Johnny Layton Week: Exclusive Interview Part 1

Welcome back to the second installment of Vans Rider’s Week. This week we feature another Toy Machine team member and long-time Vans rider, Johnny Layton aka J-Lay. We start the week off with an in-depth interview covering J-Lay’s early days, his ties to Neil Heddings, how he won his spot on Toy Machine, who he pissed off by switch tre-ing MACBA, how he could have been a pro baseball player and his historic ollie at Pulaski. We cover a lot of ground on this one, enjoy.
(All of today's photos of Johnny were taken by the one and only, Ed Templeton.)

FYI, one by one, week by week, we’ll be focusing on all your favorite Vans riders. We’re working on Year’s Best Am Elijah Berle next and then Gilbert Crockett after that. Who would you like to see after that? Hit us up @vansskate on Twitter and let us know.

JOHNNY LAYTON INTERVIEW PART 1

How did you get into skateboarding, Johnny?
I grew up down the street from this elementary school and kids were skating the parking lot and bringing little jump ramps there. There’s a 3-stair and a 5-stair there. That was the first rail I ever did. I noseslid the kinked 3-stair against the wall. There was other stuff to skate there, like a shed that we would just roll off of. I think I was 10 years old when I first started. I remember this kid I used to skate with at school had videos and I hadn’t seen any skate videos. This was probably 6 months into me skating, up until then I was just doing what I saw people doing at that school. Then I saw Welcome to Hell and I remember saying, “Fuck! This is how I want to skate!” Brian Anderson’s part…I’d watch it every day. I’d watch that entire video every day before I’d go skating for the first year of my skating. From there I met different groups of people as the years went on and we’d skate local shit and then I started realizing videos would come out all the time and I started getting 411 videos and it caught on that way and we started to try and film stuff.


What town did you grow up in and what was that like there?
I grew up in Lake Elsinore, Wildomar, Murrieta. We kind of moved around a little bit when I was younger. It’s all the same valley. It’s just an hour northeast from San Diego, in the desert. It was cool…actually, it wasn’t that cool. We didn’t have much to skate. We had the Temecula Skatepark; it was an outdoor concrete park and the park just sucked. It was this bowl that was so mellow that if you dropped in on one side there’s no way you could even reach the coping on the other side. It was like a fish bowl. And it had a bunch of blocks that you couldn’t even ollie they were so big. It was more of a park for inline, rollerblade shit; I think that’s what it was built for. We had Wheelhouse in Hemet. It was a roller skating rink. They’d have bands play and they’d pull out ramps and shit. That was early on, I think I was 13. I’d have to catch a ride out there with some older friend. Or have my mom or my dad take me out there. My dad was always down. He would drive us to LA when I like 15 to skate spots.

Would he make you wear a helmet while street skating like some parents I’ve heard about?
No, never. He knew what was up. He wasn’t going to be like, “You need to wear a helmet.” My mom at first was all, “Be careful. Wear a helmet.” And we would skate Illusion Zone, which is some weird indoor park that eventually turned into a paintball park. And we had Ollie House. It was a two-story indoor skatepark with a big ass vert ramp and you’d randomly see Danny Way skating there sometimes or Chany Jeanguenin. I remember going to a demo or a video premiere and Koston and Jamie Thomas were there. We’d see T-Bone, Tyrone Olsen there. Man, he would mean-mug us. He was such a dick to us when we were kids. It was a really fun skatepark and I think that’s where a lot of progression started early on for me because I had that park at my disposal. The guy that owned the place sponsored a couple of us, that was my first sponsor, and from skating Ollie House all the time I got on Active. That was my in to get a job, so I started working at Active. Just being there and dealing with reps that were coming in and at that time really trying to film a sponsor me tape I gave my tape to the Emerica rep and I ended up winning some best sponsor me tape contest. That’s when they really started hooking me up more and then I started getting boards from Toy. But before I was getting boards from Toy I was getting boards from Neil Heddings’ company, Roll Model. An old neighbor of ours, when my dad lived in Wildomar, was this guy Jeremy Rogers, randomly, not J. Cassanova. This guy was an old pro that rode for Zorlac back in the day. He built a massive ramp in his front yard.

Front yard?
Basically front yard since it was all trailer park zone. It was like a 10-foot vert ramp with pool coping with an over-vert extension; it was gnarly. Naverette would come over, Sam HItz would come over and then Neil Heddings would come over because Jeremy was friends with all those guys. This is when I was in 8th grade. I didn’t do shit. I didn’t party. I didn’t smoke. Those people next door were raging so hard, doing so much fucked up shit over there and I’d hear them. I’d be sleeping in bed and you’d just hear them skating the ramp and partying. Shed, HItz’s band, would be playing. Eventually my dad told me years later that there was so much drugs going on over there. I guess my dad kept me from it. He’d take me back to the house when the partying started getting crazy. I remember Neil took me up to Seattle on this filming trip and I met Jeff Henderson up there randomly and he filmed a clip of me. I saw him years later and he was like, “Remember? You had black, weird long hair?” I think I was 15 at the time because I started getting boards form Toy when I was 16, almost 17.


Did you always want to ride for Toy just because Welcome to Hell was so influential?
Yeah, I think in the back of my head that was the sickest company to me. Later on I eventually watched all the Girl, Chocolate and early Plan B videos; I didn’t see any of that stuff until so much later. I think because I first saw Toy Machine that’s why I was psyched on that kind of skating. When I first met Ed it was so funny. I had my tape and saw him at his car in front of ASR trade show, in front of this 10-stair handrail contest, and I gave him my tape. He was so awkward. I was like, “Ok…thanks. Later.” I somehow got in the contest because my neighbor’s chick somehow got me in. I knew Billy Marks and Austin Stephens because I had skated Corona Park here and there and they’re like, “What the fuck are you doing here?” I remember Bill was like, “You better not do that shit!” He had already kickflipped lipped the rail and kickflip feebled it and I almost kickflip backsmith’d it and he was scared that I was going to win the contest. It took from then, from that day when I gave Ed my tape, like six months for him to call me. He never watched the tape. He said him and Austin found it in a box. I was like, “Oh, sweet.” They were like, “We’ll send you a box.” So I got a box with three boards. I remember it was a Diego deck with an Argentinean soccer player graphic and I was so psyched. But then I was so bummed when I took the plastic off and it was heat transfer and it was all peeling off. I was like, “Fuck! My first boards and the graphic is all fucked up!” And I didn’t get another box for so long. I was scared to call Ed or anyone at Tum Yeto and be like, “Hey, can I get some more boards?” I was out every single day trying to film so those 3 boards lasted me a week. Three months went by and I was just buying Toy boards at Active. Eventually I sent my footage tape to Ed and that’s when he hit me up and was like, “You need to go shoot photos with Mike Burnett, Mike O’Meally and Jon Humphries. Go skate with those guys and film with Kevin.” So I started there and then I remember they took Alex Olson on a summer trip and went everywhere in the U.S. and I was so fucking jealous. I was like, “Who is this fucking rat they’re taking on this trip?” Meanwhile I’m killing myself filming. I remember I went skating with O’Meally, Ed, Alex Olson and Harmony one day in Mission Viejo and they vibed me out. Even Josh. Josh vibed me out, Alex vibed me out. I was just trying to film tricks with Robert Brown and then they went on a U.S. trip, took Alex, they came back and were like, “We want to take you up to Sacramento, Anaheim and Oregon.” That’s when I went on my first flow filming trip with Toy. That was with Griffin Collins, Austin, Josh, Kevin, Ed and Deanna. This is before I smoked weed or anything. To think about it now, it’s so awesome but then I was covering my face with my shirt telling them I’m not down. I got a lot of shit on that trip. This was a 10-day trip. We came back and they were like, “Alex got two tricks on a month long trip, Johnny filmed almost a whole video part in 10 days.” Ed called me and said, “We’re taking you on more trips so shoot more photos and keep filming with Kevin.” I got some photo with Bradford, a front feeble, and he gave it to Ed and Ed was like, “We have a photo to give you an ad. But first I want to send you on this trip.” And that was King of the Road, the very first one. I met Diego for the first time and Ethan Fowler, Adrian Mallory and Gareth Stehr. I went on that trip, skated my ass off, went home and it was my 18th birthday and Ed called me and was like, “Happy birthday. You’re on the team.”

Was King of The Road the last test?
I think so. Diego called Ed in the middle of the trip and was like, “Put him on now!” in a way that Diego would say it like, “Fucking do it, Ed!”

That was 2003, how long before you went pro?
I turned pro in 2006.