CAINE ONE tribute by LADY PINK
The life and death of Woodside writer Edward Growalski, more famously known as CAINE ONE, has captured the imagination of several generations of graffiti writers, be it from Queens or parts afar. His untimely passing in 1982, right at the cusp of mainstream acclaim and entry into the legitimate art world, has always left a gaping hole of wonder about what could have been. I was too young to fully appreciate CAINE’s productions during their heyday but his legacy loomed large in the minds of writers that subsequently added to the canon of graffiti in Queens and NYC at large. I wanted to honor his memory by talking to old friends from the neighborhood, writing partners and members of his old crew. From masterminding what is arguably the first whole train, both sides, production to his forays into canvases/lee jackets/pop art; are all a reflection of a talented and multifaceted individual that packed a lot of living within a brief span of time.
Thank you to LADY PINK, ROGER, Martha Cooper, FREEDOM, NOTCH 56, JIMMY 131, ZAR, PHANTOM and childhood friend Eileen Galindo for sharing their recollections.
This article originally appeared in Queens Graffiti Legends Vol 1
WHEN AND HOW DID YOU MEET CAINE?
LADY PINK
PC KID brought him to my house in 1981, they were commissioned to do a mural at Bryant High School, which was across the street from my mother’s house. They’d heard I was a good artist and wanted me to be involved; CAINE went ahead and did a Grim Reaper and I did a sexy girl. The principal called it inappropriate art, got real upset and called the cops on us, they came looking for me at my house. Later on when I got thrown out of Art & Design High School I was sent to my zone school, which was Bryant, you should’ve seen the look on the principal’s face!
ROGER
I met CAINE at some point in ‘72/’73, he was living in Woodside and at that time we were doing a lot of street tagging. I went to 72nd street over here and there’s an underpass where he had put up a tag of mine; he did a ROGER, CAINE and TAGE tag, because they always ran together. I was like; ‘what the hell?’. They used to live on 61st street in Woodside and that’s how we started hanging out.
NOTCH 56
I met Eddie through Angel Duster at 103rd St train station back in late ‘77 early ‘78 and we hit it off right from the start. I was from Corona and CAINE was from Woodside. The first thing you noticed about Eddie was his calm demeanor, when most writers have an outgoing personality. We hung out a few times, did some local bombing and one day he asked me if I wanted to be down with him and I said hell yeah and that’s how I got down with CAINE’s crew called “The Knight Hawks”.
FREEDOM
I first met CAINE in 1981 when he was painting the Solar Coaster wall with Pink in Queens. I was getting breakfast on the Upper West Side when Martha Cooper entered the restaurant and asked if I wanted to go with her, I was thrilled with the idea, and we drove out there.
Martha
I’m not sure, maybe at GPI Gallery (Graffiti Productions). I did not know CAINE well and I don’t have a good memory.
JIMMY 131
TAGE, MAD 102 and some other guys had a fort built along the freight tracks by Roosevelt Ave near where US Skates once stood. They had tags on the wooden shack and CAINE would sketch in black books, he would piece the alphabet letter by letter to perfect the letters, they were a few years older than me.
ZAR
I met him in the summer of 1979 on Woodside Ave and 61St. I met him quite accidentally. I was thirteen and on Sundays my mom would send me ahead to church with thirty dollars for the collection box. I was suited up in my church clothes, ran downstairs to the corner towards St. Sebastian’s. I wanted to cop a quick tag on the mailbox right on the corner of 61St and Woodside Ave, as I was doing so I was approached from behind by a gang of older guys and I could tell that they weren’t from Woodside. One guy grabbed me from the front of my jacket, picked me up, and threw me on top of a car right behind me. The other guy put a switch blade to my neck while the first guy went through my pockets and found the cash in my socks. The guy with the blade lifted his blade up and all I remember was some other dude telling him not to cut me up like the last guy they robbed. He took two steps away from me and punched me in the face, then they all ran up Woodside Ave towards 67th Street, for some dumb reason I ran after them yelling and cursing! I couldn’t keep up so I just kept walking in the same direction.
By the time I got to 66th St; I turned left downhill towards a group of guys who I had seen around before. I ran towards them to ask if they saw the dudes that robbed me. There were around 15 of them in old cars smoking weed, drinking beer and listening to classic rock, they asked me what happened and at that very moment I looked across the street and saw those guys walking down 67 street. I yelled; ‘There they are!!’ CAINE told his crew to go after them and told me to get in the car with him so I could identify them. What I saw from inside that car was CAINE’s boys running after them with bats, chains, and hammers. We went east towards the 70th St BQE (Bronx Queens Expressway) overpass. There was blood everywhere, all of them were laid out on the ground and banged up really bad, one guy got away. I got most of my mom’s money back. She grounded me for a week for showing up at the church like that, all dirty, broken shirt, jacket and swollen face. She eventually met him later on that year, thanked him and gave him a huge hug. Talk about a cool guy! Always looking out for his friends and neighbors.
Eileen Galindo
I knew Eddie aka CAINE 1 between 1974-1976. He used to hang out at the Flushing Flea Market with my mother and some of the other gay antique dealers who held court there. It was a crazy, exciting crowd, deals were always being made. There were always parties, none of which I was allowed to go to at the time. He wore either a black leather bomber or a jean jacket, he was thin and really handsome. His hair was dark and straight and down to his shoulders. I can’t remember if it was painted. He always had his paints with him and my mother asked him if he would do something special on my skates. He took them with him and painted them completely, when he presented them to me I was so excited.
They drew a lot of attention when we went skating at Flushing Meadow Park. At that point he was painting the trains at night, we would ride them during the day and try to find his tag and guess which ones were his.
PHANTOM aka CAINE 2
I knew MAD 102, FLAME, TAGE and his younger brother who stayed with us. I always use to go to Eddies house on 61st. Many have asked how did Edward Glowaski was inspired to cast and name himself CAINE 1? Ed Glowaski was an obsessed film fan who loved the film Citizen Kane, was so inspired that he identified with Kane’s role adopting the nom de plume, however he simply changed the spelling of its name to CAINE from Kane in forever sourcing its visionary movie.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE EARLIEST PIECES YOU SAW BY HIM?
FREEDOM
The first pieces I saw by CAINE were the whole cars, I couldn’t say which one’s came first, but the Alice Cooper car and the cartoon car ran forever. I was also watching ROGER and the Wanted crew.
ROGER
The first one was an orange and black piece that had waves in it, that’s one of the first I saw on the train because CAINE didn’t do a lot of bombing, in the sense that he did a lot of throw-ups. I guess early on he realized that the way to get recognition is to do production pieces on a whole car scale and ultimately that’s what he became known for, like 20 whole car pieces that made him famous because no one was doing that at the time, especially by themselves. He wouldn’t do a CAINE whole car but instead a ‘Welcome To Hell’, “Spellbound’ or Dick Tracy piece, more elaborate productions. He did some tagging but as far as bombing piece wise, there wasn’t a hell of a lot in that end of it.
Martha
I don’t remember seeing any photos of subway pieces. I watched him paint a wall with Lady Pink in a Queens schoolyard. I remember the portrait of Blondie because I have a photo of him with it.
JIMMY 131
On 69th St and Roosevelt Ave, there was a catering hall called Queens Terrace. I remember a CAINE piece behind the place, it was Krylon gloss white with a green outline. Next to the piece, CAINE tagged two of his aliases ‘Blue Blazer & Sut 104’. His main partner, TAGE 1, also had a ‘TAGE The Rebels’ tag alongside CAINE’s hits.
PHANTOM
I saw many of his first whole cars i.e. CAINE PLANE, SPELLBOUND, WELCOME TO HELL which also inspired the crew and writer LEE and his Fabulous 5. Rotun & Wasserman wanted him real bad.
ZAR
Welcome To Hell, Debbie Harry canvas and hundreds of painted Lee jackets.
(NOTCH 56) We just finished having a meeting at Calvary cemetery and on the side was a factory, kind of a dead area, you know and CAINE took out a blue Krylon can and did a dragon outline right off the head. That was the first time I’ve seen him paint, he definitely was ahead of his time, the year being 1978.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THE 1976 TEN WHOLE CARES ‘FREEDOM TRAIN’ PRODUCTION?
ROGER
CAINE came up with the concept and being that we were basically running the #7 yard with me and the crew from Broadway park, that was made up of some of the boys from Jamaica like MOVE 1, SIN 158 as well as CHINO 174, DOC 1 and others. He called me up with the concept; ‘ We’re gonna do a whole train, both sides’. I said all right, cool and we got together, went over to this guy SPEEDY’s house, which was off Astoria Blvd in the 80’s, near 25th Avenue. At SPEEDY’s, CAINE had already painted a whole train on the bumper of his car with a depiction of what he wanted to do. I was like; ‘Oh shit, let’s go for it!’
FREEDOM
I saw mostly buffed versions of the Freedom Train, and didn’t know it’s place in history until a few years later. The Freedom Train was the first whole train ever painted, from what I understand, the Wanted crew came close by painting 8 whole cars previously.
(Martha) Only in photos. A woman showed up at GPI with a photo album with photos of that train. I have a picture of her with CAINE but I didn’t get her name. That photo is in my book Hip Hop Files.
ROGER
SPEEDY provided all the paint, they had 300-400 cans of red and blue paint, that was distributed for the concept CAINE wanted. My mother had a big old station wagon that we used and I fit CAINE, CHINO 174, SPEEDY and DOC 1 in it. We parked on the opposite side of Flushing Meadowlands, across from the LIRR tracks, took all the paint to the yard. Ultimately there must have been 30-40 people involved in the production, because 10 people weren’t going to paint the whole train. People say they paint a train with 3 people but that doesn’t happen, a whole train has a lot of surface area, it’s a lot of work doing both sides of it.
LADY PINK
I was 12 years old in 1976 and living in Brooklyn at the time so access to the 7 line was really limited, never really saw his work until I moved to Queens later on. I’m sure the Fab Five were influenced by the Freedom Train since it was the first whole train production, someone like LEE would have heard it about it but you have to ask him more about that, he can be hard to reach sometimes. The first time I introduced LEE to CAINE, they hit it off so well, that they sat all night talking about Graffiti & LEE went on to do a painting later on of that night. It was spray paint on metal canvas of a brunette and blonde dude talking as they overlooked the #7 train yard, some collector bought it. LEE always said it was a memorable night.
PHANTOM
Like ROGER said he was one of the first artists who understood production in creating whole cars like the Freedom train, which was contributed by a cast of characters while there was a concert at Shea stadium on the evening of the bicentennial July 3rd 1976.
JIMMY 131
We cut school and me and a kid who wrote SX3000 benched at the Willets Point station to see the train pull out. By the time that we went, the train was broken up so we were only able to see individual cars.
ROGER
As far as I know that was the first whole train painted wasn’t just one side but both sides, top to bottom, side to side. To my knowledge I had never see anything like that before, even ‘til this day.
TELL ME ABOUT FILMING THE PRODUCTION OF THE FREEDOM TRAIN, THE REACTION, AND WHAT BECAME OF THE WRITERS INVOLVED IN PAINTING IT?
ROGER
Everyone heard about it and knew what had happened, they didn’t even run the train, the next day they took it within the yard and split it up, right away started buffing it. Afterwards you saw the individual cars with was left of the pieces. SPEEDY was older than us, he was probably in his 30’s at the time. CAINE had worked something out with him and the morning after we did the train, they filmed it with a 35mm camera so the whole train is actually on film somewhere but it hasn’t been located. The last person that any knowledge to its whereabouts was PC KID; he located SPEEDY but the guy wanted like 5 grand for it, unfortunately PC KID passed away and where SPEEDY is now is anyone’s guess. DIME 139 was the only guy that had photos of the train. As far as what happened to the other writers, unfortunately I don’t keep in touch with them, when we did this we were just a bunch of kids but I do know TAGE, DIME 139. MAD 102, FLAME have passed away and obviously CAINE too. CHINO 174 is still around, he’s become a serious guy and doesn’t want to be involved with anything Graf-related. DOC 1 moved to North Carolina sometime after he stopped writing in the mid-70’s, I don’t know whatever became of SPIKE and SPEEDY.
BESIDES CAINE, WHAT ARE SOME OF THE EARLIEST WOODSIDE WRITERS YOU REMEMBER SEEING UP?
ZAR
MIKE79, JIMMY131, SON ONE, PRO ONE, TAGE ONE, CONAN, FLAME, WEB 007, BUST 007, BIONIC 007, ACE 007, GHOST RIS, EA RIS and many more.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT HIS KNIGHT HAWKS CREW?
NOTCH 56
One summer night we went to Astoria pool and started hanging out with some girls we met and having a good time when CAINE said; ‘Yo, let’s go to Flushing Meadow Park to see if I could steal a horse’. We all looked at each other and said fuck it, let’s go. On our way to the train station, Wane stole a van, now we got wheels to cruise around, when we get to Flushing Meadow Park there was so many cops, we were like wtf? so we turned around and started walking out the park. Boy did we looked suspect so the cops started following us, we make it to the van and to the red light when Wane said; ‘Yo we out of gas, so when the light turns green everybody get out and run’, so we did me, CAINE and Wane got away that night. I asked CAINE what the hell bro and he said he felt like riding a horse back to Woodside, like a god of knights, can you believe that shit?
ZAR
I am one of the youngest members. There are too many to mention here but the best was protecting his mom’s bar on Roosevelt Ave near Junction Blvd, the gang fights were crazy!
ROGER
We did not hang out too much in that sense, they were more of the Woodside crew, people that lived in the area, hung out and did crazy things.
LADY PINK
When I met him in 1981 he was past the Knight Hawks and wanted to get away from the gang life in his old neighborhood. He was focused on getting artwork ready for gallery exhibitions as several people had expressed interest in showcasing his work in the US and Europe.
DID YOU EVER VISIT HIM WHILE PAINTING JACKETS AT YOGI LALA’S (SHOP IN ASTORIA) AND WHICH OF HIS JACKETS DO YOU REMEMBER?
JIMMY 131
After CAINE passed away, TAGE used to tell me that when CAINE painted trains, he didn’t speak much at all and I thought that overall; he was a quiet guy. We didn’t speak much. I spoke mostly with him while I was checking out his black books. In one book, CAINE drew a series of pages with a genie coming out of the bottle. When you flipped through the book quickly, the genie appeared to be moving, it was incredible. Everyone wanted one of his jackets, there was always a waiting list. There were so many: Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Jerry Garcia, Jim Morrison. Yogi Lala still has jackets. CAINE painted jackets with PC Kid and a local artist named Tina back in those days.
LADY PINK
I didn’t see him painting jackets at Yogi Lala’s but at his house. He showed me how to do airbrush and we did a bunch of commissioned work together. The act of painting jackets takes knowledge and he shared with me the precise way of doing them. His jackets were more depictions of Rock album covers and artists, mine were more Graf based and specific commissions like people’s names.
Martha
Yes, I have photos of his shop and jackets, they will be in my next book. The jacket I most remember is the one he painted for me.
ROGER
CAINE was living with a girl out in Bayside for a while and one night I was out there to visit him at the basement he was staying at. He was one of the first guys that I ever saw putting canvases together and he had some for his production pieces. I was very surprised because up to that point I’d never seen anyone make canvases of what they were doing on the train. I thought to myself that this guy is actually doing real art, putting Graffiti and enhancing it to another level. It wasn’t only painting on trains, he was moving on to canvases and Lee jackets of Rock bands as well as store fronts, like the one he did for Yogi Lala. Everyone knows about the famous Debbie Harry portrait because at that time he was in love with her! Those were the kind of things that were surprising once you got to know Eddie.
ZAR
He lived up the block from me and hung out at the small park on Roosevelt and 60th. He wore many of his freshly painted jackets every other day, my favorite was his Welcome to Hell jacket!
NOTCH 56
I never got a chance to go to Yogi Lala. I was a writer/b-boy and was down with ‘Chill Town Rockers’ from 103rd St in Corona, the president was KASPER so between practice. spending time with my girl, who by the way was the writer SPEEDY 79; my schedule was fucking crazy but we always found time for a black book session and he would teach me about acrylic paint and brushes. (He said) think of acrylic as designer’s, you could reproduce everything in your black books on denim jeans/jackets and canvases and make some money but back then I didn’t have the capacity to understand the gem he was dropping on me
DO YOU REMEMBER HIS ‘WELCOME TO HELL” CAR WITH ALICE COPPER CHARACTER AND WHAT WAS THE REACTION AT THE TIME?
NOTCH 56
‘Welcome To Hell ‘car was such an amazing piece and shows his prowess, you can see how he stood out from the rest, he definitely was the “Frank Frazetta” of graffiti. The father of heavy metal style, from trains to canvas to denim jackets and jeans, he was a one man army. When he dropped this car people thought he was crazy but crazy is a very important ingredient in genius.
JIMMY 131
In Woodside at that time, every new CAINE car that came out of the 7 yard was seen by hundreds of kids at Saint Sebastian’s grammar school. The school still stands on 58th St and Woodside Ave with a clear view of the 7 line. The nuns had to chase the kids back to their desks when Spellbound, Dick Tracy, The Freedom Train and Welcome to Hell exploded onto the scene.
ROGER
Yeah I saw that and all his cars. We were there every day, the thing that made his pieces famous, is that the day they came out; you knew about it. From what I recall he was one of the first to start drawing characters into the pieces and using different coloring techniques plus a set up that was thought out. It wasn’t that when he went to the yard and used whatever can to do something he decided at the moment, he actually plotted what he was gonna put on the train, drew it to some degree on paper and executed everything thoroughly planned out on the train, One of his very first pieces was the Dick Tracy car, then a Peanuts car, then came ‘Welcome To Hell’ followed by ‘Spellbound’. If he did 20 of those cars it might be too much but he did it in such a way that no one was doing that, putting him on top.
DID YOU EVER PAINT WITH HIM? IF SO, WHERE AND WHEN?
FREEDOM
I was lucky enough to paint with Eddie a few times. The first was the Solar Coaster wall, I was shocked at how quickly he painted, and how confident he was in his line. My own work on the wall was to try and help the PC Kid with his section which wasn’t working out. After that, I bumped into TRACY with CAINE while he was painting a lumber store by our gallery. CAINE and I both pitched in to make it go faster.
PHANTOM
Eddie love the night life and one night we hanging out a school yard and painted the whole school end to end. He had great magic in his hands, when he drew people stopped whatever they were doing. Eddie never stopped drawing or painting there were countless sessions of him exploring styles and forms. Eddie asked me to take on the name CAINE 2 when I was bombing the MTA..
NOTCH 56
I never painted murals but plenty of tags with him and whenever we had meetings, someone always pulled out a can or a marker and we all copped tags, whether it was on 111th St, 103rd St, behind Aviation HS etc…
JIMMY 131
No. CAINE mainly painted alone.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER OF HIS FIRST GALLERY SHOW AT THE TIME OF HIS UNEXPECTED PASSING?
FREEDOM
CAINE was alive for his first show at Graffiti Above Ground, his painting of Debbie Harry stole the show, I’m pretty certain all of his works sold out. The best part about the show was that an older woman showed up with photos of all of his trains, she had an amazing collection.
ZAR
I didn’t go. l was too upset. l was 16 at the time.
LADY PINK
He was down with Graffiti Above Ground, they opened up a space on 14th & 9th avenue, a corner studio space with windows overlooking all sides of the street. That space became a gallery. We all exhibited our work there and CAINE’s canvases incorporated Graf, inspired by Rock music stars, like the Blondie painting he did. It was probably going to go somewhere, he was producing work non-stop.
THERE IS A STORY HE WAS CAUGHT STEALING SKULLS FROM A CEMETERY AND WAS INVOLVED IN SOME KIND OF CULT?
ROGER
They were going to Calvary cemetery on Queens Boulevard and the story is that they were digging up bodies to steal the skulls for their rituals, he had a thing for the occult, that kind of stuff drove us away a bit from hanging out with him. One time he invited me and CHINO 174 to a place in Manhattan and it was a little weird when we walked in. It was one of those cult type get togethers where you had a Santero Warlock deal going on there. Me and CHINO looked at each other and we both said this is some weird shit; didn’t want any part of that so after a while we just got up and left.
JIMMY 131
Sure, it was in the Daily News and the neighborhood people were freaked out about it. Years later, I asked TAGE if he was connected in any way and he denied any involvement.
THE NEWSPAPER CLIPPING OF HIS DEATH MENTIONS HE WAS SHOT FOR BURGLARY. FROM YOUR KNOWLEDGE, IS THERE AN ALTERNATE EXPLANATION?
LADY PINK
He was set up and chased, ran up a fire escape; the evidence showed he’d been dragged by the front of his shoes by people that were out to get him. I don’t know if you’re aware of this but back in 1977 he was arrested for selling skulls stolen from a cemetery, he had taken up with a bonafide witch cult and after his arrest he was taken to a funny house (mental prison ward) where the notorious Son Of Sam (David Berkowitz) serial killer was his next door cellmate, they wrote long wrote long letters to each other once CAINE got out. That cult kept pursuing him as he became more known and for some reason had to rub him out. After he died they kept coming to my shows for me to work with them. I flatly rejected that and after so many years I couldn’t tell you exactly who they were, just really scary people.
NOTCH 56
He wasn’t there to rob anybody that night! He was trying to escape from a group of men that was trying to rob him and in the process he got shot!! I warned him plenty of times you just can’t trust every writer you meet now this man is no longer here because of envy and greed and the group of men that chased Eddie; two are dead and the rest never saw the light of justice, how crazy is that?
JIMMY 131
Anyone who knew CAINE, ruled out a robbery attempt immediately. The story going around at the time was that CAINE had beef with some Sunnyside guys and they chased him to that fire escape.
ZAR
Yes. I can bear witness that Eddie was not a thief at all. There were a lot of jealous people that didn’t like him because of his fame and charismatic character, we used to all get into fights with them because of that. The only thing that comes to my mind while asking myself is `why?’, was that maybe it was over some girl, he had a lot of them. Maybe some beef over that? Did someone chase him and the only way to save his own life was to randomly leap into some apartment window for safety? I guess we will never know.
ROGER
I heard they were hanging out and got into some kind of altercation, tried to get away from some dude that was trying to harm him. Unfortunately he climbed up a fire escape and got to a certain level where an ex-cop was living, mistook him for a burglar and wound up shooting him. I’m not sure that it was a beef with rival writers but just with someone in the neighborhood, it wasn’t anything graf related, just a personal misfortune.
FREEDOM
I’ve heard a lot of rumors about Eddie’s death, only he would know. He either stumbled through the window while being chased, or it was a burglary, it remains a mystery.
Eileen Galindo
I only found out about his death a few years ago. In the early 70’s many of these guys lived for their art, nothing else was important. I don’t know if he was gay but he was the youngest and was fawned over by the older guys. I’m sure they took care of him, that was the scene. There were drugs, booze, music, parties, sex and the freedom to express yourself, everything a young artist could ask for. I imagine as he got older it got harder, once they changed the trains and made it impossible for the paint to adhere to them, a whole art form was lost and I’m sure with it their way of life.
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE CAINE TO BE REMEMBERED?
NOTCH 56
I want people to understand he wasn’t a common burglar but a true Graffiti king, someone who inspired and continues to inspire. MR CAINE 1 The Knight Hawks.
FREEDOM
I think CAINE should be remembered as a pivotal figure in the graffiti movement who helped open the doors for conceptual cars. He had a unique voice that helped pave the way for writers like LEE and BLADE to expand their vocabularies, using pictorial elements other than those found in the funny papers.
LADY PINK
I haven’t stopped talking about him for decades, just this year I did this ‘CAINE ONE FOREVER’ canvas now up at the Museum of Graffiti in Miami. He was such a nice gentle guy, I brought him to nice places & people treated him like gold. He never was disrespectful, always a gentleman, even sitting alone in his bedroom he always showed respect. Some guys act all hardcore when they’re with their boys but can be really gentle when they’re by themselves. I had a boyfriend at the time and CAINE never made a pass at me, he was true friend and we inspired one another with our art.
JIMMY 131
TAGE used to always say that CAINE wanted to piece a 747 at one of the NYC airports. He was an incredible artist who put Woodside on the graffiti map. Rest in peace Eddie.
ZAR
Kind, Loving, Brave, Super Smart, Funny, The True King Of The 7 Line, Woodside’s Own Son And My Friend.
Martha
He was a very talented artist who tragically died too soon.
PHANTOM
I left NYC by the time he had finally attained his first exhibition, if he had lived he would have gone on to great accomplishments. I hope CAINE is forever remembered for his vision.
ROGER
I would like for him to be remembered as someone that was an innovator; a real artist in the sense that he had a concept of what he was doing art wise, not just writing his name but an entire background with ideas to it. We were in that time transitioning from just doing tags to little pieces that were enhanced tags and then to bubble letters, people started using 3D, the influence of FLINT 707, that sort of style. Graffiti had evolved into a patching of ideas from various people that everyone was just grabbing, it wasn’t one person that came up with every concept or every idea that took place, it evolved over a period of time. CAINE was one of the first that came up with this whole car concept and made it his own contribution to the culture. He actually sat down and came up with the characters, like the fun face on the car, when you saw the train coming, you would have a character coming at you and then you would see the whole side painted. I don’t recall a hell of a lot of other people doing that.
RIP Eddie!
