KZAM GTB Interview!

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We interviewed KZAM before he passed. We are now publishing the full interview here for friends, family and fans to read…

Kill Pretty: What’s your earliest graffiti memory?

KZAM: I had a little marker, and I remember just drawing anarchy signs all over the neighborhood. I'd never done graffiti before that, but that's the first time that I remember doing it. I grew up in Palo Alto area and saw a lot of ORFN and stuff like that, MARVL. I actually met ORFN and he gave me a Pilot when I was tagging in the tunnel at the Palo Alto train station with a Sharpie, and he came up and he... I forget what I even wrote back then, but he came up and saw me with this little tiny Sharpie, and gave me a big Pilot, and he hit up ORFN and I was like "Oh, shit!" I'd seen him everywhere. And it was kind of cool to meet him in person. But honestly I was like 11, 12 years old.

KP: What was he like at that time?

KZAM: He was skating and he was nice. He was nice to me. I mean, he stopped us in the tunnel; we were little kids, you know, compared to them, they were way older. I remember him being interested in the fact that we were doing graffiti. I met a lot of writers as I grew up that weren't nice, and they were always trying to say, you know, "Don't bite my style!" or "You're a toy!" and all that shit, when I was young, a little kid. It was always cool to meet people that were supportive and inspiring. You know what I mean? And he was one of those guys.

KP: How did you even know, to write graffiti?

KZAM: I saw it, and I remember liking it. And I remember originally, I didn't know that it was letters. I just saw arrows and doodads as a little kid, you know? I didn't really know that it was letters so I made up this little tag with a pen that didn't really say anything when I was real young. And I remember hitting that up when I was really young. And I would draw an anarchy sign or something next to it, you know, a star, an arrow. But it didn't say anything man, it didn't say anything, it was just a bunch of doodads you know? And then I guess it was just from skateboarding, I think, because I was really into skateboarding. Just being around older, cooler guys.

KP: Were you seeing graffiti in Palo Alto? Or do you mean when you went to San Francisco?

KZAM: Oh, Palo Alto used to have a lot back then. And also my family's from the east coast and I would go back and visit them. And I remember being older, once I actually started writing, going to New York, and I was about 16. At that point I was writing KZAM and I went to New York to visit family and was just amazed by the graffiti. JA was all over, everywhere I went, and I was super inspired by it. And then having friends that went out to New York, and as time moved on- I got into GTB when I was 15 years old. All those guys were older than me at that point. But I met- CYLOE was my little crime partner back then and we just went everywhere and painted everything together. He knew EIDR, and EIDR knew SIBL, and eventually we all hung out and they asked me to join the crew because they'd seen me up. And I was intimidated but I was like, "Hell yeah!" because I'd seen 'em up all over the place. It was cool because they were writers that were different than the writers I knew at school and around the neighborhood and shit because they were nice. Well not nice, but they weren't all about beef. They were more about actually doing graffiti than the drama. So that was cool. They were a good influence on me, definitely. I met SIBL, I met TAPE, HINDU, DEPOT, ERUPTO327, NAO. And then EIDR, he was a big influence too. At that point I was going to the city all the time. I'd go with CYLOE a lot. We'd go into the city, and we'd go up on the 7F bus, and just fucking get off on the last bus and spend the night bombing the city and then take the first bus back in the morning. It was crazy but it was fun. Early on there was lots of cop chases, getting arrested and all that stuff. But then eventually I learned, I got caught a bunch. By 15 I'd probably been arrested six times, I think it was, for graffiti. But then I never have been caught since. So I kind of learned to run, or something. Something!