everybody’s there to prank everybody. Prank after prank after prank. You don’t necessarily have to get annihilated like before, but anytime we’re all together funny shit always happens. Us being around each other and fucking with each other will at least get three awesome things out of a day even if they’re quick things.

You know, to this day, Danger Ehren says that he knew about the pubes being put on his face.

Is that what he said?

Yeah.

Well, let him keep thinking that. I mean having pubes put on your face is pretty sucky, but then there was crabs in somebody’s pubes. There was actual crabs in the pubes that were glued to his fucking face. That’s horrible.

Do you have any closing thoughts?

Yeah. Dear Tremaine… Let’s figure out something to film again, whether it’s a jackass or a something else. I like this new Viceland channel and I have a couple ideas, so I’m ready to film again. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting at bars and drinking, but I’m over that now. I’ve had enough.