So, Get Your Mix Tapes Ready To Rock!
For the majority of rock fans, or really any genre of music, our favorite songs accompany most of our favorite activities. We take the radio with us to the beach, parties, sporting events, picnics, jogging, and so much more. The majority of the 80s and 90s were jam packed full of soundtracks from our favorite movies, and we listened to them non-stop. In some instances, the soundtracks became as big as the movies that spawned them. Singles (1992) was a soundtrack that introduced much of the world to Seattle rock, and a few years earlier was the Back to the Future soundtrack and movie that encouraged so many of us to get off the couch and see if we could skateboard like Marty McFly. For some of us, this experiment was a success, and for others, a miserable failure. Either way, there is great news for everyone to know. The world will soon have the chance to skate like McFly once again, so get your song lists and pads ready!
The skating world will go back in time this fall, thanks to a re-release of the skateboard that was made famous in the 1985 blockbuster, Back to the Future. Madrid Skateboards, in Huntington Beach, CA, has announced that they will be offering a thorough recreation of the original board this October, and for long-time skaters and fans of Back to the Future, this news couldn’t be more exciting. Founder Jerry Madrid built the original skateboards for the classic film, and he is heading up the faithful re-creation to celebrate 40 years of Hollywood time travel. This news inspired us to dust off our cassette tapes and dive into some of the music and culture enjoyed by the surfing and skating community as well as the story behind the iconic Madrid / Valterra skateboard that lit up the Hill Valley town square, some forty years ago.
Pre Order The 40th Anniversary Valterra/Madrid Board Here
Photo Credit: Jerry Madrid/Madrid Skateboards
The news of this release got me thinking about “skate rock” in general and what it really is, or if it really exists at all. I have known a lot of skaters over the years, but never have I known of a set genre of music that they all listen to exclusively. Instead, it’s more of a soundtrack that speaks to each person individually. One that gets their blood pumping and ready for a good skate session.
I was a nine-year-old who had just been to Universal Studios (Hollywood) when Back to the Future came out, and my first album happened to be Huey Lewis and the News “Sports” album. You could not have chosen a movie or soundtrack that would have beckoned me more to skate than what Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis put onto the silver screen that summer. I even started my journey by purchasing a Valterra deck and began my attempt at skating, soon after. My soundtrack added components along the way and included bands like INXS, Dead Milkmen, Metallica, and Pearl Jam, to name a few. Add to that all the great songs on rotation at Jet FM in Erie, PA and all the Rush I would hear at my high school, and you have yourself a very diverse catalog. And one that most of my friends listened to as well.
That’s all great, but I know that nobody cares about what skate music I enjoyed, so I thought I would talk to two great skaters who have had a profound impact in their local communities and around the world. One of them just happens to have made the skateboard that Marty McFly made famous and is happy to tell us all about it and the music he enjoys. The other has been shredding the streets of the Bay Area for decades and, at 56 is still teaching future generations about the music and sport he loves. There is a lot to tell, so let’s get to it!
Quite possibly, nobody has been more involved in the American skating community than Jerry Madrid in Huntington Beach, California. To long-time surfers and skaters, Jerry’s name is one that is well known and synonymous with quality and class. Jerry has been a fixture of the surf and skateboard manufacturing community since 1976 and has manufactured decks for just about every major American brand, at one time or another. His passion has always been about making boards for individual needs, not necessarily building a large distribution network. This focus led studio executives at Universal Studios to seek out Madrid for a skateboard they needed for an upcoming film, Jerry recalls,
“…we got approached from Universal Studios, because we’re one of the top brands at that point, and they wanna know if we wanted to join in on a movie, and we can do product placement. We had no idea what kind of show this is gonna be, so we said, yeah, we will split it with one of our mass market companies because I don’t want to put Madrid on a mass market product, which I know that would go if it became a hit. So, I brought in Valterra, and they said they’d love to do something like that, so they came in with us. It was both of us split the $50,000. $25,000 each at that time was a lot of money.”
Just like that, the idea and logistics for one of the most iconic skateboards was born, and it would see a lot of screen time at the beginning of the movie. In fact, the first introduction that the audience sees of Marty McFly are his feet and the Madrid / Valterra deck at his side. The skateboard accompanies Fox for much of the first ten minutes of the film, so the money for product placement was as well-spent as any.
Pre Order The 40th Anniversary Valterra/Madrid Board Here
Jerry got his start making surfboards in the late 60s and early 70s and has always been a resourceful steward of the craft and sport. In his early days, he would head out to the beach, waiting for the right opportunity to get some practice in. He explains:
“I grew up in Norwalk, CA. It’s about 15 miles from the coast. I would sit on the beach and wait for boards to come floating in. That was pre-leashes. The guys would be way outside the breaks and as they wipeout, the boards come floating to the beach. I would pick up the board and paddle out on the inside break and catch a few waves until the surfer swam back and got his board from me. That was how I actually started learning to surf.”
From that point, Madrid would put his resourcefulness to hard work, setting up shop in a warehouse that his father was not using and learning from the Southern California surfboard manufacturers on the art of shaping boards to suit the needs of different riders. He would collect the resin he needed to make his own boards by scraping the epoxy that the 55-gallon drum pumps would not catch and inch by inch, he built his own.
Once Madrid Skateboards had finally found a home of their own, Jerry continued making surfboards, but he also tapped into the art and personalities of the skate culture around him and encouraged their artwork and personalities to shine through.
“I didn’t want to pick their art form, so I would just let them go because that’s (their) feeling and that’s their vision of what they want to do…my whole philosophy with the guys was they were experimental riders and I would do different concaves, different shapes and have those guys test them all out. I’m a manufacturer, so I wanted to just make these boards like I did surfboards.”
Madrid’s approach to the music he listened to was much the same. He is a fan of almost every genre and has enjoyed this diverse soundtrack throughout his life. His early days consisted of bands like the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones, and continued to progress into more modern music like Red Hot Chili Peppers and other Southern California bands that came around in the 80s and 90s. He is a true craftsman and artist, and his support of others’ creative endeavors is what has helped Madrid skateboards thrive for nearly 50 years. This latest re-issue is a testament to his attention to detail and getting the aesthetics right in everything that he makes. While it doesn’t officially release until October 2025, you can preorder the Back to the Future Madrid / Valterra deck until March 31, 2025.
Photo Credit: Jerry Madrid/Madrid Skateboards
While Jerry Madrid was building his board manufacturing facilities in Southern California, a young man named Shane Reuter was getting his start at skating in the Bay Area in the early 80s. For his generation of skaters, music would be a very big part of their experience and culture. The early 80s saw the launch of MTV so music and video quickly became part of the skate culture and a big influence on young people just starting out in Northern California. Reuter recalls:
“In 8th grade, I came up from Fresno on a Greyhound bus wearing my Adidas black and red track suit, my Walkman, and three cassette tapes. They were (Led) Zeppelin 2, Prince: Dirty Mind, and Alligator Woman by Cameo…so that’s a pretty good idea of my background; a lot of rock early on. I mean, this stuff shaped my life, you know what I mean? It’s about what the music is and what it means…it’s part of your journey.”
Reuter quickly started to find his own musical niche by tuning the dial to stations like KSOL and KDIA and found his own music and more of the funk and soul that called to his taste. This introduced him to songs like Rapper’s Delight from Sugar Hill Gang, and bands like The Gap Band, Twitch, and the Whispers. All of which would soon be added to his quickly growing soundtrack, both from friends’ recommendations and his own digging for new music. As his mixed-tape playlist grew, Reuter started adding bands like Iron Maiden, Slayer, Celtic Frost, Public Enemy, Butthole Surfers, Naked Raygun, Morally Bankrupt and most of all Venom. By his own admission he was “full-tilt Venom at sixteen.” All such diversely different bands, but all part of the skating culture, and handed down from the older skaters to the younger up-and-coming thrashers like himself.
Photo Credit: Shane Reuter / Personal Collection
Shane cut his skating teeth in the late 70s and early 80s, following and assisting his godfather, who owned Smoothhill Distribution. It was during this time that he met the two most influential people in his young music-loving life, Geoff and Marc. Geoff worked for Smoothhill, and Shane soon found himself rooming with the pair, who were about five years older. Reuter was into Ice T., Eric B., and Mantronix when he moved in, but soon after, his playlists included a lot more than that.
“…it was a skater’s household. They hit me with the Replacements, Johnny Thunders, Big Black, Minutemen, Green River, Joy Division…they really blew me open sonically.”
He goes on to say,
“Those guys saved me. I would’ve still been listening to Venom without them.”
It is evident in talking to Shane, how much these two and their musical influences changed him and expanded the sonic part of his skating experience. That was the great part of pre-streaming music. Sometimes, you had to listen to someone else’s favorite band or song, and that allowed us all to enjoy more music together.
As his skating progressed, he would find himself working with several different skateboard manufacturers like Poorboy Skateboards and Pornstar in the 90s. These opportunities gave him the chance to create more video content for marketing and further expand his music library. Every good skate video needs a great soundtrack, so he would take this opportunity to incorporate the music he loved. Whether it was Eric B., Minutemen, Method Man, Kyuss, Jimmie Hendrix, or Jane’s Addiction, there was a place for all of them on a skate promo video. That is what is so great about the culture of skating and the community of skaters. There are no set lines as to what is good and what is bad. That decision is left open to the individual and his or her preferences. It really is a great community that encourages diversity of people and art. This also included the new generation of skaters that were influenced by the release of the Back to the Future Trilogy. Reuter saw the influence it had and remembers;
“That was really big. I was already going, but I remember brought a lot of people into skating… that really got peoples eyes on (the sport). That was really cool for skateboarding. It was still viewed as something not cool, then, you know…there was a huge influx of skaters from that.”
As time and skills progressed, Reuter would find himself collaborating with Skip Engblom at Santa Monica Airlines skateboards and many of the Dogtown skaters from southern California, and he eventually launched his own brand of skateboards, Ender, which was popular in the Bay Area and especially with Shane’s students. Reuter still skates regularly and has instructed the next generation of skaters for the biggest part of his life. That is probably why the influx of new skaters in the eighties has been so memorable to him. His love of skating transcends just being a hobby for him, it’s a way of life. One that was passed down to him and he has passed on to so many. After more than a decade of Ender, Shane collaborated again with Skip in 2020 on a guest deck with SMA. He incorporated the custom shape that he perfected with new artwork and it is one of the most enjoyable skateboards to ride. That shape will again be featured for sale this June and you guessed it, Jerry Madrid will be making it, at his Huntington Beach facility. This time, it will be released as Shane Reuter’s Official 2025 SMA Pro Deck and part of their summer 2025 lineup. Pre-orders are available until March 31, 2025, at the link above.
Photo Credit: Shane Reuter / Personal Collection
In the end, skating is more about a community and creativity than it is about labels and genres. It’s about encouraging others and sharing what you know so that others can enjoy it with you. There isn’t one genre of music that could possibly encompass the wide variety of personalities and talents that make up the community. Instead, skate rock is really just more about your individual taste and what you and your friends enjoy than any product you could buy on a shelf. Skate rock represents freedom and creativity and that means all music is welcomed, whether it’s from 1985 or 2025.
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