THRASHER
with it. My band's doing really good
right now and I'm stoked just being able
to play punk rock and skateboard.
Then I'm working at a shitty job, so I'm
in touch with the working class, and I
never worked until like three years ago,
and that's the one thing I'm not doing,
I'm not out thieving or any of that shit
anymore. That's about the only thing I'm
not doing that I used to do that always
led to gutter time, and now I'm active all
the time, so that's the only difference.
And I'm always trying to play catch-up, I
guess, I don't know. But I know every-
body I grew up with is already an old
man, and I don't want to be anything
like that. Not yet.
What are your favorite bands?
Mostly all old bands like The Ruts.
Stiff Little Fingers, we just saw Stiff Little
Fingers two weeks ago and they were
great, with Bruce Foxton playing bass
from The Jam, and then the Clash is one
of my all-time favorites, Chelsea, Dead
Boys, Shane McGowan right now is my
favorite songwriter, old Pogues, and I
like his new band The Popes, a little bit
of Eddie and the Subtitles lately. I was
listening to The Jam all last month. A lit-
tle bit of Jimmy Cliff in the morning or
whatever, sometimes old rockabilly like
Robert Gordon, but not too much of it.
But mostly just old punk rock. A little
Ramones, a little Sex Pistols. I've got a
big Sex Pistols collection, a lot of boot-
legs. Some of The Fingerprints, some of
the Boomtown Rats. The US Bombs is
my favorite band right now.
What do you think about drugs?
Fuck, man, half of the friends I have
are just now going through what I went
through about ten years ago, just dis-
covering coke, dope and just being
drunk all the fuckin' time, which I don't
mind as long as they're still doing stuff,
but for a lot of them, that's all they're
doing, and I can't sit there and say it's
wrong, because I went down the same
road, but it's different being on the
other side because I'm just sitting here
catching up. But now, I'm hanging out
with Ricky Barnes a lot, Lucero every
now and then, Duncan, Chris Robison,
and all those guys are cool. But a lot of
my close friends are still doing the beat
hammer, but whatever, got to move on,
there's always new kids coming around
that are into skating around and shit. My
chick thinks I'm a little old to be hanging
out with some of them, but oh well. Got
to hang out with the feisty ones, man, or
you just fuckin' mold up.
Tell me how Thrasher came about.
Well, Action Now was basically ruin
ing skateboarding, bringing in a lot of
the skimboarding, bikers, motocross,
and rollerskates, and Fausto wanted to
put out a mag with all skateboarding.
where everything wasn't candy-coated
like Skateboarder was, he just wanted to
make it a lot more real and then add
some music in there and keep it what
THRASHER INDEPENDENT
SKATEBOARD MAGAZINE
VANS
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skateboarders are all about, and that's where
the whole concept came from. It was all talk
one night, and then about three weeks later,
he's saying it's almost ready to go, and they
needed a name, and everyone started firing
off names, and then he said Thrasher, and
everybody was just going, "Thrasher would be
great. And it happened. In no time they had
the first one. That was the coolest thing of all
time, and everyone backed it up, especially
everybody from Independent, and anybody
who was cool was one hundred percent
behind it, and it just went off on its own.
What about when you made the loop?
The first time I made it was after about I
don't know how many eat shits, then we put
the bag in there, because I was getting my
knees drained everyday, and it was just too
weird. The ramp was like seventeen feet tall,
and the loop was only fourteen feet tall. They
had me design the thing, and the only thing I
could think of was a pipeline and a Hot Wheels
track. The first time I did it without hitting a
bag, I did the back up to like around two.
o'clock and then rolled and then went off into
the bag. And then they had the bag on the
very end, and I started making it without
eating shit and just sliding out. Then we
took it to the studio, and I made it a few
times with no bag in it at all.
What were you thinking at that point?
I was thinking I was going to be a million-
aire, man, because that show, the way they
hyped that thing up, they were putting millions
of dollars into it before it folded.
Have you got any final words?
Just that some of the kids that I've ses-
sioned with lately have got to get that serious
smirk off their faces and have some fun while
they're doing it, because time passes, and it's
like, keep learning all the tricks, but have fun,
because there's too much straight down time
when it's supposed to be a blast too.
Clockwise from top: While tailslides to fakie are all
the rage nowadays on the street, Duane's been
doing 'em in pools for almost twenty years. Croaking
his guts out with the US Bombs. Striking his Upland
stance of yesteryere, Der grinds one into the corner
at Kelly's. A pipe like the Glory Hole is big and
gnarly, and backside berts on the hang are pretty
damn rad. The Master leans on a way of life from
the fall of 1980. As for the acid drop in the Combi,
Duane ate it at least once before he made it-that's
four feet of vert with some way burly coping on top.
46TH