Chris Oliver interview.. The Artful Dodger.

October 08, 2007 @ 12:08 PM

Text by Pete King

Photos by Dom Marley, except where there’s someone else’s name next to them.

I’ve known Chris since he was a nipper, and I’m pleasantly surprised at how the urchin has turned out. Without the positive influence of skateboarding Chris’s life could well have turned out very different, as the buzz he gets from skating I’m sure he would have tried to find elsewhere and gawd knows the strife that would have caused.
He’s one of England’s greats as far as skateboarding’s concerned, and has a natural talent that you just can’t learn. If Chris was wired up differently, I’m sure he could have been immortalised in computer games and all that guff, but thankfully Chris is happy doing what he does when he wants, and not chasing anything in skateboarding other than the skating itself.
His personality is reflected in his skating in many ways. He’s spontaneous, silly and cheeky, with consequences never at the forefront of his mind, on and off the plank.
You could easily get the wrong impression of Chris, as his mumbling can be hard to decode. He treats everyone the same and is consistent with his genuineness. He’s always got time for his mates and he realizes there’s more to life than skateboarding. Inspiring to skate with and always a laugh to kick about with.
Raise your glasses please, there’ll never be another one. Chris the urchin Oliver.

So tell me Christopher, your introduction to skating was basically a side effect of you being a naughty little urchin, which resulted in naughty boys’ school. In hindsight are you glad you attended?

Definitely yeah. It was pure pot luck that my borstal was within spitting distance of a skatepark you know, and I met a lot more skaters who were more into it because it was in a much bigger town and there was nothing in my home town to skate, and if I’d stayed in regular school my life could have had a very different plot.

So ironically all your good fortune in skating has been a direct result of you being a naughty little bastard?

Some might call it naughty but others just see it as having a laugh, which was the boat I was in. I always had this rebellious blood ever since I can remember and its more psychological than just being ginger, it’s fully ingrained, and the groups I used to hang around with didn’t help, but that’s the reality of being a mindless teen in a town never seen.

What was the school you went to?

Slades Farm in Bournemouth but its more like slaves farm, come home on weekends, be in bed by nine, polish your shoes every morning and if you were naughty you’d have to sit facing the corner of the games room all night, pretty close to capital punishment man, I’m telling you- not good.

What did you actually do to get kicked out of school and put in there?

The usual, disruptive, obnoxious, incoherent to any teaching, threatened to break the music teacher’s fingers so he couldn’t play piano anymore, and I think the icing on the cake was soaking the headmaster with a fire extinguisher head to toe and that was it, bags packed and off to hell. Well, I don’t want to give hell a reputation but it was pretty bad…

photo: Deeli

You started travelling around when you were quite young, was that with friends from your hometown or did you break out on your own?

I’d get about with mates around the south [of England] to check stuff out you know but a lot of the time I’d mission on my own to various countries for contests and tours. I met a lot of good people along the way and as I grew older I started to realize how big skating really was and how willing people were to help you out with getting to places and places to crash. And everybody on the whole was older than me back then so you know it was quite a funny upbringing seeing fully grown men on skateboards having it and I think that’s what made me stick it out and realize it wasn’t just childish. Back then there wasn’t much to expect from skateboarding in the way of sponsorship or money. You just went skating.

Now that you’re travelling so much and skating professionally, do you feel pressured to perform? Especially as standards are rising so furiously.

Not really no, I don’t tend to get caught up in the whole pressure thing, I just skate at my own pace where ever I go.  There was quite a rise in pressure when I got offered a Blind Europe deal, but then I met everybody on the team and it was well mellow you know.

Do you think you’d have been shown the same hospitality by people on your travels if you’d been just travelling, as opposed to travelling with skateboarding?

Not in the sense of accommodation and being shown around no, skating’s a very alternate lifestyle to most and to be part of it is amazing, it’s taken me round the world since I was 17 for contests here and tours there you know and its been a long haul. There’s just this sense of humbleness and wellbeing about most skaters you meet. Whether they’re absolute drug casualties or set square athletes, they’re always willing to put you up. I think Oz is the top of the league for hospitality definitely. Everyone there is a bloody legend man!

WHAT IT TAKES TO BE AN OZZY LEGEND

A combo of someone with a cool cattle dog, one who is contemptuous of authority, one who is fearless, one who is tough and doesn’t whinge, one who sticks by their mates and more importantly one who doesn’t mind pounding a coopers longneck before midday. -Morgan Campbell

It’s a hard fucker that don’t take no shit and likes to get properly tanked, he doesn’t even have to be good at anything, haaaaaa, other than the above. Take chopper for example. -Jake Brown

It takes many things to turn a man into a legend, and it usually takes a lifetime to acquire those things. Not many can hold that label next their name, but those who do, earned it not with luck but by being true to their word, always reaching for a higher goal, never forgetting where they came from and most importantly always returning from the bar with a fresh coldy for the boy’s. -Shane Azar

With your cat like tumbling skills you seem to avoid getting hurt a lot better than most. When you horrendously hammered your knee in Australia, how did you fill your time for the year and a half you were recovering? Did you ever think it was game over?

That was an absolute nightmare mate. That was back in 2003, I couldn’t walk for about 5 months, spent the rest on crutches, claiming benefit, had a girlfriend who was mental trying to teach me etiquette, which wasn’t happening; smoking too much weed to ease the pain, which didn’t really help in the long run, so it didn’t pass with flying colours to say the least, but thankfully all emotions and injuries healed over and all is well. I suppose the only upside really was getting into making beats which dominates most of my spare time now which there’s a lot of in the UK for a skater.

Pushing it on a plank as you do can only last for so long. You do have a few Peter Pan issues, but how long do you see yourself maintaining your current lifestyle where riding a skateboard dictates your life? Do you think you’ll skate until you can’t physically do it any more?

I’ll have a damn good go! I’d say I’m at the pinnacle of my skating lifespan, bar anymore freak injures like my knee, but the way I see it is that my knee was so horrific, that it counted for a few years of injuries. And also I’ve skated a lot of tranny over the years as a kid which has helped a lot with balance ability, agility and ways to fall, and I think kids who are allergic to tranny find it hard to bail out of tricks and end up dying where you really didn’t need to. So I’d say at the moment there’s a good 10 years ahead to shred, fingers crossed, touch wood, cross my bloody heart.

When you’re not skating you spend a lot of time making music. Do you find it balances your life out in a way? Skating’s pretty hard graft on your body, and I suppose tinkering on a computer making music is a completely different buzz. You don’t often have a day when you don’t do both.

Nah, the beat thing has been a big learning curve just like skating, there’s so much to learn in beat making. I don’t play any instruments or play out live, I literally make beats on my computer with samples I’ve been collecting over the years. I’ve had a few tunes go out to some skate videos and stuff like that so far, so who knows where it could end up. It’s also quite a good sedative from skating too. Check me 1 time:

So what’s an average day for you?

Pull myself from my pit, pull myself off, pull myself downstairs, pull the fridge, go out and push a skateboard, try to pull off a few tricks, come home and pull out the pots and pans then lose myself in a beat. On average.

No real need to mention the lonely act of masturbation, but it’s good to put across your inability to know when not to say certain things, as that’s definitely one of the qualities that make you you.

Yeah I’ve never found a barrier for that, it just seems relevant in my head at the time even if it totally ain’t. Oh look at my bothered face…

Could you see yourself working in skating in the future when your ginger’s turned grey and you’re reduced to the occasional carve in a bowl?

Well I’ve always had a hand for joinery, so maybe ramp construction or something along those lines. I’m definitely not the TM or marketing type, that’s for suckers, but I might not be able to walk in the future so who knows. Or alternatively, I could get a freak million pound record deal, but I’ll leave that as a fall back I reckon…I might end up a Buddhist monk in Tibet? Again, a fall back…

Is there any places left you want to visit?

All skating aside I hear Basra’s quite nice this time of year, ha, ummm, yeah there’s loads of places: Brazil, Mexico, Hawaii, China, just so I can feel like I’m big. Anywhere tropical with warm waters is ideal for me. You know there’s nothing as good as doing nothing. And also I’m just down for new spots you know. Places like the Congo, Amazon, the Grand Canyon or any wonder of the world are all amazing places, but it’s not as appealing to me as say New York or Shanghai or any big city would be. I’ve got the rest of my life to see the world, but I ain’t got as long to skate it.

Are you glad you didn’t go to America for any length of time to give skating out there a crack? Chasing the Yankee dollar and all that.

I wasn’t really fussed about it, I was happy chilling in Europe. It would have been nice, I’m sure, it just never grabbed me as the must thing to make it in skating. Although I did go to Tampa Am a couple of years running, with you once, but that wasn’t really a proper American experience, more like 300 skaters in a sauna. I wasn’t that hungry for it. It was more just an excuse for a trip.

Are there any old mates you used to skate with who you wish had stayed at it? I’ve never met any other skaters from your hometown.

Yeah, a few mates used to be sick man but they opted for the high life of say a plumber or estate agent with a wife and kids straight away without leaving the town at all, because that’s what you’re supposed to do right? Settle down?

I don’t think there’s much danger of you doing that any time soon. Nice one Oliver. Now be on your way.

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