Via Spin

Go into any garage or basement where a high school band is thrashing away. Go into a stadium where rock gods are hurling lightning bolts. Go anywhere people are making music, and — without being too weird about it — look at their shoes. There’s a good chance you’ll see Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars. As much as jeans and guitars, Chucks are part of the rock'n'roll look, but nothing achieves ubiquity by accident, let alone simple, cheap, and let’s be honest, blister-inducing, non-arch-supporting rubber-and-canvas sneakers. Rarely has a consumer product had as unlikely a life as the now 80-year-old shoe, which pulled off a nifty and unintentional cultural crossover, moving from basketball courts to CBGB — a shift that took Converse decades to understand and then, finally, exploit. Here, athletes, artists, and industry insiders consider the history of the shoe heard around the world.

TOMMY RAMONE (Drummer, The Ramones, 1974–77)

In the ‘60s and '70s, it was still rebellious to wear sneakers outside of the gym. Doing that was anti-establishment. It was punky and snotty to wear sneakers instead of shoes. Punky and snotty was very important for the Ramones.

DENNIS RODMAN (Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, former Converse endorser)

Growing up in Texas, I wore Chuck Taylors till they fell off. I was poor. I had nothing, but I felt like I had something in those shoes. Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Kurt Cobain. Bill Russell. Dr. J. I don’t know if they all wore Chuck Taylors, but in my head, they did. Know what I mean? They’re the shoe. So thanks, Chuck Taylor, whoever the fuck that is.

ICE CUBE (Rapper, Actor)

Growing up in Compton [Los Angeles] in the '80s, I started wearing Chuck Taylors by watching my older brothers, my friends, my uncles. All the gangbangers wore Chuck Taylors. They were what they made you wear in the prisons and Youth Authority camps. You’d see all these gangsters going to the surplus stores and buying Chuck Taylors because they looked good with a pair of khaki pants and a T-shirt. You could spend $60 and look fresh. Black Chuck Taylors worked with that raw, hard-core street feel that N.W.A wanted, even if some people were more into Jordans and shit.

MARK ARM (singer-guitarist, Mudhoney)

Everyone in Seattle — Eddie Vedder, Kurt — we were all punk and hardcore fans. So it wasn’t really an aesthetic choice to wear Chuck Taylors; it’s just kind of what you did. The reason, I think, we wore them is that it was either those or Doc Martens, and if you wore Doc Martens and jumped into the crowd, you could really hurt someone. Though doing anything in Chuck Taylors didn’t feel that great either. You know, when I heard Converse was going bankrupt, I went out and bought a couple boxes of Chuck Taylors because I thought I wouldn’t be able to get them anymore.

LARRY BROWN (Basketball Hall of Fame coach)

My daughter, she’s 15 now, and she wears a pink pair. When I tell her that we used to play basketball in those same shoes, she can’t believe it. She sees the rock bands wear them, I guess. People think Chuck Taylor is made up, like Ronald McDonald or something. I don’t know how we got from his shoe being the shoe of those great Boston Celtics teams to being a shoe for teens. It’s crazy. How does that happen?

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