Glory Bound

Frank151: How many years have you done Gumball now, Mike?
Mike Vallely: I did one Gumball rally total. I did it in 2006.

F151: Can you tell us about your history with Gumball?
MV: Tony Hawk was asked to do the Gumball rally. Then Max had the idea of surrounding him with some other action-sports athletes—skaters, BMX guys. Tony reached out to me and said, “Hey man, would you wanna ride shotgun with me in the Gumball rally?” I was like, “Hell yeah.” I’m always open to a new experience, and this sounded like an amazing opportunity. It turned out being Tony Hawk, myself, and Rooftop.
F151: How was it riding with Tony?
MV: It was cool. The guy is so electronically inclined. I’m driving 150 miles per hour—which I’d never done prior to this moment—and it’s not a closed track, it’s the open road. I’m barreling down the highway and he’s on his Sidekick, just boop-boop-boop-boop. I guess that just shows he trusted me, to some extent.
F151: He wasn’t navigating for you?
MV: At times, but…
F151: He was navigating the web.
MV: Yeah. He was navigating the web.
F151: I worked with Tony on a little film called Gleaming the Cube.
MV: Oh yeah. I remember that.
F151: I was a fake skate guru called Yabbo. They put these metal diamond plates on the top of the board. I kept telling ’em, “I think it will make it slower.” They said, “But it looks good. Shut up and keep doing it. We’re paying you.”
MV: That was a badass board, I thought.

F151: So what kind of car did you and Tony drive?
MV: We had a Jeep Grand Cherokee or something. It was a street-racing SRT8.

F151: You started off in London?
MV: You blast out of London. Some of the cars never made it out of London. Guys got pulled over, arrested, cars were  impounded.

High speeds. Not cool to drive like that in the UK. Outside of the UK, most of Europe, it’s not cool to drive that fast, but you just have to pay a fine. I got stopped in Austria going 150, and they took my credit card, ran that sucker up, and said, “Go ahead.”

In Thailand no one got pulled over. No one got arrested. It depends on where you go in the world. Some people welcomed us with open arms and got outta the way and said, “Go! Go! Go! Go!” Other places, they looked at it as a moneymaking opportunity. And then some places like the US and the UK, they don’t give a shit, they don’t give a fuck, you’re going to jail.

F151: Did you take a board with you on the rally?
MV: Yes, of course. Unfortunately, I was just recovering from a broken leg. I couldn’t do shit. But, we got out and skated in France, we skated in Thailand. We skated quite a bit in Thailand, actually. The main session we skated was in Salt Lake City. We went to a skatepark and had a really good session there.
F151: Was that a planned activity, or just on the fly?  
MV: It was on the fly. Part of our mission was to get some skating done on the Gumball rally, if at all possible. It was hard to pull off and accomplish the objectives of the rally, which was to make it to a certain city in a certain amount of time and go to this certain party.

F151: Backing up, what inspired you to become a skateboarder? When did you start?
MV: I started in 1984. My life prior to discovering skateboarding is pretty much nonexistent. There was some life lived, but it wasn’t until I started skating that I felt like I really became alive. I saw Thrasher magazine, I opened it up, and it was life changing.
F151: What issue?
MV: It was the September ’84 issue, Natas Kaupas on the cover.
F151: We used to take baths together. We went to Washington Elementary School, Natas Kaupas and I.
MV: That’s cool. Natas’ mom was cool, too.

F151: When did you start getting competitive in skateboarding, and what made you want to compete?
MV: I never really looked at it as competitive. I skated in competitions and I did well, but I think I was more driven by a love and a passion for what I was doing, as opposed to a cutthroat desire to beat somebody. I just wanted to express myself and express my skating at the highest level possible. Getting first place was sometimes a result of that.

But at a certain point, once skating became ultra competitive, I bowed out of the competition scene, ’cause it never really spoke to me. When it was about fun and expression and more of a creative pursuit, I really excelled in that environment. But when it became compulsory tricks, more like gymnastics than skateboarding, I just didn’t vibe on it anymore.

I never practiced, I never trained, I never looked at it as a sport. When people started barking at me—my sponsors, my “handlers”—like, “You gotta do this! You gotta do this!” I was like, “Wait a second…who fucking makes the rules around here? I didn’t get into this for no fucking rules,”
ya know?
F151: When you have handlers as a skateboarder, can you choose if they’re girls or guys?
MV: [Laughs] Well, in the ’80s they chose me. I didn’t have a choice in that. I got on Powell Peralta, I was on the Bones Brigade, and I had people startin’ to try to manage my career.

F151: Can you talk a little about your style of skating?
MV: A lot of it relates back to the kind of skating I did when I started, which was a lot of jump ramp and wall rides and hand plants and foot plants. That’s the stuff I vibed on when I started. I still vibe on it to this day. I like a lot of the more modern skating, too. I like the aesthetic of it. But for me, after skating for some 25 years, I just like to do what I like to do. I don’t wanna try and have to play keep-up with anybody.

A lot of people think the style of skating I do is the only style of skating I can do. No, it’s actually a choice I make to skate a certain way. But at the same time, yes, it does also flow naturally out of me. It’s something I participated in the birth of. I gave birth to some of these tricks and some of this style, so it comes very natural to me. It’s just my brand of skating.

F151: Is it true that you have a tattoo of Burt Reynolds?
MV: Yeah. You want to see it?...
F151: What’s that from?
MV: It’s from the movie Hooper.
F151: You like Hooper? I like Gator.
MV: Gator’s good, too.
F151: Hooper was my first favorite, until I discovered Gator.
MV: Hooper was cool for me, man. I always wanted to be a stuntman when I was a kid, and then boom, this movie comes out, and it’s all about glorifying the life of a stuntman.

F151: Aside from skating, what have you branched off into?
MV: I’ve done some movie work lately. That’s been pretty cool and fun for me. It’s a whole different thing. I didn’t really actively pursue it, but once I started doing it, I enjoyed the process. I worked on this movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop with Kevin James, and I was there for the entire production of the film.
F151: What did you do?
MV: I played a bad guy who takes over the shopping mall. Myself and a couple other guys, our roles were fairly integral to the storyline. It was cool. It wasn’t just being a skateboarder in a movie. It was actually playing a role and it had me there for two months. I got to do some killer stunts, which I was super excited about.

F151: I know you make music, too. Tell us about your musical background and your bands.
MV: I really got into skateboarding through punk-rock music. For me, the two things have always gone hand
in hand.

I started my first band in early 2002 and have been active in the music scene since then. I’ve put a lot of miles down between my two bands, Mike V and the Rats, and Revolution Mother, and it’s been a lot of fun.

My latest music project is a Black Flag and Minor Threat tribute band called Mike Vallely / By The Sword. The first record I ever bought was Black Flag’s My War and the first show I ever saw was Black Flag at City Gardens in Trenton, New Jersey in October of ’84. I just knew when I saw Black Flag that whatever I did from that day forward, whatever I was going to do with the rest of my life, I was going to do it with intensity.

Mike Vallely / By The Sword has  been gigging quite a bit lately and the response has been tremendous. People really vibe on hearing this music live and I feel I’m able to present it with some relevance.

www.mikevallely.com