Collect Call From Danny Webster!

Most skateboarders grew up with posters and ripped-out pages of our favorite ads from Thrasher, Transworld, or Poweredge plastered on their bedroom walls. My walls were covered in my favorites. And one ad stood out from the rest. It was directly off to the right of my bed, so it was the first thing I saw when I woke up before I hit the streets or went to the dreaded prison of knowledge. What was the ad?

The ad was a picture of Danny Webster standing at a phone booth, holding his new model, with the caption:

“If you charged over $2,000 to your sponsor and had to pay it all back through royalties, would this not be your graphic?”

Danny Webster, Skateboard Ad

I remember looking at this ad every morning and wondering what kind of ad this was.

I loved the new graphic. The layout was as brilliant and mysterious as the ad campaign! I understood that he must have made some crazy phone calls. But all these years, it remained a mystery to me. So I made the call to Danny… And no, it wasn’t a collect call!

SPS – Where did skateboarding find you, and what year was it?

Danny – It was a field trip, I think, in 1976. One of our teachers was one of the coolest teachers in the world! Organized a skate trip to Skate City in London. You had a test. You had the green test, where you had to kick turn on the bank. Then the red test, where you had to carve in the bowl. Then the black test in the big bowl where you had to air out the top of the bowl!

So we went down there to Skate City, and I got red and green, but I think I fell off in the black test. I thought, “fucking A, I like this and can do this!” So that was my introduction to skateboarding. The boards we were using were the Logan Earth Skis, with no grip tape, nothing! That’s the way it was, so thank God for that teacher!

SPS – So skateparks started to pop up, and skateboarding started to take off?

Danny – Yeah, I remember going to Andover Skatepark the first time. I turned up to the park as a kid, I couldn’t afford a skateboard, but I did have some pads. Steve Douglas was there riding a Caballero skateboard, and I asked him if I could borrow it! He was like who the fuck is this guy(laughing), but he let me go on the skateboard! I believe by my third run, I did an invert, and from there on, Steve let me use his skateboard all day! Word started to get around that I was getting good at skateboarding, and my parents bought me my first skateboard! It was an orange Steve Caballero, his first pro model!

So yea, skateparks started to pin up, and one pinned up in my hometown! They were mostly made of fiberglass. They were making tons of these “Ikea” type fiberglass ramps that were put together! There was no flat bottom then, just a giant fiberglass U-shaped ramp! They were crazy to skate. You knew you were reaching the top by the sound of your wheels on the fiberglass making a whoooom sound (laughing).

We had a couple of pros that would come out. Tony Alva and Kirk Talbot were some that would come to the skatepark! The place was crazy. You had a four-foot wall, like a four-foot gap, where that wall had 4 feet of vert! You rolled into an 8-foot transition, 16 feet vert wall of death! Tony and Kirk were doing cess slides up this 10-foot wall there. There was no way to skate it. It was like skating up the side of a building!

SPS – Who was your first sponsor?

Pacer Skateboards, an English company! They were like our generic brand skateboard here! Gary Lee and I skated for them. They made every accessory for a skateboard. I don’t think we made any royalties from them. They just flowed us our product…It didn’t last very long!

SPS – How did Gordon and Smith (G&S) come about in your career?

Danny – So what happened was Neil Blender, and Billy Ruff were sent by G&S to Europe to look for a European pro. Neil and Billy came to different contests in their search. The European Championships in Crystal Palace displayed every European that was good at the time! The Germans, the Dutch, and the Danes are all there on the ramp! Fortunately, I beat Claus Grabke by 10 points and won the contest!

Billy and Neil went to the British Championships, still on the hunt for this pro. Unbeknownst to them, this was my favorite ramp, and I also won this contest!

Some time passes, and the next thing I know, I’m sitting indoors, and a ticket comes through the door! My mother looked at this ticket and said, “What’s going on here? Where have you stolen this from” You know what mothers are like… No, I was like, they are inviting me to America to skateboard, Mum! She thought this was impossible, but after seeing some magazines I was in promoting this genre if you like, she felt differently! After riding my bike, I walk inside, and my Mum is having dinner and tea with her friends, with all the magazines open! “This is my son. He’s going to America”(laughter, No serious, the way Danny changes his voice to his Mum’s voice will give you side stitches!!!) It was all quite strange!

The next thing I know, I’m on a plane to America! After arriving in America, the first thing we do after meeting up with Blender, Ruff, and Paul Molina is watching Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom…(Laughing) My first meal after is hash browns! I thought fried potatoes…what the fuck are these people on?

The next day I had clam chowder, fuck if I can even understand what the fuck clam chowder is! I’m from England, “fish and chips, Beans and Toast” What the fuck is clam chowder? We’ve always joked as teenagers that a clam was is a lady part! (laughing)

I could not differentiate between English humor and American culture. It just clashed with me so hard that everything was just jovial.

SPS – It was like a whole new world to you!

Danny– It was exactly like that, and to approach it without any advice, you only had your consciousness to deal with it! Almost everything I did was humorous. I didn’t take life seriously. I appreciated everything that had happened to me. I couldn’t take it! I just had to take it as it came and tried to soak it up like a sponge rather than going into it like a diagnostic idiot!

SPS – Let’s go back to the plane ride…You already had your graphics ready for your deck before getting to America?

Danny– Yes, when I found out G&S were flying me to America to become a pro, My good friend Doug Cameron had drawn my mad scientist graphic for me. I put the drawing into my luggage and flew to America!

We land in America, meet with the guys, and G&S makes my board with the mad scientist graphic to my specifications. They put me through the factory, giving me thousands of dollars worth of clothes and gear! The next day we go to a demo. Neil, Billy, Jim Grey, and then Chris Miller showed up at the demo! So you have the whole Gordon and Smith crew skating there! I swear to Christ. It was the best I’ve ever skated.

They got this Lil English-type 12 feet wide ramp that we’re skating. Everyone seemed to be struggling with this ramp. They were used to much bigger ramps at the time! Me… I’m in my element!

After the demo, Larry Gordon called me into the office and told me we need you. You’re English, European, and skate like an American La dee da! So we discussed what they were going to offer me.

SPS – We discussed your mad scientist board earlier. Let’s dig into your other graphics as well!

Danny – Yes, the scientist was drawn by Doug Cameron. I had crazy spiked hair, so he portrayed me as a mad scientist. The graphic also had some features, such as the G and S in clamps if you look carefully. G&S also made an experimental deck called the Fibrelite with Neil, Chris, Billy, and myself’s names on them! We had to skate them in this one contest, to name the contest, I can’t fucking remember(Laughing). We were all given the boards at the same time. They were foam-filled fiberglass tops! When I first skated it, I realized you couldn’t feel the deck! All you could feel was where your trucks were under the board. It was so light it was like skating on a pillow! We all broke them. They didn’t go anywhere! I’m sure I’ve only seen 4 of them with my name! To come across one of these in any condition would be amazing.

SPS – Let’s talk about this phone bill!

Danny – (already laughing) There was a conversation with the art department with the artists for G&S Lyn and Erik Gordon. I was sitting there and had already gotten the phone bill from G&S complaining about all the collect calls back home! I was a bit homesick! I was given a number for them to call home with a code. You could call from anywhere with it. Did I take a piece of that(laughing)? I called everybody, My sister, my Mum, everyone using that code! I still have the original printout of all the calls I made. It’s about 5 or 6 pages long! The bill came out to over 2,000 dollars!

So I get a phone call from the boss about it.

Larry Gordon says:

“We got a phone bill for over $2,000 within one month. How are we going to deal with this?

I was like:

“Right, so what do we do here?”

I tried to take control.

“We’ll do a graphic depicting my absolute fuck up!”

And Larry was like:

“How are we gonna do that?”

Slight pause:

“Well, you’re mad at me, right?

Larry responded:

“Yeah. As a company, we are”

And I was like:

Well then, I’m mad at you for being mad at me, so that’s how the graphic came about!

Then I spoke to the art department. I said I wanted England. That’s who the calls were to. I like Texas on the graphic, where I made the calls!

“We’ll then do the graphic where I’m angry at you, and you are mad at me!”

That’s how the ad and graphic came about! They thought I was mental, but they did the graphic, and I swear, two weeks later, the debt was paid! The actual phone number for G&S was in the dial on the graphic! Everyone was calling G&S requesting the board by the Thousands! This was one of my best-selling boards!!!

SPS – Your following graphic, “The Hotel, ” tells another story of a successful fuck up as well?

Danny – (Laughing) My next graphic with the car and hotel in the background had everything to do with Ken Fillion and me. Chris Miller had just won the contest, and Fillion had won the amateur contest! Ken and I had a hotel room together. We just went nuts! We filled the bathroom tub with ice (Laughing) with 12 cases of Miller beer to celebrate Millers’ win. We invited everyone from the contest, and the hotel by morning was fucking trashed! So G&S found that out, and I got the phone bill call again (Laughing). So I said, “Let’s just put another graphic out depicting my fuckup again.” It took a bit longer, but eventually, I paid them back for the hotel bill!

SPS – Around this time, you decide to go home, and Deathbox gives you a model.

Danny – My Deathbox graphic was a tribute to my return to England. I was oblivious to what was happening at home, and it was time for me to head back! After talking with Deathbox, they said they would give me a model. This would have been the Monty Python-inspired graphic! I love Monty Python, so we made it like an English return, the red bus welcome home! In hindsight, ti my best the shaped skateboard I ever had. I skated better on this model than any other model!

SPS – There was a graphic that Neil Blender drew for you.

Danny – O right, you seen this? Yes… It never became an actual board! Neil drew this for me, but we never used it. It was fantastic. You can tell it’s Neil’s art! I sent that artwork to a friend that has it framed!

SPS – Aside from your skateboarding career, you’re also into music and playing instruments. How did this come about?

Danny – I was 12 years old, Christmas morning… My Dad had built this Lil stage in our home. I walked downstairs, and all the presents were there. The Christmas tree was placed in front of the Lil stage my Dad had built. I saw a blanket over the stage but paid no mind t it. I opened all my presents and went to walk away. I was a bit sad. My Mum pointed and said, “Look at that ” I looked over at the direction she was pointing towards the blanket. I pulled the blanket off, and under it was a drum kit…what I was hoping for! My Dad at the time knew I’d been tapping away on pots and pans, listening to the song by The Sweet called Blockbuster! My Dad said, “Play this song, son,” and I went behind the kit, and he played the song by The Sweet. I played it like I knew what I was doing! So this was my first experience playing music!

After the contest, everyone would go to the hotel rooms. All the guitarists would get all the pussy(Laughing), Gator, Christian… So there’s Steve Steadman and me, who played drums! You can’t take a fucking drum kit into a hotel room(Laughing). So I learned how to play guitar by watching Christian Hosoi!

SPS – So you’ve played in quite a few bands and got the opportunity to play with Anti-Nowhere League?

Danny – Two of my friends got into Anti-Nowhere League and needed a drummer. I’ve been listening to them all my life, so I show up to try out, and Animal says, “Pick two songs, and we”ll see how you are.” So I picked “Woman” and “We Are The League,” and we started playing. After the last song, Animal turns and says, ” You’re in the band Chavvy.” (Laughing) So the next four years were brilliant! From 1998 to 2002, We went everywhere!

SPS – Your current band Geezapunx just released an album called Old Dogs, No Tricks. How did this band form, and when?

Danny – Before the pandemic, one of my friends knew I was a drummer, and I had done a reunion show with my old band, the Insane, in 2017. So I had the drum bug again! So I auditioned for Geezapunx! Since we all are in our late 50s or early 60s, we wanted to knock off a thing from the bucket list and record an album!

So they asked me to be on the album, and we’ve done just that. It took like three years to complete due to the pandemic! We just finished it up six months ago! It’s like a mid-life crisis(Laughing). I stopped playing drums for 15 years, played the reunion gig, then got to record this fantastic album and be playing music again! I’m 58 years old now, and I just rehearsed this morning. I think I’ve done what a teenager would be happy to do! I’m thrilled with this album!

SPS – You just recently started playing drums with Rhi & The Relics as well?

Danny – Yea give us a like or 10 on Facebook, We just played our first show at The Hobbit on May 1st, 2023, It was a blast!

SPS – If you could go back in time, what moment in your skateboarding care would you relive?

Danny – This is such an easy question for me to answer… It’s when I won the European Championships at Crystal Palace against all the top Europeans! I won the competition, and the English people went crazy, making me feel like a God that day! That was my favorite moment in my life!

SPS – Thanks, Danny, for sharing all these moments in your life. As a young skateboarder, I would have never thought I would get to interview my favorite pro skateboarders and create great friendships with them! So I’m returning to waking up each morning and looking at the G&S Danny Webster ad on my wall. Life has come full circle for me! I love what I do, and I hope after reading my articles, you enjoy them as much as I do writing them! Check out Danny’s band, grab some merchandise, and the new album! Maybe with a bit of luck, G&S will reissue Danny’s decks…yea, I said it!