COLIN MORRISON
of our deal.” Morrison says. “We were
pretty much living the life of rockstars.
We were hot and everyone wanted
a piece of us. We did whatever we
wanted and said whatever we wanted.
We were pretty much untouchable - it
was hot sh*t!”
buying him some extra time as a pro
FMX rider. He soon found out however,
there weren’t that many opportunities
to make money just doing distance
jumps. Scummy started to realise
his dreams may be over unless he
stepped up and did the Backflip.
Freestyle motocross was on the up.
The sport was becoming bigger and
bigger every year. The heyday for
action sports in general was in full
effect and everyone like Brian Deegan,
Mike Metzger and Carey Hart were
taking full advantage of being the best
FMX riders in the world, and of course,
all the perks that came with it.
“I think it was a big deal for me to not
do the Backflip at that time. It was
definitely a showstopper for me and
everyone else who didn’t want to do
it,” Morrison explains. “And slowly,
slowly over the years I started to slip
away. Luckily for me, I think because
I was one of the OG’s, my name kept
me going a little longer than it normally
would have. I would find ways around
not doing the Backflip.”
A big turning point for FMX was the
introduction of the Backflip. When
Carey Hart did the first one at the
Gravity Games in 2000, the sport of
FMX suddenly became real. Now for
the first time ever, riders were doing
something that the racers couldn’t
do and everyone would respect it, no
matter what side of the fence they
were on.
Many of the OG’s struggled with this
new concept to loop your bike out
and rotate all the way around. It was
so foreign, especially after so many
years as racers where you were taught
to keep the front end down. This
evolution would undecidedly change
the course of many of the top riders’
careers. Struggling with the Backflip,
Morrison felt for the first time since
he started riding FMX that he had to
follow the rules and go with the grain,
so he decided to say ‘f*ck that’ and
not do the Flip. Instead he would focus
more on his long distance jumps.
“I was f**king over it. I had that ‘I
don’t give a f**k’ attitude. FMX was
becoming so organized and that’s just
not what it was about for me. To me
the beauty of FMX was that you could
do whatever you wanted and no one
could tell you what to do. Now with the
Backflip, you had to do it in your runs
and I was just over it.” Colin says.
Focusing on going for the bigger
jumps, Morrison kept his name going,
Looking for an escape, Morrison
turned to partying – and just like he
did on a dirt bike, Scummy went big!
He began using harder and harder
drugs and abusing everything in his
path. Back in the early days of FMX,
everyone partied, but of course the
level of tricks back then was nowhere
near what they are today. Partying
was totally accepted, but for some, it
became too much and completely took
control of their lives.
“Partying is just what you did back
in the day. You got more respect
from everyone the harder you went,”
Morrison says. “Ever since I was on
the Warped Tour at 16 years old, I was
partying with the hardest of the hardest
rockstars. That’s just what we did; we
partied harder than everyone else, we
rode our dirt bikes, and we put on a
show. Partying didn’t slow us down.”
Recalling one of the crazier nights he
had out on the road, Morrison tells us
about the time he was riding a show
at the Evel Knievel Days festival in
Montana. He was out all night drinking
and woke up the following morning in
jail with no recollection of how he got
there. The event promoter had to come
and get him out of jail and drive him
back to the venue to do his jump, still
drunk he says.
“I had barely even slept - straight out
of jail, I geared up and jumped 250
feet. Right when I landed, my bike just
bogged. One or two seconds sooner
and I would’ve been dead,” Morrison
says. “And I didn’t even care.”
Slipping further out of control and into
a deep dark hole no one wants to be
in, Morrison’s life was only just starting
to unravel. Turning to booze, pills,
cocaine, meth, and heroin, his life had
become so unmanageable, blacking
out and crashing his truck beca