John Lucero: OG Vert shredder, Street Style innovator, artist, brand owner, and goofball. I am a Lucero fan. There is the classic X1, X2, and Jester graphics he drew, but there were some that I hadn't really realised were his designs. Bob Schmelzer? Mike Smith? Monty Nolder? We'll be getting into that...
These are three sketches from the Disposable book by Sean Cliver. The obvious one is the Jeff Grosso blocks graphic from 1986. The one I didn't realize was his art was the Sims Kevin Staab graphic. I dunno how I could have missed that since the style is so noticeable. The there's the Sitting Jester graphic that looks very much to be the reference for the X12. I'm not sure if there was a release of this art as a graphic, though. Definitely could pass. If you know anything about Lucero's history in the skate scene, you'll remember that he rode for G&S, Zorlac, Tracker, Variflex, Independent, Santa Cruz, Madrid, and Schmitt Stix before venturing into the company owner business. Yep. Total sponsor hopper. He was able to draw his own graphics for his popular Madrid model, the Jester Pop-Up, which was later called the X-Teamrider after he left for Schmitt Stix. Before that was his Variflex graphic which was drawn by XnO which was a full on bondage scene that got returned by a lot of the shops at the time. The story behind that was that he hand-drew and painted a skull with cross bones and bat-wings graphic that didn't get too much feedback at the trade show. Skulls hadn't quite hit yet as cool board art. The next year everyone was all over the Alva John Gibson Pushead graphics. Lucero tried to contact Pushead about doing a graphic for him, but as Pushead was too busy, he referred his buddy XnO from Tennessee to hook him up and the bondage graphic was born.
The Jester was one of Madrid's top selling boards around '85 - and when Lucero moved over to Schmitt Stix and released the X1, the Eyes Behind the Iron Bars graphic, it was proof that skaters were into his artwork. He had the biggest selling board out of the SS camp, even though he wasn't their 'top' pro. The graphic idea came from a sticker inside a Trix cereal box. It was almost identical, except for where 'Lucero' was, the sticker said 'Dungeon'. That graphic was generating him $15,000 a month at times. The Jester would return on the X2, by busting out from behind the iron bars of the X1. It was a great way to expand on a theme, and Vision (parent company of Schmitt Stix) was raking in the dough. As he was riding bigger boards than what the company was selling, and requesting to put out the bigger shapes along with more graphics he was developing (the red cross), he got shut down by Brad Dorfman and Paul Schmitt. That marked the end of his time at Schmitt Stix and the beginning of Lucero Ltd.
The Jeff Grosso Ragdoll and Blocks board is also highly sought after by collectors. Mine was a light blue but I can't quite recall if it was a stain or a dip. Sure wish I still had it, even though I skated the shit out of it!
Lucero Ltd. was at first a single proprietorship thing, but soon came to be a partnership with Steve Rocco and his SMA Rocco Division, which wasn't supposedly legit as SMA was Skip Engblom's Santa Monica Airlines brand in which Rocco claimed he got the OK to use the name to sell his own boards. Lucero and Rocco had formed their own distribution called Prime Time Distribution. The boards weren't exactly top quality, and so Lucero bailed and sold his shares in the company to Rodney Mullen. And from there he went with Santa Cruz to produce Lucero Ltd. Rocco continued to sell the Lucero Red Cross decks without Lucero's permission, which is how the 'Kill Rocco' Red Cross boards came about. Spray painted, even... The Santa Cruz thing didn't last long either, as they (Santa Cruz) were running into their own problems with the attitude shift in the industry from vert to street. And so he leaves the NHS camp and goes it alone again, only this time dropping the Lucero brand name and going with the name of the beer choice at the time, Black Label.
Lucero supplied the graphics for other skaters, too, like Kevin Staab (Sims), Mike Smith (Madrid), Riky Barnes (Lucero Ltd. & Black Label), and others through the Black Label camp such as Ben Schroeder, Omar Hassan, John Cardiel, Wade Speyer, Duane Peters, Steve Olson, Mike Vallely, and Matt Hensley.
Be sure to check out the Lucero graphics in the galleries section over at Disposable... There's some goodies in there!
There is a great John Lucero interview by Steve Olson in Juice Magazine, in Issue 58. You can read a portion of it online on the Juice website...
You might want to check out the mini Lucero interview from a 2009 post on Memory Screened which originally ran in Skateboarder Magazine...
There are a few images here from Vert Is Dead, notably, the two Lucero posts from 2009. #1. #2.
John Lucero got the Chrome Ball Incident treatment as well in this post from August of 2010. The interview Chops posted is rad.
I hope that guy from Wheelbite doesn't get all bent outta shape that I re-posted a couple Schmitts from his collection.... but then again, he hasn't updated since 2009.
Oh, and by the way, if you're still here on the inter-webs, you should probably check out the Marc McKee/Sean Cliver interview on Memory Screened....
Ok, enough with the long-assed post... I gotta go order that Alva Leopard deck for my gal's cruiser set-up.
