10 Reasons Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Soundtrack Was More Influential Than The Beatles
5. It's The Reason We Know Who All These Pro Skaters Are
Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, Chad Muska, Bob Burnquist. These professional athletes are household names (or at least they were between 1999 and 2006) and they owe this all to the THPS franchise. Without these games, only hardcore skaters would know of these gnarly dudes, at least until Jackass came along and featured a few of them.
If we look at why these games were so commercially successful, this was in no small part because of their soundtracks. Sure, the arcade-style skateboarding was great fun, but if we’d had a boring and repetitive tune blaring in the background, or no music at all, they’d fail to create the same atmosphere.
Without these sounds, we’d have definitely received a few of these games, but they wouldn’t have made the same impact on the angsty, punk-rock youth of their time, and would have dwindled much more quickly. The same would have happened to the featured skaters’ reputations.
Ask yourself this. When was the last time The Beatles promoted a professional skateboarder? Was this not enough of a “real sport” for them? Did they feel threatened by Bam Margera’s wild personality? At this point, one could go as far as to say that The Beatles have done very little at all for skateboarding.