The Metal Mulisha Story – As told by Brian Deegan, August 2003

Love them or hate them, Metal Mulisha and its followers are growing at a rapid rate and gone are the days where it was only the selected few wearing a hand sprayed MM shirt, as now they are printed by the thousands along with bandanas, caps and hoodies, and they sell as fast as they can produce them. What makes the label so successful? Is it the name alone, or is it the driving force behind it that people want to be associated with? I recently spent some time with the general who leads the Mulisha, Brian Deegan, to get his story about the early days, how Metal Mulisha came about, it’s members, his silent partner Larry Linkogle, and the companies future.

Kickin’ It Off With That Ghosty 

I think through my whole racing career I always wanted to rebel but I was locked into the old-school mentality of racing, like following the rules and acting professionally just to try and get a factory ride. I mean I had the speed to get that factory ride, I just didn’t have the right attitude, as I just wanted to be myself, so it was perfect timing for me winning the L.A. supercross and then ghost riding my bike off the finish line jump. I was ready for something new, and I just wanted to prove that I could beat all those guys, which I really wanted to do for myself. Right after that happened I was in to other things, I just wanted to make something else happen, and it was the perfect timing for the birth of freestyle. At the time I lived with Mike Metzger and we both had the same vision of freestyle being the next big thing so we just put our hearts into it and next thing you know it took off. We were two of the guys who helped start it and that can never be taken away from us.  

Early Days  

When I first moved to California with the hopes of becoming a pro racer I would go and practice with McGrath, Emig and Metzger, and Metz was the only one that really would go off practicing doing crazy stuff that had nothing to do with racing. Like MC and Emig would be doing sick Whips and would find big jumps in the hills that would blow people away, but they didn’t have the vision we had for freestyle, and we’d be doing stuff like runnin’ around in costumes and being idiots, partying, and having fun, and we weren’t scared to admit it. Those guys were there at the same parties smokin’ weed, drinkin’, and doing the stuff that everyone does but won’t admit it. It just so happens that we didn’t give a shit and basically just let it all hang out, and we found a home for it. 

Metal Mulisha  

Metal Mulisha was originally thought up by Larry Linkogle and myself as a name for our group of rebels at the time who were rebelling against dirt-bike corporate ways. It was the original guys like Faisst, Twitch, Link and myself who didn’t really give a crap, and I think once there was a home for guys to actually be themselves it grew really fast. The original Mulisha compound was at Larry’s house, and back in the day Larry and myself would make our own MM stencils out of cardboard and spray the Mulisha name across blank shirts, and all of a sudden it really took off the first year we hit X Games by rolling up with this image of spikes, black, and military mayhem. It just caught on and next thing you know everyone wanted Metal Mulisha shirts. So it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out we needed to start a company, and sell this stuff to people so we can have a little money to support the kids that were like us coming up through the scene who didn’t have any support. I mean back in the day we weren’t really into pushing the selling of the cloths too much as we weren’t clothing salesman, we were riders, it was more like a hook-up. If we hooked you up it was a big deal, and we hand picked our first Mulisha guys to make sure they were gnarly. Only certain guys got the cloths, which were real hard to get, and we didn’t want to give the name to a clothing company because we were scared of what they might do to it. So in the beginning it wasn’t a vision for us to make a heap of money, we just figured we’re making some money riding so lets just pump the name, dominate the sport, and be ourselves until it grows. 

Taking The Next Step 

I remember in ’99 at a freestyle comp in San Hose a bunch of kids showed up in the crowd wearing spiked chest plates, which was awesome, and something I kinda knew would happen as kids love a character and we were characters more than names. That was our plan, kids can love the Metal Mulisha image more so than Brian Deegan or a certain name. I think kids are more honest than adults, they know what’s the real deal. Like we were anti-establishment and kids love to rebel so it was perfect. This was one instance that proved to me the name was getting out there, but it took years before I started taking the whole deal seriously. We kinda cruised along keeping Metal Mulisha alive until about year 2000 when we were getting so many complaints from people saying “Man how do I get it?”, and they were getting bummed out so that’s when we started to get a lot more serious about running a company, so we hired people and really learnt the hard way. We learnt through our trial and error of hiring and firing our friends. We thought it was cool at first to have friends running our company, but this didn’t work out too well so we got serious and thought, OK, if we don’t do this right lets not do it at all. Then once things were coming together our main guy who ran the show, Chris Ackerman, had a serious dirt-bike accident towards the end of 2002, which has left him paralysed in hospital until this day. Chris’s accident had a huge affect on the running of the company and I think it’s only now we’ve managed to pull things back together and supply everyone their orders and what they want.  

Deegan And Link 

Basically between Link and myself, I was the guy who always backed up all the talk. He was always really good on camera, he always had a good comment or something funny to say and was a great character, but people will only listen to you for so long and eventually you have to back it up. So I was the guy always backing up our talk, and then eventually he just faded out and disappeared for like a few years, went on his own deal and we all went forward. Twitch, Faisst and all the boys took the riding more serious to back up everything we said, and he came back around with the same attitude without riding and it just doesn’t work. The bottom line is people respect us because we ride, not because of what we say. I’d say the good thing about being partners with Larry is that I always would have the final say because I think he understands that I know what is going on with the business. He still owns part of the company and that’s never been a problem with me, and I’ve never had a problem with him sitting at home collecting a check, it’s just the day he came over to challenge me and my friends about the situation, it wasn’t a good move as I’ve always been known to be loyal with my friends and to give people a lot of chances, but after a while I don’t have time for bullshit anymore or anyone trying to hold me back. When something takes off and there’s a lot of money to be made everyone wants a piece of it, and know one wants to really do the work but they all want to reap the benefits. In the end though truth prevails and it all works out, which is exactly what’s happening right now.  

Future Of Metal Mulisha 

It’s been very hard over the last year with people saying to me, “Oh you’re selling out, and why are you selling to this store, and I seen these kids wearing it that look like dorks”, and it gets to the point where no matter what I do or where I sell the gear, I figure, if people want to think me or my boys are a sell-out, I say come to my backyard and watch us practice Backflip 360’s, watch us fight and party. The Metal Mulisha will be core forever, we’re not selling out, but we will need to retire some day. Right now I have a lot of good people that work for Metal Mulisha who I can trust and they work for the cause. They’re willing to stay an extra hour or two after work to get the orders out. It isn’t just a nine to five job, I like my guys to enjoy their work, be happy in what they’re doing, and most of all believe in the company, which I think makes a huge difference. I believe that Metal Mulisha is not even close to being as big as it’s going to be, and I plan on being around for at least another five years dominating the sport, and after that I’m gonna be the general of an army of freestylers who will continue with the domination! Brian Deegan.