Danforth Interview

Photos by DAVO

Growing up in Detroit in the eighties, if you skated, you knew about Bill Danforth. Maybe you or one of your boys was lucky enough to skate with him--Danforth was all about the skating and sharing that stoke. His shaved head and aggressive skating helped him stand out from the crowd and my friends and I idolized the man.
When one of my friends asked me to help him pick out a board--it was Danforth’s because that was the coolest ride around at the time. I sported one of his t-shirts with an image of him doing a wallride and ended up shaving my head soon after— more out of teenage rebellion, but shoot—if it was good enough for Danforth . . . the biggest thing was this: here was a guy from Detroit SKATING and making a name for himself. He gave a lot of us hope—that we could transcend where we came from and follow our dreams.
Bill Danforth, the “American Nomad,” has been shredding his way around the world for the last twenty years. A Detroit native, his first pro deck came out in 1986 and he was a member of Alva’s infamous leather-clad skate team in the late eighties. He recently started his own company with Jay Kelly, fellow skater and tattoo aficionado-- American Nomad--and has Bill Tocco and Fred Smith III (“the Loud One”) on as team riders.
He took part in Thrasher’s “King of the Road” in 2005, does skate clinics for local Michigan skateshops, and is still constantly on the road.
His list of sponsors (former and current) is a who’s who of the skateboarding industry—Vans, Madrid, Alva, Tracker, etc . . .
He’s lived the dream, skating just about everywhere and with just about everyone. At forty-one, Bill is still ripping and representing. He is taking part in the All Nations Skate Jam in Albuquerque on April 29th and did a cover/interview for Concrete Wave last year.
Some of the younger skaters have taken to calling him “Old Man Danforth,” so let’s give him the OLD MAN ARMY treatment . . .

Tell us about the "King of the Road" experience. Personally relevant question: What did you think of the Louisville, KY park?
Sidenote: Keep ripping! I got a bit of footy of you when you were in Louisville. And even though my friends give me hell for it, I still love the "Daffy" 2 board trick - you were the first person I ever saw do that...
-Concretin Louisville, KY
Louisville is great--and King of the Road is one of the best experiences I had on the road.
More places need to build parks like Louisville’s—some cities decide to do a little park, which is fine for awhile, but the crowds and skaters will go to the big huge parks like Louisville.
Something pretty funny happened there when we were shooting K.O.T.R.—Jake Phelps was arrested for hitting a kid in the chest with a bottle rocket, but all charges were dropped when the kid realized who he was. Jake had to send him a bunch of autographed Bob Burnquist stuff after the fact, but . . . it’s a nice example of skaters doing what they have to do . . . and skateboarding saving his butt . . . because he pretty much paid his way out of jail with skate stuff.

first I have to say that nomad does the best frontside rock'n'roll I've witnessed for real and gnarly laybacks...
how long did you live in your car ? was it by choice ?
what's with skulls ?
you were one of the first people I've met with a lot of tatoos, hence skull tatoos, did you experienced hate from being tatooed ? what do you think of the present day where everybody and their sisters are inked ?
how was it being a member of the alva team ? from what I witnessed in Le Grand Bornand, they were a rowdy and funny bunch.... you were with BBC then...
one last word: you rule !
-El Gato Negro Bordeaux, France
I went pro in 1985--after a year of college down in Dayton, Ohio. I pretty much lived out of my car or slept on couches, in pantries, whatever I had to, to be a pro and to go skate all these different places. I had entered some contests out in California in 1984, including one at Delmar. I placed in the top three, so Madrid called me and said, "If you want to go pro, now's the time to do it."
I never cared to live out in California, though. I hated California and I didn't want to be tied down. What fun is it skating in the same exact place day-in and day-out? I wanted to skate a new place everyday, so I was pretty much on the road until just recently. I bought a house in the 1992, but just recently really kind of stuck to the Midwest. Last summer was cool because I was doing stuff mainly in Michigan and the Midwest so I was close to home.
The skulls imagery is kind of what skateboarding is all about for me. Skateboarding is blood and guts and so is tattooing. The skulls also set you apart from the day-glow crowd. The day-glow crowd is all sunny and flowery, which is the opposite of what I’m about.
I experienced some hate and distrust at first with the tattoos. Back in the mid-eighties tattooing was still an underground thing, not as common. People would just assume that I was an ex-con or a criminal because of the tattoos. Nowadays anyone and everyone has a tattoo and the ones I can’t stand are the tiny ones that are kind of out of view so mom and dad can't see them. The ones where someone decided to do because they were all drunk and now they regret it. I’ve worked in tattoo shops and even owned a couple of shops- but now I just ink up my friends or anyone that might want a skate-inspired tattoo.
I hated seeing people walk in who didn't have a clue-- and they get inked but it doesn't really mean anything to them at all. Just a bunch of frat-boys hopped up on testosterone and beer.
Skating for Alva was the greatest. Those were the best years of my life. HARDCORE. A bunch of really good friends, it wasn’t a team. It was a brotherhood. We came in as a team and when we left we left as a team, not like some other skate teams that were there to compete with everyone. We weren't competing against one another. Some people claimed that we weren't A-list skaters. To us, though, we were the A-list. We shredded, we partied and we got laid.

What is your favouite breakfast cereal?
Hovercraft or steam-ferry?
-Gazza Llama-llamaland, UK
I don’t eat breakfast and definitely steam-ferry.

Are you still pushing mongo?
How often do you shave your head?
Do you remember skating Dean Lane skate park, Bristol UK on tour in the 80's? And do you wanna come back?
Why does Wayne keep getting dogshit on his griptape?
-BDP Willllshirrre
I still shave my head. I let it grow out a little in the winters, though. I’ve got some grey fuzz going on along with my beard right now. It’s kind of a “winter skin” which you need up here in Michigan, but I'm shaved about 99% of the time. I started shaving my head back in the early eighties because that was me, that’s who I am. There were a lot of guys growing their hair out and everything, but I never did that. It was part of being punk rock to me.
If shaving my head and listening to Black Flag was trendy, then I guess I was trendy.
It doesn't matter how you push it--I guess I push mongo—when you’re riding in bowls and ramps, there’s not a lot of pushing involved.

I guess that means Wayne pushes shit-foot too
What set-up are you riding now?
Favourite cheese?
-Alec Woking, Surrey, England
I’m riding one of my American Nomad decks which is 9 ¾” by 33” with Tracker Six-Tracks, Ninja bearings, Spitfire Classic 60's, IronHorse grip tape…
Provolone is my favorite cheese.

Has skateboarding today got away from the "FUN" factor with all of the big business bullshit associated with it?
What were some of your old stomping grounds for skating back in the day?
Favorite pool ever? If you could resurrect one pool from the grave, which one would it be?
Would you send us a picture of you skating so we can use it for our next magazine issue? The magazine is free and we basically just show-case old farts still ripping to this day.
-OldManMike Tempe, AZ
It has driven the older guys into a tighter-knit group. 95% of the people that my company (American Nomad Skateboards) sells to know me personally. In the past, there were just a handful of companies, but now there are more companies than there are pro riders. I've been burned a few times, so you really have to be careful who you sell to and who you talk to. I had a guy make me some promises recently--he'd fly me overseas and all this great stuff and he knew all about who I was, but he thought I skated for Blockhead or somebody. He didn't know anything about me and everything fell through, so we're selling to people we know to protect ourselves.
The industry has been whored out the way it is now. Any kid could call up any shop and have their own board just like that. You're almost not really a pro unless you have your own signature shoe these days. A lot of companies are flooding the market, selling cheap boards to outlet places--that took a lot out of skateboarding and contradicts everything that we sweat for and worked for in the early days.
There are cheap products on the market that someone pushed out there just to make a buck. We should have quality American-made products and that's what we try to do at American Nomad. It's 100% skateboarding and it's not for everyone, it's for the hardcore skaters. The shoe industry is a racket and it runs skateboarding-- it should be the other way around.
These days you can get a pair of skate shoes at the mall. When I was in high school, no one had ever seen a pair of Vans before, they all thought it was some kind of specialty shoe, like I had some kind of condition or something. We had to go out and seek our music, our clothes, our shoes, but now it’s all available at the mall.
I started my own company and it’s geared toward the over-thirty crowd, primarily.
One of my favorite old stomping grounds was Endless Summer Skatepark, in Roseville, MI. I probably spent 360 days out of the year there. Even when we weren’t skating, Bill Tocco and the rest of us would be in the clubhouse, just hanging out. There were other spots after Endless Summer, but for a lot of us, that was the place.
There was a subdivision in Paradise Valley that was bulldozed to make way for the freeway project—“The Concrete Jungle”--one of the yards had this killer egg pool and you could skate from that pool right into the one next door. We’d just hang out and barbeque and skate and no one bothered us—we weren’t busting stuff up or setting fires so the cops were cool with us. This was an abandoned neighborhood because the government claimed it as eminent domain and they moved everyone out.

is Harry Boneless One still around?
-themutt Balmer, Merlin
I’m not sure who Harry is. . . but my good buddy, Gary Scott Davis, who was from Cincinnati, invented the Boneless back in the late 70’s though. We worked together over at Tracker and he’s one of my best friends to this day . . . who the hell is Harry?

I remember seeing a caption of a photo of you in a UK skate magazine in the late 80's that read "Big Booted Bill Banforth boing a Buntside Bifty Bifty" Do you ever still skate in big boots?
-discipleofsketch Bristol, England
I used to skate with boots on quite a bit back then—I had these monkey boots that were super-grippy . . . maybe that’s why my feet hurt everyday now, but it was also about making a name for yourself and getting people stoked on skating.
If people showed up to watch a demo and left saying, “that Danforth guy was skating in boots!” then that was a good thing. It was punk rock.

Define the term "punk rock".
and what does punk mean to you personally.
-jer Raleigh, NC
Punk Rock is my life. Growing up-- we didn't listen to what was on the radio. We didn’t like what was on the radio. We wanted music that was hard to find and it was all about the power, the raw aggression. Punk Rock is blood and guts, man . . . some of the bands that are out today were just little kids when the scene was alive. It was raw and aggressive and on the edge. There were a lot of people doing their own thing here in the Midwest like Negative Approach and the Necros who didn’t have as much exposure as the guys in California but they were just as punk rock, maybe more so.

In the annuls of skate history, what would you like to be known for?
-themutt Balmer, Merlin
I would want to be remembered for the fact that I went to cities and towns that didn't know much about skateboarding and educated the kids and towns about it. I would go back to that town the next summer and a whole scene had started where there was none before. These were little towns in the middle of nowhere that no one else had gone to. I also got to travel to countries I didn't even know existed thanks to skateboarding.

What's the best way to deal with someone giving you shit for riding mongo?
A.) a tire iron to the forehead.
B.) a steal toed boot to the prostate.
C.) a bludgeoning with a roll of quarters dropped in a sock.
D.) a large wooden spoon jabbed in the eye.
-Stalag 5 TX
The whole mongo thing really came up thanks to Big Brother . . . they didn’t have anything better to write about so they created this whole thing about the way some skaters push. They made me the poster-boy for mongo foot. When I first got started it didn’t matter at all how you pushed because we were skating bowls and ramps—there was no pushing involved with that.
Once we started skating street, you’d see someone pushing and only then would you realize, but it doesn’t mean anything at all. If I go down as the “Mongo Pusher” if that’s what people remember me for, so be it--you can stick that on my tombstone. But the controversy is one that was whipped up by some idiots because they were selling a magazine. There were other skaters who pushed mongo--Roskopp, Dressen . . . but I guess there is no such thing as bad press . . .

What would you do if someone kept putting dogshit on your griptape?
And how would you get it off?
-Wayne
I guess I would get a new board . . .

1) What's your favourite country to travel in and why?
2) Did you ever think of quiting?
3) Where would you like to skate that you haven't yet?
4) How do you feel about punk and skating having spread so far and across so many religous and cultural barriers, even here in Indonesia there is a huge punk as fuck skate scene, complete with it own hardcore bands and skate 'zines and companies.
5) How do you carry your shit around?
6) Wanna buy a bag?
-Jonno Indonesia/Thailand by way of the U.K.
1) Australia—it’s like one big a$$ Texas. The people there are really down to earth and are just REAL. Next would be Japan. I also like skating in Canada—a lot of those guys in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal are 100% dead-a$$ hardcore skateboarders and I’ve had a blast skating with them every time I’m there.
2) Never. I didn’t start to quit.
3) South America and Brazil, specifically.
4) That’s cool if what they’re doing is real skateboarding and real Punk and the corporate elements aren’t the ones pushing it just to make a buck. Indonesia seemed pretty sketchy when I was there, but that was back in the 80’s. I mostly just relaxed and went surfing at that time.

What have you been up to recently?
-mangadezi between the Lakes
Doing a lot of skate camps and staying busy with American Nomad. Bill Tocco and Fred Smith III (“the Loud One”) are team riders for us right now and we put their boards out . . . they'd love to do interviews if anyone's interested. I think last year was our biggest year as a company and we hope to keep that going. My business partner is Jay Kelly, who is a skateboarder and an internationally known tattoo artist . . .
I’m forty-one years old now, but I plan on skating forever. If there’s any way I can teach or encourage young skaters to skate as a living, that’d be great. I want them to know that you can actually do this--because I'VE DONE IT. If I can get kids stoked on skateboarding, keep them skating, that'd be great. You can travel, meet all kinds of people, and make a living out of it.
As far as the near future, I'll be hosting a bowl contest in Novi on April 7th (Modern Skate-formerly Vans Skatepark), the Skate Jam in Albuquerque at the end of April, then going to Switzerland and going out to Vancouver. But other than that, pretty much sticking close to home, just like last summer, which was really nice.