When millions of parents bought their kids a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game in the late 90s and early 00s, they couldn’t have understood the profound effect it would have on their children’s music taste. With bands from Bad Religion to Papa Roach and Millencolin accompanying every failed spin and grind, these trick-tastic games slyly doubled up as the ultimate compilation CD.
While the Fifa games have an equally storied history with licensed music, those soundtracks feel impersonal – a who’s who of whichever artists EA’s associated record labels wanted to push at the time. Pro Skater’s soundtrack, by contrast, felt like being handed a grubby and slightly dog-eared handmade mixtape, still battered from its last tumble at the local skate park.
“Most of the bands were chosen because I heard them growing up at the skate park. I would say most of the original punk stuff – even the early hip-hop – that was my soundtrack to skating in the 80s and 90s,” Tony Hawk says. “I never imagined that I would be a tastemaker but, that was really just a byproduct of staying true to the culture.”
“Tony was very involved in punk rock,” says Chris DeMakes, frontman of Less Than Jake, before his set at this year’s Slam Dunk festival. “Ultimately, he had to approve the bands on his soundtrack … So that always kind of made me feel good about it.” The band’s Roger Lima adds: “The culture of skating and music is so meshed, it made sense for them to have a real soundtrack to it.”
For the bands that made it on to these games in those years, the impact was immeasurable. “I remember playing earlier versions of THPS and hearing some of our contemporaries … I hoped we’d get an opportunity like that,” says Hunter Burgan, bassist of AFI. “But I don’t think I really understood how big the impact was until after we actually were on the soundtrack. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me over the last two decades and told me that THPS3 was their first introduction to AFI.”
“Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater made All My Best Friends Are Metalheads a hit – as big a hit as if we would have been on 60 major rock stations in America … Probably bigger,” says DeMakes. “I talked to John Feldman [of Goldfinger] about this recently, and with Superman it’s the same thing for them. That wasn’t a worldwide hit, but it became a hit for them because of that game.”
When the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater came out in 1999, those grey PlayStation discs served as a punk rock Trojan horse, sneaking a killer introduction to the world of alt and punk music to millions of unsuspecting kids. A quarter-century later, new artists are featuring on modern remakes of the Pro Skater games, alongside the bands that shaped their taste.
“Those games fully altered my taste in music!” says Sammy Ciaramitaro, vocalist of hardcore band Drain. “They brought punk rock (and a lot of other incredible music) to my childhood bedroom.” Drain are now one of a handful of new artists that were chosen to be added to the soundtrack for the remakes. “I think our inclusion represents the growth of hardcore,” says Ciaramitaro. “I’m honored that we now get to be a part of this with Turnstile and End It, too. I hope that maybe some young kids will hear our songs while playing and it will motivate them to do a deep dive into punk rock music, like we all did when we were younger.”
Other bands who weren’t quite big enough to get on Tony’s radar at the time, such as the Ataris, spent their careers dreaming of making it on to the next Pro Skater game. “We were coming of age the same time that Pro Skater was,” says bassist Mike Davenport. “In 1999/2000 was when we really started to take off as a band and we didn’t even feel as if we belonged with the bands that were featured [on the games].” The Ataris’ track All Souls’ Day eventually made the soundtrack for 2020’s Pro Skater 1+2 remake.
Davenport says that the band used to play Pro Skater constantly on tour in the back of an RV – even, once, in the middle of a car accident. “My merch guy and I were playing in the kitchen nook one night when we heard the driver yell ‘look out!’ and then the TV flew at us, and we both literally batted it down with our hands so as not to have it smash us in the face,” he remembers. “Sadly the TV and PlayStation were killed, but luckily not us.”
Even though Less Than Jake reaped the rewards of being on the game back in 2002, returning with a different song on the Pro Skater remake decades later still felt like a badge of honour: “We’re a band that’s been around for 33 years, so we love anything that can propel us and get us in front of a new audience,” says DeMakes, “Everybody has social media. Anybody can upload their song to YouTube or Spotify or Apple Music now, it’s a different playing field. So how do you get noticed? Getting asked to be in a video game is perfect.”
“As long as there are people playing video games there will be an avenue to connect them with music,” says Burgan, “Skateboarding, punk rock and video games were a huge part of our lives growing up and were inextricably connected, so it seems like a natural continuation of that. For bands, I think the cultural impact is far more important and lasting than any financial benefit.”
Such is the lasting impact of the Pro Skater soundtracks that there are cover bands dedicated to playing it live – among them the 900. “We were really annoying when we first started the band, just tagging Tony Hawk in every story and Instagram post,” frontman Harry Shaw tells me. “When he followed us [on social media] we thought: ‘That’s it, we’ve made it.’ We never imagined that he’d actually come on stage with us.”
In a video that’s since gone viral on Instagram, Tony Hawk hopped on stage unannounced with the 900 in east London, covering Bloodstains by Agent Orange and Superman by Goldfinger, to a rapturous crowd. “[We’re] eternally grateful for him doing that show, and also just not being a dick about bands covering songs from his game, either,” says Shaw, “He doesn’t have to do this stuff, his name is so big within pop culture – like Ronaldo or Messi – he’s almost like a living meme.”
“There are five bands that only play covers from our video game series, and I’ve sang with three of them. But that one [the 900] was really fun,” says Hawk. “My appearance was a surprise, and they were kind enough to choose songs that I was more into. Yes, I’m proud of the soundtrack, but I can’t sing every song nor could I remember the lyrics!”
In the decades that have passed since the original Pro Skater games, their soundtracks have been the gift that keeps giving for the bands who make it on. “I actually just met Tony a few weeks ago at a music festival,” says AFI’s Burgan. “He is a true music lover and that makes being included in THPS even more special.”
While Pro Skater has gone down in legend, Less Than Jake believes that it could have very easily gone the other way.
“How many stars do we know that have made products or endorsed things that weren’t good?” laughs DeMakes. “But in Tony’s case, he had a really cool game that kids embraced and loved.”
“Pro Skater could have been a flop, it could have just not really worked out in the long run,” agrees Lima. “But every element of it was just super effortlessly cool and it was huge for us … I can’t count the amount of times someone has said: “I found out about you guys through Pro Skater.” Just look at the YouTube comments … thousands and thousands of fans that probably never would have heard of us otherwise.”