Simon Evans - Shell Centre, London, 19991. Photo: TLB.
This is not the new R.A.D book article…
Photography by Tim Leighton-Boyce & Mike John
As printed in Issue 15.
OK, well I guess it sort of is. The road that led to the publication of Read and Destroy: Skateboarding Through a British Lens ’78 - ’95 earlier this month has been a long and rather winding one. Back in 2018, a Kickstarter campaign was launched with the aim of producing a two-volume set compiling a wealth of the visual gold originally printed in R.A.D Magazine’s legendary pages. Though the campaign was spread far and wide, and drew in a vast amount of support, the funds committed ultimately fell short of the required target, leaving Dan Adams - one-time R.A.D designer and now the magazine’s primary archivist - to return to the drawing board. Through the post-COVID involvement of ACC Art Books, the project was given a fresh lease of life, and on July 8th 2024, six years after the initial Kickstarter campaign was launched, the staggering 272-page hardbound Read and Destroy retrospective finally made its way into the awaiting hands of skateboarders the world over.
To celebrate the reaching of this long-overdue milestone, we contacted a handful of notable heads who either skated through the era when R.A.D served as the principal lifeline for UK skateboarding, featured in its hallowed pages, or had a hand in the magazine’s creation. The task we assigned them was to choose then discuss the one singular image from the sprawling R.A.D archive that has stayed with them over the decades. Understandably, narrowing down eight years’ worth of printed matter to one individual photo is no mean feat, and the results are not solely confined to the shots that have made it into the final book either, which further underlines the Herculean task that Dan has undertaken in order to make the project a reality. The material that didn’t make it into Read and Destroy: Skateboarding Through a British Lens ’78 - ’95 could easily fill another book. Maybe one day, it will…
Anyway, the following pages should serve as a window into what it was that made R.A.D the unparalleled cultural glue that bounded the whole British scene together from the late 80s through to the mid 90s, and should also serve as a timely prompt to head to www.read-and-destroy-archive.com and order your copy of the book if you haven’t managed to do so yet. This is not a practice run. There are no rebates. Read on…
Tim Leighton-Boyce
Jim Frost - Frontside grind, Weybridge, 1989.
Photo: TLB.
I like this picture because it encapsulates two aspects of R.A.Ds inclusivity which were important to me: that any skater could appear in the magazine, and that everyone looking at something in the magazine could feel they were part of the session.
My favourite features in R.A.D were the ones about local scenes. If you wrote or phoned to try and get us to feature your scene, there was a very high chance that we'd come. Very few people contacted us in those pre-social media days, and in retrospect, I should have made the possibility more obvious. But that might have felt cheesy. On those trips I'd always take some skaters with me. Most importantly they'd be there for the critical function of spotting who was doing what and gently pointing me towards interesting skating, but they also provided a backup insurance in case nobody there could really do much. I can't remember that ever happening, but I felt happier knowing that we'd still come back with something R.A.D to put in the magazine.
My memories of that trip to Weybridge stand out because what the Dead Cow Crew showed us was so remarkable. First off, there were two spots in the super posh St George's Estate - an empty (and rough) backyard pool which needed bailing out (I think), and a private mellow skatepark bowl which they had permission to skate because the owner's son had given up. We also went to the legendary banked Brooklands motor racing track. I was really surprised and amazed and delighted to find that chunks of it were still there. I love the feel of huge abandoned structures like that. Empty lido swimming pools like the ones in Neasden and Harrow feel similar, but Brooklands was very special indeed. I wasn't able to photograph skating there very well. I think modern skate photographers would handle something like that much better, and also video would be very interesting. I've seen videos of skaters on safari from one end of the country to the other [Land by Jim Craven], skating ditches and reservoirs, and what's going on in those, and the photography, is way beyond what I could do. I loved such terrain, but I never really got the hang of photographing it.
Anyway, the other aspect of inclusivity - using photography to communicate a feeling that the viewer is present and involved in the session - is particularly strong in this picture. I saw an opportunity to push things a bit further than usual technically. I think it was relatively shaded, which opened up flexibility in balancing the flash with the natural light, and the bowl was mellow, which made me feel that the chances of me causing serious injury by getting in the way were reduced. I hated the thought of getting in people's way, let alone someone getting hurt because of it. So instead of my tramline 1/15th at f5.6 formula, one of my experiments was to turn up the flash and stop the fisheye down to f16. This resulted in massive depth of focus, which I wanted because that allowed me to get way closer than normal. So I could sweep the camera along close behind the back truck and have that sharp as well as the skater himself. The lens was very close indeed. I couldn't compose through the viewfinder, but it was worth it because I could get the lens, and the viewer, much closer to the action. And anyway, years of using a fisheye meant I had developed a fairly good ability to predict what the view from a slightly different viewpoint would be. Sometimes I'd get that wrong, but this time it was good.
For me, the reason for using the fisheye was not to make things look more dramatic, airs higher and so on, although that was one of the effects. I was into it because of that inclusivity aspect. I believe that we can all instinctively interpret visual perspective and so people looking at the fisheye pictures get a subconscious feeling that they are right there, very close indeed, part of the scene. This effect is most extreme at a big vert ramp, where the picture takes you right up onto the platform, but I think it's there in other shots like this one. The viewer is involved, not a remote spectator. Everyone becomes a participant in skating. And that was the key to what I was trying to say with R.A.D. Everyone is welcome, everyone is part of this very special world.
John Cardiel
It’s really hard to pick just one photo, but I used to love skimming through all the old R.A.D Magazines and trying to find the old skateparks and see if they were still around and skateable. Truly amazing the amount of dinosaur parks that still exist. I really appreciate of the amount of documentation throughout the years, and I'm excited to see the book!
I remember actually seeing some of the old R.A.D mags at Thrasher and making some plans for trips with Jake (Phelps). I think Livingston was one. And we actually went!
Bod Boyle
Nicky Guerrero - Warrington European Championships, 1986.
Photo: TLB.
The Warrington Euro Championships 1986 contest article. For one, this weekend was a benchmark in EU skateboarding, in my opinion. I’d just returned from my first USA trip; skateboarding was really growing out of the dark ages of the early 80s, and the energy of that weekend still Iives in me now. Simply put – out of all the contests I have ever skated, I still come back to that one as the absolute stand up, for the most incredible energy all day, every day, for four amazing days. All of the EU showed up, the location inside lent itself to the most amazing fun weekend, and Nicky Guerrero was about 10 years ahead. The pictures of him… And this is going to sound nerdy, but the way he skated, his style, the yellow Converse, and his level of skating was so far ahead. The pictures of him from that weekend still live in the front of my mind as - for the time - he was definitely one of the best globally!
Neil Macdonald
Simon Evans - Bluntslide, Jubilee Gardens, December 1990.
Photo: TLB.
Simon Evans bluntsliding down the stairs at Jubilee Gardens is one of my favourite photos from R.A.D. It was the cover of the December 1990 issue, and it's just perfect. The ledge isn't waxed, he's fully locked-in, and his red New Deal longsleeve with those olive cargos were exactly the right things to be wearing at the time, just as skateboarding was starting to change and people like Simon (not that there are many people like Simon) were taking it in stylish, street-oriented, technical new directions. Simon's riding an Andy Howell board in this (Simon was on flow for New Deal), but he's got a Death Box Rocker sticker on it, as well as an SMA one. He's such a fan of skateboarding, and I think it's rad that he wanted to rep those other things too. The outfit, the weather, and the emptiness of the street was so relatable back then, back when Sunday Trading Laws kept everything shut and it felt like summer lasted forever. Back when skating with your mates was all that mattered. It's appropriate that Simon's 'I Can't Wait to Skate... Escape' article is in the same issue of the magazine, the article that talks so beautifully of the frustration of being completely disconnected to school, and only being able to think about skating. Simon was so much more relatable than some dude with long hair doing a big air out of a perfect halfpipe, and he seems like the perfect example of how - and why - skateboarding was changing in the early 90s, and this cover says it all.
Steve Douglas
Curtis McCann - Shifty ollie, Shell Centre, July 1992.
Photo: TLB.
I love it all: the person, the trick, the place, the sky, the graphic - “Eli Mint as I recall”. It oozes style and we used that image as the logo for the Underworld Element brand embroidery on the polos. It’s just class…
Samuel Ashley
Rodga Harvey - Rom Snake, 1989.
Photo: TLB
To pick a favourite photo from the pages of R.A.D is no easy task, and as the years roll by I continue to be amazed by the incredible foresight Tim (and the others!) possessed to be able to shoot not just the latest tricks of the day, but also all the other things going on behind the scenes; the contextual stuff that really gives you an insight into the world of UK skateboarding in the late eighties and early nineties.
The photo I have picked is of Rodga Harvey at Romford in 1989. There's so much for me to love about this photo; the golden hour light, the way the perspective renders the architectural form of the concrete, the way Rodga's style comes across even though you can't even see his board, but most of all - it's relatable, and for me that was always the best thing about R.A.D Magazine.
Mike John
Steve Caballero and Mike McGill - Southsea doubles, Issue 78, 1989.
Photo: Mike John
This picture symbolises so much for me. It was my first R.A.D front cover (or was it the second) - ahh first sounds better, let’s say the first. It was the Bones Brigade 1989 world tour and I was the driver for the UK leg alongside Shane O’Brien as the roadie. It was one of the best weeks of my life, touring with the legends getting paid by the UK distributor for Powell for driving whilst getting paid by R.A.D for photo coverage. Anyone in the photo industry knows getting paid is the hardest thing to capture. Anyways touring with the Bones Brigade made you realise that yeah, they were icons, but also real people. Steve Caballero was a quiet and humble guy, Mike McGill was exactly how you expect a American to be like, but we really got on, Tommy Guerrero gave the impression that he felt a little out of place as a street guy on a vert dominated tour, but the reception he got on non vert terrain was phenomenal and lifted him. Marc Saito was the am on the tour as apprentice to the big dogs; he was such a darling, love that guy. If you’re wondering why I’m not talking about the actual photo, it’s because to me my job was to capture the radness of the skaters. It’s always the skaters and their skills that is the most important thing to me. I always just want to do them justice.
Ben Powell
Alex Moul - Backside noseblunt, Shell Centre, 1992.
Photo: TLB
I genuinely struggled to select a single photo to talk about. TLB’s back catalogue is just so expansive and eclectic that it would’ve been possible to pick a top 10 and still feel as though I’d ignored huge swathes of massively significant images, which is a testament to both Tim’s work ethic and to the all-pervasive influence of R.A.D Magazine on the minds of all the eager children who encountered its pages.
I was one of those children. I must’ve first picked up the mag just after its metamorphosis from BMX Action Bike, during the period when vert skating still dominated the media. I can’t remember the first issue I bought but I do recall religiously going into town to ransack the shelves of Newstand, the only newsagents that sold skate magazines in my town, to see if a new issue had come out.
From the mid 70s to the mid 90s, skate photography nourished the collective unconscious of skateboarding in a way that’s inconceivable these days. Tim’s photos and the magazine that served them up made every town in the UK seem magical for every kid infected by a subculture that had absolutely zero wider cool factor for anybody not already a skateboarder. I almost picked a Ged Wells one-footed kickturn photo taken on the infamous Isle of Wight mini ramp. Equally, Simon Evans’ crook cover in the mustard pants on the Ronnie Bertino Think board evokes the post Video Days moment like no photograph before or since. Or any of Curtis McCann’s photos – possibly the 180 stalefish out of the jump ramp in some random carpark. Or Carl Shipman’s backside sugarcane on Chris Hudson’s vert ramp. Or Mark ‘Mad Snoz’ Snowball wallriding, shot from above at an early street contest in Sheffield back in 1988. Or Sean Goff rock and rolling in the pissing wet in some demonic looking abandoned swimming pool in Norfolk from the same year.
I could go on forever…
Instead, I picked Alex Moul at Shell Centre shot by TLB in 1991. Explaining how fucked it was to see this in a mag 32 years ago to anybody who wasn’t present during the earliest moments of street skating’s rise to dominance is difficult. If you were born after 2000 then this is just a photograph of a backside noseblunt on a medium-sized planter ledge. And that’s sound too – nobody’s expecting you to be hyped on Penny Farthings if you’ve already been on a bus, but, in context, this double page spread of Alex was mind-blowing. Whilst he absolutely was not the first person to have a photo of a backside noseblunt: that accolade probably belongs to either Matt Hensley and Daniel Harold Sturt or to Henry Sanchez and Tobin Yelland for Sanch’s sequential Blind advert shot at Embarcadero – Alex was incontrovertibly the first Brit to be documented doing this trick. Add to that the context of Shell Centre, which was featured heavily in R.A.D at the time (see Curtis McCann’s shifty ollie cover for example) and the fact that one of the most important spots for the progression of what was still an oppositional activity at the time was also the London HQ of a multinational oil company and we have something to celebrate. It's worth noting too that despite this being shot at a point when consistency wasn’t really part of the conversation, Alex could (and probably still can) do this one on command.
Photographically this is perfection. The lighting is beautiful. The photo captures the peak moment of lock-in of a trick that only a handful of people in the world could do at the time and he’s been captured halfway along the ledge, meaning that Mouly was locking into and sliding these during an era where ‘bonking off the end’ was the norm. And we’ve not even touched on the outfit/board/shoes combination. Formative-era Bench oversized cords and a Bench long sleeve married with original Half Cabs in the original colourway, which are not cut down yet as would soon become the footwear standard: we’re dealing with a photograph ripe with apex zeitgeist. What makes this one even more mental is the fact that on the reverse of this DPS was a single frame from a sequence of Alex doing the same trick but bigspin out. This is three decades ago, long before ‘being tech’ was part of the lexicon. Alex was living in the future and through the medium of R.A.D and TLB’s photography he was cajoling all of us to embrace what was coming, or be left behind. The original popcorn merchant will never truly receive the praise and recognition he deserves for signposting what was yet to come, but that’s how it is. Revel in your history. It belongs to you.
Nick ‘Zorlac’ Orecchio
Mark and Barry Abrook, Southsea doubles, July 1988.
Photo: TLB
The Abrook brothers! Skating all day, partying all night, somehow still skating the comp the next day. Or maybe not, on occasion! Simple yet solid tricks pushed to the max. I went to a Shut Up and Skate comp at Southsea skatepark in around 1990, and it felt like being part of a worldwide skate family. There was a massive pub crawl around Southsea afterwards, and our heroes were raging as much as you imagined they would be. I loved it. This cover shot symbolises and reminds me of all that R.A.D stuff. The boards, clothing, stickers, high top Vans, gaffer tape, pads and gloves, at that iconic, timewarp skatepark ... They are all part of the magic of this photo to me. The Abrook brothers, blasting their way out of the early to mid 80s, which was a dark time for skateboarding, at least in terms of participation. It didn’t stop them from having the best time. I thought it was killer that they were legit part of Zorlac, which was a pretty big U.S. brand at the time, and that they were flying the flag over here for it with no half measures. Also, it was amazing that so many rippers travelled from all over the world to the Shut Up and Skate comps that they ran here. An amazing slice of skate history. Here’s to skateboarding, and having a great time!
Felix Owusu-Kwarteng
Snoz - Rock n’ roll, Hillsborough, 1988.
Photo: TLB.
I remember seeing this image before I really knew Snoz, but his name kept coming up, and eventually when Rehab opened, I witnessed and skated with him a lot.
His bottomless array of manoeuvres making light of tight transitions that everyone would struggle on (and that he'd usually built!), quick foot mini ramp skills and stories that should be compiled into a book.
I think in the text for this Intro article mentioned his preference for the style of skaters who would give it their all for one trick vs those who can do a whole range, and that always stuck with me.
Look at the back foot placement! Is he doing a rock and roll, a tweaked rock to fakie? Has it been slid? Who knows with Snoz? Anyway this shot gets my vote!
Sean Goff
Davie Philip and Chimp - Livingston doubles, 1988.
Photo: TLB.
It was a pull out poster, and I had it on my wall.
I loved that shot. The timing of the shot was perfect. Chimp’s arm, Davie flying just overhead. The pool looked amazing in it. What wasn't to love about it?
Geoff Rowley
I’d been reading and buying R.A.D Magazine since I started skating, around 1988-89. I would buy it from the newsagents store I had my newspaper round at; it was hard to get US mags near where I lived, so often I saw the UK mags first and more frequently. The volume of work and skate history in the pages of this book gives me goosebumps. It shows a vital piece of skateboard culture and how UK skating has had an impact on skateboarding as a whole. Thank you for sharing this with us all. Read and Destroy!
Eric Dressen
Eric Dressen - Frontside grind, London Southbank, 1987.
Photo: TLB.
Tony Coffey, the owner of Roller Mania in Bristol, had brought me out to England for my first time overseas. He had a Jimmy’Z booth at a London trade show. After it was over we ended up at Southbank with some skaters. What I really remember from that night, it was freezing cold and I took a gnarly hipper trying to grind the wall. Southbank was a dream skate spot come true; I had so much fun skating that night. I was so stoked getting to skate so many rad spots on that trip, and R.A.D was there to document it. Great photos and memories!
Mike Manzoori
Curtis McCann - Melon, Meanwhile 2, 1990.
Photo: TLB.
When asked to pick one photo from R.A.D Magazine to talk about, this image instantly came to mind: Curtis McCann blasting a melon on this centre spread from December 1990. Anyone who was lucky enough to be around back then and witness Curtis skate will most likely agree he was beyond gifted and dripping with style. This glorious photo - by the great Tim Leighton Boyce - perfectly captures his masterful control, which was lightyears ahead of everyone else. Two of the best in their fields, joining forces and resulting in pure gold. I am so thankful to have been around Curtis and Tim during this era because they both remain a huge inspiration to this day. Last night I saw Dan Adams and he gave me a sneak preview of the book, which is packed with so many great photos. As I flicked through all the great skaters - Simon Evans, Tom Penny et al - I began to question my selection… until I turned to this photo and it hit me just like the first time. Huge thanks to Tim Leighton Boyce, Vernon Adams, Ian Lawson, Gavin Hills (RIP), Mike John, Dan Adams, Dobie Campbell, Andy Horsley, Wig Worland, and everyone who was involved in the magazine and now the book. You inspired a generation.
Comentarios