height of his fame in the early 1980s, Adams was convicted of assault, launching a string of prison stints over the next 24 years.

The member of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame, who had proudly been clean and sober for the past several years, blamed his troubles in part on the sport's early years, when seemingly any outrageous behaviour was tolerated.

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Dogtown and Z-boys, Jay Adams

"We were wild and acting crazy and not being very positive role models," he told The New York Times shortly after being released from prison for the last time in 2008.

He rocketed to fame while still a teenager as a founding member of the Zephyr Skate Team, a group of surfers turned skateboarders who came together in a run-down, dicey neighbourhood known as Dogtown, thatstraddles Los Angeles' Venice Beach and the city of Santa Monica.

Peralta, another member, would memorialise the group in his 2001 documentary Dogtown And Z-Boys.

"Watching him when he was 14, 15, 16 was pure entertainment," the film-maker recalled. "It was like watching energy itself evolve. You never knew what he was going to do, and no matter how great he was at something, he never repeated it."

Although he was not technically the best skater out there, Peralta said, Adams' influence on the sport was as great as that of X Games gold medalist Tony Hawk.

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Skateboarder Jay Adams in 2013

But Adams never became quite the household name that Hawk is, perhaps in part because of his repeated brushes with the law.

When Dogtown And Z Boys premiered in 2001, he was