The Albion Issue 6

James Hudson - Editor and Publisher - 1991 to 1992 BMX Now 1991 - 1992 Frequency - Quarterly BMX Now only lasted six issues during the early 90s. It was a time when BMX was at a low, yet James Hudson, the magazines editor, was confident that even in austere times, BMXers would support a magazine documenting a largely unseen Northern scene. BMX Now was important for a number of reasons, it was the first ‘challenge’ against the growing popularity of Invert (and subsequently Ride UK) and also where a young Will Smyth cut his teeth before amicably moving ont o start Dig in 1993. Sadly, BMX Now proved to be too much of burden on James Hudson, so laden with debt in 1992 James called it a day and bowed out of the UK BMX magazine industry.

Albion: How did you come to be the editor at BMX Now? James: At the time I was a professional BMXer but had also recently been the editor of a skate magazine for about six months right after I finished riding my bike in the circus. When the skate mag was closed down by the publisher he suggested I should start my own magazine.

What made you want to make a BMX magazine at that time?

There was just one BMX mag at the time called Invert and many of us felt it was not really representative of the whole UK scene. It was based on the south coast and also had relationships with some riders/teams/sponsors/politics that people often felt were over-represented in the magazine. I definitely felt that there was room for another voice and other riders and companies agreed. The intention was never to take over or compete with what Invert did, but just have another angle and show other scenes. RAD (formerly BMX Action Bike) did occasionally have some bike stuff in but they’d become a really full on skate magazine by then.

Did you feel that BMX was coming out of a slump in the early 90s and you saw an opportunity to create a magazine that could grow as BMX grew?

Not at all. I never really saw the national scene in a ‘financial market’ way because I was personally into BMX in such a complete way for so many years that I did not care if it was growing or declining nationally. Shops and companies would sometimes tell me things were getting better or worse but it didn’t really affect me in my decision to start a magazine. The scene was really small at the time and interesting stuff was happening with half pipes and street but I never felt it was going to grow into something massive. I still cannot believe it has. I’m really glad to have been there at the start though.

What connection did Will [Smyth] have to BMX Now? Did you start it together?

Will had contributed to some of the earlier issues and as things started to get really difficult for me we talked about Will basically being the editor and supplying all the content for the next issue, but it never got that far because I had debts and had to stop publishing.

Did that prompt Will to start Dig magazine? Where did this leave you?

I’m sure Will had thought about making his own mag for a while, but when I called it a day with BMX Now he basically took all the content he had been working on and that formed most of issue one of Dig. I was really happy for him and he did a really good job but by the time Dig came out my BMX ‘career’ was really in decline after so many really intense years.

You mentioned earlier that Invert was the main UK BMX magazine, with the Nobles switching titles to Ride around 1992. What was your relationship with them? With 4130 growing into a successful publishing company, was that hard to compete against?

There was a bit of bad feeling between us for sure but that was never the motivation for me starting the magazine. I do remember Mr Noble Snr once telling me not to contribute photographs and articles to RAD Magazine and I thought that was a bit odd. After I won the first KOV [King of Vert] half pipe contest at Portsmouth - they recounted the scores about four times - I got virtually no coverage in the magazine, I kind of realised that we maybe did not see eye to eye. Some of the Invert sponsored riders said in the mag that the judging was a joke and I should never have won…. Simon Tabron did come up to me about ten years later and basically said sorry and that he had recently watched the contest on video again and thought I got treated pretty unfairly at the time. ‘Good on you, Simon’ I thought. Apologies like that don’t happen very often. One of the things I seem to remember about the switch from Invert to Ride and the setting up of 4130 was that it seemed to me that the old 42