Videos
Weezer – Memories
It's somewhat fitting that Weezer recruited the “Jackass” guys to guest-star in their upcoming “Memories” video. After all, it's very much a song about looking back on the good ol' days — back when Audioslave was still Rage and, strangely enough, Johnny Knoxville and company used to run almost exclusively with Rivers Cuomo's crew.
“Yeah, Weezer and 'Jackass,' in a way, we go back a long way, since before any of us were successful,” Cuomo told MTV News on the set of the video. “[In] '91, '92, we were hanging out together in Hollywood, Johnny Knoxville was known as 'PJ' back then, and I remember playing basketball with him a lot back then. He was like this good-looking, aspiring-actor guy, but for some reason, he was super sweet and nice to me, which I thought was interesting. He had nice manners.”
“I used to play tennis with Johnny Knoxville,” Weezer drummer Pat Wilson added. “He nicknamed me 'the Albatross' because I had the long wingspan. I would always get to the ball. He wasn't very good.”
Luckily, there was no basketball — or tennis — being played last month in Sun Valley, California, where Weezer and the “Jackass” guys got together to film the “Memories” clip. But there was a whole lot of skateboarding (and screwing around), as Knoxville, Ryan Dunn, Chris Pontius, Wee-Man, Steve-O and the rest of the maniacs gave it their all: skating in an empty pool, wiping out, nearly killing themselves and — in one key scene — actually subbing for the guys in Weezer during a performance of the song.
Filmed by “Jackass” vet Jeff Tremaine (on what appear to be Super 8 cameras), the video has a lo-fi, reckless vibe, recalling the old skate videos where Knoxville and his cohorts first rose to fame. It was all pretty amazing, to be honest. And now, thanks to the good folks at Weezer's brand-new home, Epitaph Records, you can check out some behind-the-scenes footage from the making of the “Memories” video, right now. It's fairly high-impact, so make sure you're wearing your helmet. Safety first, after all.