{"id":25334,"date":"1999-05-01T21:18:10","date_gmt":"1999-05-01T21:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=25334"},"modified":"2014-11-08T18:42:41","modified_gmt":"2014-11-09T02:42:41","slug":"glen-e-friedman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/glen-e-friedman\/","title":{"rendered":"GLEN E. FRIEDMAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

GLEN E. FRIEDMAN<\/strong>
\nINTERVIEW BY ANDY KESSLER, JIM MURPHY AND GREG EDGE<\/strong>
\nPHOTOGRAPHY: GLEN E. FRIEDMAN<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Black Flag show boils over into a riot; Jay Adams knocks coping blocks loose with a frontside grind; Public Enemy stands with the S1Ws. Pivotal moments in radical culture. Somehow, Glen E. Friedman was always there at the crucial moment when things went down; the images he captured are a visual history of our evolution. A published photographer for SkateBoarder magazine at age 14, Friedman had roots in both L.A. and NYC, and this bi-coastal perspective gave him the opportunity to be at the forefront of both cities\u2019 exploding scenes. Get your hands on his books Fuck You Heroes, Fuck You Too and The Idealist for some amazing photography and history, then go out and document your own scene. – TC<\/p>\n

What drives you to want to take a photo?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s kind of hard to describe. It\u2019s just what you like. You know when you hear it; you feel it when you see it.<\/p>\n

What are you listening to now?<\/strong>
\nFugazi, the Make-Up, this new band Asian Dub Foundation is kinda cool, they\u2019re from England, some Pakistani kids. There are different rap records out there I like, a lot of singles I hear on the radio that are pretty cool. Unfortunately, everyone is spreading themselves so thin in hip hop. They make one or two good records, and the rest are just filler. That kid Jah Rule sounds pretty cool. I actually shot some photos of him recently; we\u2019ll see what happens. I like that band Barkmarket a lot. I don\u2019t even know what he\u2019s talking about, but I like the sound of it. System of a Down is some pretty radical new shit. Mostly, I listen to old records. I\u2019m not an old fart, but I just like really good, great records and you can\u2019t beat the classics. In my opinion, I\u2019d love to hear new records that blow them out of the water. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t.. So I\u2019m still listening to late \u201870\u2019s\/early \u201880\u2019s punk rock, The Stooges and early hip hop.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s not all politics with your music?<\/strong>
\nNo, it\u2019s definitely not politics. If I shoot, it\u2019s more political, but for my personal enjoyment, it\u2019s not all politics. If there are bad or stupid politics on a record, I generally won\u2019t like it, but if it\u2019s offensive politics or something that\u2019s just hard core, like on some hip hop records, sometimes it\u2019s entertaining and I can deal with it. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a good thing to promote, but some of it sounds cool. I love The Godfather movies. I love some gangster movies, so why shouldn\u2019t I like some gangster rap? It\u2019s intriguing. It\u2019s interesting, but I don\u2019t necessarily want to help promote those aspects anymore. I think people got the message being put out in the late \u201880s and early \u201890s and anything past that is overkill. I express my politics through my photography every day. I called up Jerry Brown\u2019s campaign and offered to let them use some of my photos of him when he was running for president. There are political messages in a lot of my photos; a lot of the bands I photograph have political messages. In The Idealist, there are some political images that have nothing to do with bands. They\u2019re landscapes I shot in Hiroshima and in South Central LA. Those are very political images.<\/p>\n

How do you feel about film use and veganism?<\/strong>
\nI definitely consider myself a vegan and I am absolutely 100% conscious that there\u2019s gelatin in film. I have probably gone a lot farther than anyone else has in that, I would have to say. Maybe I\u2019m an artist first. No, actually, I\u2019m an inhabitant of the planet first and an artist second. My main contribution to making the world more interesting or even making it a better place is the way I take photographs and share stories and expose people to different cultures. To hopefully expand their minds. So that\u2019s the little sacrifice that I\u2019m making using film. I\u2019ve gotten three continents on the same roll of film. I\u2019ve got pictures of Australia and Italy and the Beastie Boys cover all on one roll, but, then again, I might shoot ten rolls a day if I\u2019ve got a really big job and I think they need a lot of images, but I don\u2019t shoot that much film. I\u2019m really careful; I take my time and compose the images. I\u2019m offended by the way people shoot film and over-use equipment. It\u2019s kinda wack.<\/p>\n

[After Greg talked to Glen, Murf and Kessler met up with Friedman and here\u2019s what happened next. . . ]<\/strong><\/p>\n

Murf: You were there when it all started with pool skating and the boys were innovating. What was it like being in the scene when that went down?<\/strong>
\nWhen skateboarding was progressing in the \u201870s, there was almost nothing to compare it to. In some ways, you could compare it to punk rock back in \u201882 or hip hop in \u201887. But the creativity and the attitude of skateboarders back then. . . It\u2019s hard to even explain, but imagine what skateboarding would be like before anyone had ever done a kickturn on vertical.<\/p>\n

Murf: Yeah. Who did Tony Alva look to? Nobody.<\/strong>
\nYeah, these people were innovators. They took stuff from surfing moves, then things developed on flat ground and then they took it to vertical walls. Like I explained in Fuck You Heroes, the first day I saw Tony do a frontside air at the Dog Bowl I went back to school the next day and tried to explain it to someone. They couldn’t even understand what I was talking about. It was just so out of the realm of their reality of skateboarding. Then, when Alan Gelfand came around four years later and did that ollie air. . . How do you explain that to someone? Now, that\u2019s the root of all skateboarding. I know people who used to ride pools and do one wheelers barefoot with no grip tape. It\u2019s shit you would say is suicidal now. The evolution of the sport is just something you can barely explain. That\u2019s what was so beautiful. It just kept on evolving every day. It\u2019s hard for me to get a younger generation to even comprehend. And why do they even have the interest, unless they\u2019re really curious about the history? A skater today could just go out and do things his first day that we didn\u2019t do for like five years, but will he have style? Will he even know what style is? Will he have any feel of the fluidity of cruising down a five-mile long hill and know what it\u2019s like to carve?\u00a0 How can you call yourself a skater without knowing how to carve? It\u2019s like being a surfer and not knowing what it\u2019s like to get wet.<\/p>\n

Murf: Hell, yeah.<\/strong>
\nYeah, it\u2019s the root of the whole thing. If you skate by yourself and it helps you express yourself and get rid of angst, it\u2019s still the same thing. You just hate to see people become followers. Skateboarders were leaders before. They did their own thing and had their own style and had their own boards. Everyone used to make their own board. You couldn’t even consider yourself a skateboarder if you hadn\u2019t made at least one of your own boards at home. Kids don\u2019t even understand how we used to have to put eight ball bearings on each side of the wheel and put the cones in. Putting a board together was an all-night affair. Now you just buy bearings. Precision bearings were probably the biggest jump there ever was after the urethane wheel. That\u2019s something that kids today have no concept of. Once you were able to get precision bearings, people were able to invent different types of wheels and have them out on the market in weeks rather than years. Later, all you had to do was pop out a wheel model and then throw in the bearings. Back in the day at the old contests, if you broke a cone or your truck fucked up or your bearings came out, you were fucked. Skateboarding has definitely changed a lot but the original attitude is still alive in a lot of kids who do their own thing. If they knew what was involved, it would probably be the most interesting story they ever heard. Especially for skaters because it\u2019s in their blood; for them not to know is a travesty.<\/p>\n

Murf:\u00a0 What do you think about all the new parks, pools and bowls being built?<\/strong>
\nPeople say that parks killed skateboarding in one of its phases but I think it\u2019s great that there are huge incredible places built just for skateboarding, but, at the same time, who wants to pay to skate? Who wants to be forced to wear safety equipment to ride? It kinda of takes that original edge off. There\u2019s just something inorganic about having to pay and wear equipment if you don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n

Andy: As far as all the skateboard magazines, are there any you feel are really worthwhile?<\/strong>
\nI\u2019d say that in almost every issue of a magazine, there\u2019s at least one good shot. I\u2019m not going to say that they all suck, but overall they do. I look at Big Brother and Slap. Those are my two favorites. There is some good stuff out there. I won\u2019t say that there isn\u2019t, but it\u2019s far and few between.<\/p>\n

Murf: I agree. Like in the beginning days of SkateBoarder, people taking photos – like Cassimus and you – had a quality in their photos you just don\u2019t see anymore.<\/strong>
\nWell, to play devil\u2019s advocate or to just give the younger guys a break, there was really only one magazine back then and now there are at least six of them in the U.S. alone. Imagine if there was only one right now. There were other ones that came and went during the time of SkateBoarder, but none of them lasted more than a year and the quality was far worse. But you had people from Surfer publications putting that thing together who won awards and were really talented art people. What Paul Haven used to do with the Craig Steyck DogTown articles is fuckin\u2019 masterful. He influenced millions of kids all over the world. If it wasn\u2019t for those articles, there may not even be skaters today. I think DogTown is what really set the tone for the whole success of and the whole rebel attitude of skateboarding.<\/p>\n

Murf: Yeah, be as punk as you wanted to be.<\/strong>
\nWell, punk came after that. DogTown, I mean. The whole punk rock aesthetic of skateboarding was always what people would call punk later, but Tony Alva and Jay Adams were doing that stuff before the Sex Pistols had even played their first song. It was being done in England a couple of years later but it didn\u2019t have the impact in America yet. Once punk rock did get here and started to have an impact, sure, it started influencing the style of people\u2019s dress. But the attitude wasn\u2019t changed much. It was just the way people looked and the music. People already had the attitude.<\/p>\n

Andy: Your photos captured a specific time, one on which people still reflect. Do you think as far as skateboarding goes that you\u2019ll ever capture a period as groundbreaking again?<\/strong>
\nI don\u2019t think for skateboarding, because I\u2019m not skating every day like I did back then. There\u2019s a whole new crop of kids out there. Why not let them portray it? As long as they really believe in what they\u2019re doing and it\u2019s actually part of their own lifestyle and they\u2019re not just some asshole out there shooting pictures because they want to be published, then eventually they\u2019re going to get good pictures. I like seeing a good picture; I can tell if the photographer really digs the sport and he\u2019s really involved in it. You can feel it. Taking pictures to me is something that\u2019s very special. I probably shot Tony Hawk\u2019s very first published photo and he was really special then. He was this incredible little stringbean of a kid. He was unbelievably radical for his age and for his size and I knew he was going to be big and famous and that he was going to have some technique. But just his attitude and the way he rides and all that. Now, I\u2019m so not interested in shooting Tony Hawk, not only because he\u2019s an idiot to do the \u2018Milk mustache\u2019 campaign, but because it\u2019s just not interesting to me. It\u2019s cool to watch people do gnarly airs and stuff but I could hardly imagine anything more boring than watching a half pipe. I don\u2019t care if they\u2019re doing McTwist McNuggets. I don\u2019t give a shit. Those are tricks for girls, like baton twirling, too much technical, not enough style.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying if you did one of those crazy tricks ten feet out and smashed your head, I wouldn\u2019t say that was radical, but I want to see some shit with style.<\/p>\n

Murf:\u00a0 If Duane was doing it, maybe.<\/strong>
\nNo, Duane was. . . you know. The funny thing about Duane is he had a lot of lines. He could do a lot of radical shit but his style was completely sketch. The reason he won contests and did so well was the excitement of him literally looking like he was going to eat shit and die, and then just pulling it off. He would get more attention for doing an air one-foot out and hanging up the back truck and still making it than someone who did a smooth stylish three-foot backside air. Duane just took it to the edge of death-defying. The fact that he did the loop was just sketchy. You never saw someone roll so unevenly on a board as Duane. He was radical, but at the same time he was so not smooth.<\/p>\n

Murf: Was that because he was so fucked up?<\/strong>
\nEven sober he was that way. When he was drunk, you could almost see it in his style. It was almost like those karate movies with the drunken master. In a way, he\u2019s not really drunk. His style is just sketch and I don’t think he did it on purpose.<\/p>\n

Murf:\u00a0 And Jay\u00a0 was super smooth?<\/strong>
\nSkateboarding to Jay was like walking down the sidewalk to anybody else. He would walk down vertical walls like people would walk down the street. What kids today would do on a curb if they were aggressive radical skaters, Jay would do on a vertical wall in a pool and fall just as much. He would break a board every day he rode and he didn’t give a shit. You look at the old magazines and you see the influence they had and you realize that he really had almost no sponsors for more than a couple months at a time. He never made a lot of money off it; he just skated and couldn’t be bothered with all that shit, even when his dad owned the company. He would put stickers on his board to make extra money for photo sessions, but he was just radical. He was the most radical skateboarder of all time. Tony is the all-around greatest; Jay is the all-around most radical.<\/p>\n

Andy: Tell me what it means to have style?<\/strong>
\nStyle in skateboarding is just like style in everything else. You just know it when you see it, but the main thing is it\u2019s natural. It\u2018s like when you pour water into a glass from a pitcher, it just has a flow; it just runs a certain way. Nothing interrupts that flow; it all just moves around itself. It just goes in and out and over the ice cubes. That\u2019s basically where style comes from, the path of least resistance. Someone who rides so effortlessly you can\u2019t tell that what they\u2019re doing is even difficult and they look COOL.<\/p>\n

TO ORDER JUICE MAGAZINE ISSUE #44, PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GLEN E. FRIEDMAN INTERVIEW BY ANDY KESSLER, JIM MURPHY AND GREG EDGE PHOTOGRAPHY: GLEN E. FRIEDMAN A Black Flag show boils over into a riot; Jay Adams knocks coping blocks loose with a frontside grind; Public Enemy stands with the S1Ws. Pivotal moments in radical culture. Somehow, Glen E. Friedman was always there at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4028,4034,4041],"tags":[4718,14462,5337,14419,10399,10397,3719,3864,10400,3818,14255,14260,2378,14262,10398,3189],"class_list":["post-25334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","category-music-2","category-skate-2","tag-alan-gelfand","tag-andy-kessler","tag-beastie-boys","tag-duane-peters","tag-fuck-you-heroes","tag-fugazi","tag-glen-e-friedman","tag-jay-adams","tag-jim-cassimus","tag-jim-murphy","tag-juice-magazine","tag-music","tag-public-enemy","tag-skate","tag-the-idealist","tag-tony-alva"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/GLENEFRIEDMAN.png","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25334"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48713,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25334\/revisions\/48713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}