Johnny Knoxville: “I’m a Coward by Nature!”

Johnny Knoxville took a trip last summer to the Florida Everglades with his friend Manny Puig. Puig is an alligator expert; Knoxville is not. So when Puig decided to film Knoxville being chased by a gator they found basking by the road, events took a predictable turn.

“It takes off running at me, and there’s this cameraman who’s about six-foot-four. My hands go up like Judy Garland’s — ‘Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!’ — I turn around, knock him over and put my footprint in his chest to get away. I’m a coward by nature,” Knoxville says, sitting in a dark bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “Which kind of makes it funnier.”

The Jackass star has parlayed a global reputation for savage personal injury into a proper acting career. He’s starring in the new John Waters movie and the next Farrelly Brothers film, and he plays Gram Parsons’s corpse-stealing manager, Phil Kaufman, in the upcoming Grand Theft Parsons.

The music-obsessed Knoxville has now launched his own record label. So far, Johnny Knoxville Records has only one signee: his first cousin, Roger Alan Wade. And it’s his album Knoxville puts on the bar stereo as he gets his picture taken and helps himself to a few beers.

By the time he’s ready to talk about his record collection, Knoxville has lined up an impressive row of empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans on the bar. It’s only 2 in the afternoon. How long has he been drinking, exactly? “Pretty much since the beginning of the second Reagan administration,” he says. “Straight through.”

Roger Alan Wade, Greatest Hits
Johnny Knoxville/Melee, 2004
“Roger’s my first cousin. He’s written for George Jones, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. When I was 14, I was sitting in some joint he was playing, and he snuck me a beer and gave me a copy of Kerouac’s On the Road. And I just wanted to leave home instantly. Roger has really inspired me.”

N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton
Ruthless/Priority, 1988
“I’d never heard anything like N.W.A before. I was 16. It blew the fuckin’ top off my head. I was living in south Knoxville, Tennessee, a mostly white Southern city. I remember drinking black-label beer and taking Valiums, riding around, getting drunk in high school, listening to N.W.A.”


The Beatles, Rubber Soul
Capitol, 1965
“My friend Brian told me ‘Run for Your Life’ is still outlawed in Canada, because — ‘Better run for your life if you can, little girl’ — it’s all about shooting a girl. I have an 8-year old daughter, and it used to be her favorite song — she’d sing along with it. She was little; she didn’t know. She also used to sing along to Sandinista! by the Clash.”


Ramones, Ramones
Sire, 1976
“I was 22, dirt-poor, living in a studio apartment in L.A., and my friends Bernie and Loomis turned me on to the Ramones. We’d go to bars at night, and Loomis would get a half-pint of Captain Morgan and I’d get a half-pint of tequila. We’d order one drink, refill it all night long — and then go home and listen to the Ramones.”


David Bowie, Hunky Dory
Virgin, 1971
“This was the first Bowie album I got, and I listened to it over and over. I was in my mid-twenties, living in the Hollywood Hills, writing for skateboard magazines like Big Brother. They were the only ones that would let me do an article on self-defense equipment. The best thing about Bowie, and the Beatles, are the non-hits.”


Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison
Columbia/Legacy, 1968
“He’s a national treasure back home. I bought a cabin of his in Tennessee. I called his brother, and they already had an offer in. I was begging — you know, ‘Please, I’m a Tennessee boy!’ I got my eyes all teared up — that’s how I feel about Johnny. I bought it sight unseen. He signed the papers on Monday, and he died on Friday.”


T. Rex, The Slider
Repertoire, 1972
“This reminds me of traveling with the Jackass guys through the Pacific Northwest. We shot a lot of stuff up there — the car-rental return; when Dave ate the pee Sno-Kone and threw up.…Happy thoughts. Getting drunk, stumbling around Portland listening to The Slider. That was our job. Never take a job you can’t get loaded on.”


The Replacements, Tim
Warner Bros., 1985
“The Replacements were either the greatest or the worst band you ever saw. They played this bar in Texas, and it was all cowboys and punkers. For the first part of the show, they played all punker songs, and the cowboys left. When the punkers were left, they played cowboy songs. They just wanted to piss people off.”


Johnny Ace, Memorial Album
Ace, 1956
“I love Johnny Ace so much. He was playing Russian roulette backstage on Christmas Eve in 1954, and he blew his brains out. On the table beside him was a song called ‘Pledging My Love’ — the sweetest song you’ve ever heard. I love buying music for people, stuff they might not know, and I always buy Johnny Ace.”


Willie Nelson, Red Headed Stranger
Columbia/Legacy, 1975
“I’ve been shooting this Farrelly Brothers picture and listening to a lot of Willie. This was his first concept album. I was talking to one of his cousins on the set in Texas, and he said that when Willie played it for his family, they were like, ‘No one’s gonna like this!’ But it was his stroke of genius.”