As a kid I was always drawing letters, way before graffiti came along. I was really into drawing band logos and copying packaging logos.
Things like heavy metal record covers, funfair art and the graphic design of the days. It was not until the Winter of ’83 when hip hop first came to Europe that I saw the first graffiti in my town, an ‘Electro’ piece by an older kid.
I was 13 years old at the time. In the UK in the 80’s there was a big explosion of American youth cultures – BMX bikes, skateboarding, roller hockey, breakdancing, electro music and graffiti just kind of fitted in there amongst it all. It caught my eye straight away, because it was letters, colors and art, and I had been doing all that kind of stuff prolifically already.
I knew straight away, I wanted to do it, but it didn’t happen immediately, because Subway Art hadn’t come out yet. Subway Art was the first thing, that showed you the process a little bit. We made a few crude attempts before that, we would sketch up the outlines and then try to fill-in, approaching everything the wrong way. We didn’t know anything at the time, so we were learning about which paint was good, and which paint was terrible, because everything was car paint at that time (laughs). It was a real learning curve.