Andy Irons was a dynamic motherfucker!

Andy Irons' last-ever interview, recorded shortly before flying to Puerto Rico in November 2010… 

The surfing magazine plays a dishonest hand. We gild the pro surfer’s life as the greatest aspiration but for so much it’s a life spent in pressurised aluminium tubes and at airports, feet folded under chairs, food served in foil-wrapped rectangles, headphones over ears, with backpacks as pillows.

Who talks of this loneliness? Who tells you when you’re 12 years old and ruling the beach all you want to be is an ASP professional?  Who tells you that when you make it, in just nine months you’ll travel from Australia to Brazil to South Africa to Tahiti to California to Europe to Puerto Rico to Hawaii and home again just in time for Christmas?

Who tells you of the overnight layovers in anonymous airport hotels? Another check-in, another wake-up call, another mini-bar, another phone call to the woman you love. And, then, when you get to the other side of the world, you wait around in more hotel rooms for two weeks for a contest to run.

Dream Tour? Yeah, it is. But it ain’t always dreamy.

Four years ago today, Andy Irons died in a Texas hotel room, bed sheets pulled to his neck, an empty Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup on the floor beside him, six thousand clicks from a wife pregnant with his son Axel and a home gilded by the rays of a Hanalei sun.

I spoke to AI before he flew to Puerto Rico about his fears, his loves, about recurring dreams and about a comeback year punctuated by the exclamation mark of a surprise win at Teahupoo. Surprising because after a year-and-a-half on the sidelines, the Champ was a long way off his peak. In a cartoon I wrote shortly before his death, Kelly Slater and Andy Irons muse on the loneliness of competition.

The week before I spoke to Andy, I’d been in the Canary Islands with his little brother, Bruce, and we’d recorded an unusually thoughtful late-night conversation.

In both interviews both men said the same thing.

Andy: “If I ever lost my brother, I don’t know what I’d do. I couldn’t live without him.”

Bruce: “Andy’s my brother and I don’t know what I’d do if he weren’t around.”

Andy Irons was full of hope, he was frank, he was friendly and his gift for surfing was innate. And now? Now? The party’s over, the chairs are upside down on tables and the lights are off. The fat lady has, to quote AI, honked her horn.

DR: Is that the Champ? 

AI: Is that Rielly? I know that voice…

Hey, I’m talking to the fucken Champ! 

The people’s champ! That’s me! Fuck yeah! (Laughing) Fuck yeah, how y’doin, brah?

I’m good, if y’count owning balls like peanuts good. I know you’re good. After Tahiti, you’ve got your comeback locked down tight like a little girls tuna (Editor’s note. This is a quote from AI’s favourite show, Eastbound and Down, series two. It ain’t me being a weirdo.) 

Yeah, yeah! Kenny Powers, bro.

Kenny fucken Powers. Andy fucken Irons. 

Kenny fucken Powers! You know that! Hey, so what are we doing? What…what… what’s this whole deal (interview) about, D? Is this for the (Stab hardcover) book?

Yeah. Y’know how it is. It ain’t a book without The Champ inside. Last year we shot you for an interview about your awesome style… 

You should see me right now. First time in three years, bro, that I’m down to my gold comp weight, 176. This winter it…is…fucken…on, brah. Fucken major Kenny Powers way.

You’re so fucken back. 

My results don’t speak for themselves (apart from Tahiti), but I fucken haven’t surfed so much in ages, brah. I’ve been surfing two times a day with Freddie P and Dusty Payne. Dusty Payne. That kid fucken pumps me up! He’s my new Cory Lopez. I lost Lopey (from the tour) and I’ve frickin’ finally got some sparring partners. Dusty’s the coolest, gnarliest little kid. Full Maui style, brah. Those guys, they’re a different breed, brah. Dusty is awesome.

Dusty’s gold, almost as gold as his reddish-gold hair. 

He’s fucken classic as shit.

I just came back from the Canaries with your brother. He’s supersonic, too. 

How’s this? I was in Madrid on the way to Portugal and I’m going, this guy looks like my brother and he goes, “It is your fucken brother.” He comes up on me… (laughs)… all creepy and sweaty, introduced Evan Geiselman to me as Evan…(laughs) Geiselfuck! And, then he showed me footage of this wave-pool thing. It was fucken sick, but, wave-pool’s are so hard to surf. Y’gotta read those things like the fucken Matrix!

Did Bruce tell you about all the poor bastards in wheelchairs in Tenerife? 

The Canary Islands? Wheelchairville?

Yup, go to a hotel and instead of hire car booths in the lobby, there’s a rack of motorised wheelchairs… 

No shit!

Hey, how good is this! We went to a party with some locals at the beach and all our shit got ripped off! 

(Laughs) Holy shit (laughs)… hey, so, let’s do this interview or have we been doing it? (Laughs)

Got a few lil gems. But, tell me, whenever I spoke to Bruce I always referred to him as The Champ’s Brother. I’d knock on his door and yell, “That the Champ’s Brother?” 

I love it!

Does Bruce call you The Champ at home? 

Fuck, I am the people’s champ, brah. You know, Slater’s taking 10 this year and it’s making my three look all the more… I told him, “Get that 10 and make my three look that much cooler, brah, cause I’m the only one who took you out.” And he laughed and I said, “No, I’m serious.”

Late at night, in bed, what keeps you awake, what are you fears? 

I’m an insomniac. I’m awake all the time, anyway, but my fears are fucken failure, letting down my family, my wife and I’m, fuck, I’m scared to be a quadriplegic, I’ll tell you that right now. A friend of mine’s in a wheelchair now from surfing and that sometimes pops into my mind at night and shit what with the waves we surf. I don’t think I could ever handle it. I’m a wild animal but that would really crash my spirit.

Andy Irons proposes to Lyndie Dupuis on Tavarua, June 2007.
Andy proposes to his then-gal of four years, Lyndie Dupuis, on Tavarua island, Fiji, in 2007. “Let’s go for a walk,” said Andy, steering Lyndie to a patch of sand that had “Will you marry me?” written in it. Later that year they got married on Kauai and on December 8 2010, their boy Andrew Axel Irons was born. Photo by Brian Bielmann (who also shot the opening underwater photo.)

When you need to put your mind in a good place, what beautiful memories do you revive? 

I still go back to my first surf at the pier, aged seven. Riding this wave that didn’t really break and it was the best feeling I’ve ever felt in my life. I went left, right, left and the wave didn’t really break and I was on the glide. I remember my dad being so proud that I stood up and rode the wave for as long as I did.

What childhood dreams have stuck with you? 

It’s usually, I’m on top of a mountain and I’m trying to stand on the pinnacle without falling off. The wind gets really strong and it turns into this radical Wizard of Oz trip with the wind coming up and with lightning bolts appearing around. It starts to rain and the mountain starts getting real slippery. What does it mean? Probably, that I’m trying to hold on.

Have you ever truly believed you were about to die? 

Fuck, yeah! I’ve had some moments, even turbulence in an airplane, where I felt f’sure the plane might crash. I’ve even had planes crashing in my dreams and woken up on a plane. The other nightmare I have is, I’m on a plane and the bottom’s made of glass and it starts cracking. But, fuck, that wave in Tahiti where I got stuck in the lip and froze with fear and just made it? I really felt like I might be physically hurt then. That wave was, literally, a major moment in my life. I remember telling Mark Healy that I’d pulled back on a wave, that I’d fagged out, and he said, “The next one, just put your head down and go”. Bruce was actually trying to get that wave and he said, “Y’better go, FAG!” and the next thing you know I was in the lip and held up and…fucken… I was about to jump, I couldn’t move, I was petrified with fear, literally frozen with fear. I made the wave frozen with fear. I couldn’t move my arm or anything. Somehow it worked out and I didn’t land on my head and get my neck broken. But, it was the wave of my life. I think about that wave all the time.

Talk to me about failure. 

To me, failure is not living up to my potential. The whole world title thing was my major drive. I didn’t want to have that Taj Burrow thing where you surf so good but you don’t have a world title. I didn’t want to have that burden. That’s what drove me to take on Kelly. I couldn’t handle being 40 years old and living on Kauai and people telling me, “Oh you should’ve won the world title but you didn’t quite put it together.”

What’s your greatest achievement? 

It’s going to be in December. It’s coming. Little Axel Jason Irons is on his way. The name Jason is my cousin’s name. Jason’s my hero. It’s my dad’s brother’s kid. My dad tried to get me surfing, but it scared the shit out of me and it turned me off. And, Jason, who I looked up to my whole life, is a Shane Dorian-kinda guy, a genuine good person. He surfs like Tom Carroll mixed with Occy. He rides for Billabong and it’s a major reason why I ride with Billabong now. He’s my fucken hero. He’s a stud. Always been the nicest, coolest badass, but in the best way. No showboating and when it comes down to it, just everything I’d like to be like. He’s seven years older than me and I’ve always tried to tag along with him. I tried to comb my hair like him, fucken, you name it, whatever he had or did, I had to get or do. When he got into BMX, we (AI and Bruce) got into BMX. He showed me Pump and Surf Into Summer (iconic Billabong surf films), he got me into surf magazines, everything about surfing I’m doing today, is because of him.

What would you change about your life? 

Not a thing. Everything’s a learning curve. There’s a couple of things (laughs) I’d like to take back, but fuck, I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am today. You gotta go in the mud sometimes to figure out who you are. I’ve had my fair share of hills and valleys, but life’s been radical and exciting. Stuff that kings would die to do. Straight-up, fuckin A. The lifestyle we’ve got and the lifestyle I’ve led since I was 17, I couldn’t even tell my friends. I try and tell stories and they think I’m making it up or I saw it in a fucken movie. Straight up. It’s the life I wanted since I caught my first wave.

Do you have a fear of being broke? 

Fuck no! I come from humble beginnings. As long as I have a surfboard, a pair of trunks and a roof over my head and, if I don’t a have a roof a tent, I mean, I’ll be happy and a hippy living  on bananas. Me and my bother have lived with my mum in a fricken place with no kitchen. What I have now is beautiful and all but I could go back the other way and live like that if I had to. But, I’m not gonna.

Do you have a fear of prison? 

Shit yeah. That would break me. I’ve had friends that’ve gone in wild animals and come out numb.

What do you like most about your body?

 My feet. They’re not too jacked up. Everything else is pretty blown out and scarred up. My feet handle it.

Who or what is your greatest love? 

My wife, right now, she’s fricken… ah, wait… you know what, I’m sorry, but surfing. Surfing’s the only thing that’s always been there day in, day out, fucken girlfriend breakups, fucken report card fails, surfing always makes you feel better. No matter what, when I’m in the water, even if I don’t catch a wave and just swim in the ocean, I always come out a better person.

Do you fear losing the love of your life? 

If I ever lost Lyndie or my parents or my brother, I don’t know what I’d do. I couldn’t live without them.

If you weren’t The Champ, who would you like to be and why? 

I admire a lot of people for different reasons, for their different traits and for the different values they have. But, I don’t know man, everyone has their own problems. Everyone’s got ‘em. It doesn’t matter who you are, there’s always something wrong with ‘em. I’m happy with myself.

Enough of the fruity shit. How’s that pussy palace of yours? 

The home at Hanalei? I call it the Hanalei Bomber. It’s radical, it’s my dream. I grew up across the street in my dad’s toolshed that we turned into a bedroom and it’s four houses across from the water. It’s everything I thought I wouldn’t or couldn’t have. It’s more than I could possibly fathom. No one handed it to me. I had to fucken go and do it myself. And, it’s my proudest accomplishment.

Anything y’wanna tell the world, now that AI is back? 

People have actually been so… fucken … cool with wanting me to come back. People that didn’t even like me, who thought I wan an arrogant little fucker, are now coming outta the woodwork and being stoked. Richie Collins (radical Californian pro surfer of the eighties) sent Lyndie an email today telling me to stick with it and how stoked he was that I was back on the world tour and how much he likes to watch me and that he only tunes in (on the webcast) to see if I’m there. To me, that’s the ultra fucken compliment.

We all missed The Champ. 

I swear, I don’t know what it was, but, yeah, I mean, shit, it’s been a trip. In Portugal, after my heats, people were coming up to me and all kinds of cool shit. Back in the day, it was sour apples and a couple of threats but I haven’t had that in a long time. It’s getting me really motivated to try and do good, you know, put my better foot forward.

Is it a good time to bet on the champ? 

Ha! I don’t want the pressure of fucken losing someone else’s money. But, I’m not going to pull that spoiled brat tantrum shit anymore. That was old Andy. The new Andy is still real passionate, but fricken, I’m gonna try my fucken hardest until the fat lady horns.

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Andy Irons and Bruce Irons
"My brother won the world title and I was very proud of him. I was, like, fuck, this is the guy I’m surfing with every day and he’s winning the world title? What the fuck? … If he wasn’t around I don’t know what I’d do,"said Bruce, three weeks before Andy died.

The little brother: A two-am sitting with Bruce Irons

Three weeks before Andy died, I recorded this subdued and oddly morbid interview with Bruce Irons…

October 2010: High above the resort town of Las Playa Americas, in a hotel of three generously allocated stars, stands Mr Bruce Irons among a wreckage of remote control toys, five knives, as well as various Apple gadgetry. A pair of Dr Dre Monster Beats squeezes the gold of Mr Irons’ longer-than-ever hair. His eyes blaze with madness, his cheeks a furious dusky pink. A remote control helicopter fizzes past his face, thumbs working the rotor blade controls in a dexterous manner. The helicopter lands on a bedside table. Mr Irons places the remote control unit down and unstraps his Nixon watch.

“It’s called The Housing,” he says, biz-like. “It’s programmed with tide information for 200 beaches worldwide for the next 10 years, it’s got a wave counter and you can dive 300 feet and not blow it out. I noticed you’ve looking at it all trip. It’s yours.”

My pal Shinya, the designer of the magazine Stab, walks in. He is 24 years old and grew up with Mr Irons as his number one surf hero. His body visibly trembles when Bruce addresses him. “You look like you could do with a pair of shoes,” he says, then pauses. “But, wait. Will you wear ‘em?” Shinya shivers an anxious yes (Is it a joke? Will Mr Irons rescind the gift?) and receives a pair of black Nike low-tops.

“I’ll run in these,” says Shinya, the seizure of uneasiness gone as he swings the shoes over his bony little shoulder.

The next visitor, photographer Richard Freeman who came to shoot Bruce for a cover, is gifted a pair of noise-cancelling Bose headphones, with fresh batteries, a high-end device worth approximately $500 at retail. Later, Rich points out to me the significant wear on the foam of the ear cups and leaves the present hanging from a coat hook, its red diode winking in the darkness like an abandoned lighthouse.

In a pile on the room’s spare bed are gifts for his wife, his kid and for his friends. Kindness is an unexpected trademark of Mr Irons.

I spent five days with Bruce in Tenerife, a city in the Canary Islands, and the location for a Stab wave -pool shoot. Bruce flew for two days, from Kauai to LA, from LA to Chicago, from Chicago to Madrid, then Madrid to Tenerife. And, he arrived looking like he’d spent the entire time at a fitness camp. I never had Bruce figured out before this. I thought we’d be babysitting a 30-year-old prince. But, Bruce is a prince of the best sort. Lord, what a joy it was to shower in his bawdy stories.

On our last night in Tenerife, I found Bruce unexpectedly thoughtful. Place a microphone near his gums and his quotes are supersonic. But, at two am, as he sat under the yellow glow of a floor lamp, he reflected on ageing, the parabola of his life, the loss of a friend and the grief that follows. He spoke at length about his sometimes difficult, but always loving, relationship with his one-year-older brother; a brother who would not longer be around in a few weeks.

This interview begins just after midnight and concludes before three. Beer is served but drunk with little gusto as the interview descends into morbidity.

First of all, in between evening sessions at the pool and your regime of day sleeps, you’ve bled the island dry of its trinkets. Can you catalogue what you’ve bought here and their price tag?  

I bought a gun with a flashlight and a laser beam on it, the gun was 10 bucks, maybe 15. I bought this little glow-in-the-dark swirly thing, I gave the chick four bucks. I bought some Nike shoes, they were about 80, 90 bucks. I bought five knives. They were a good price. Two were 15, a couple were 11, one was nine. I bought a remote-control helicopter in a briefcase, a travel case, that was 160 bucks. Woohoo! What else did I buy? Oh, I bought a little thing that can do your fucking nails, fucking tweezers, all sorts of fun. Five bucks. I bought some thermo underwear. That was probably 20 bucks. I bought my daughter an outfit, Nike, head to toe. Nice get up. I didn’t look at the fucken price, though. I figure it was about, let’s see the receipt (to another person in the room) hey get out my way, you’re running in circles…  The baby’s outfit was fucking 80 bucks.

I can see a few more things on your bed. What’s that cube? 

This thing, when your battery is dead on your phone, it gives it a burst of power for about a couple of phone calls, that was about 15 bucks. I bought some Dr Dre headphones that were well-overpriced at a whopping 300 dollars! And, um, oh I bought an iPad case for 15 bucks, an iPad screensdaver for 12 bucks,

And the cute little Monster speaker? God, my questions are so lame already! All I want to is roll in your bold consumerism!

Monster speaker! Don’t forget that! That was a walk-in 55 dollars! I bought another case for my iPad, that was 12 bucks, and some Nike socks ‘cause I didn’t have any socks. That’s it. I think we’re about down.

Tell me about your knives. Yesterday, you were at the pool with it clipped to the elastic of your waistband. 

I like collecting knifes and I like having a knife. You always need a knife to do something. Cut a rope, cut a fish, fucken, knives come in handy. I always have a knife on my side. I like knives.

Are you a hunting man?   

Well, no. I’m not going to call myself a hunter. Because, I’m not a fucking hunter. But, my friends are hunters and I go with them. Most of them don’t surf and they grew up hunting.

Have you ever killed a pig with your knives?  

I’ve not knifed one, but I’ve shot ‘em. Yeah. I shot the pig for my wedding and for my daughter’s first birthday I shot the pig.

How do you do it?  

You just come up and in between the eyes, point blank. My friend has a pig farm. He raises ‘em. But, I just went to Molokai and hunted deer. My friend lives there. We go fishing, then jump across the street and go fucking hunting deer, right there. In three days, they shot, like, 15. I got a couple. You see packs of 40 coming by and you’re, like…pow…pow… pow…  pow… whereas the shit you see on TV, you sit for hours and you see like one deer. But, in Molokai, it’s packs of 40.

What’s it like to get one of the bastards in your sights an nail it? 

Like I said, I’m no hunter. I suck shit. And on TV it looks all easy, but you stalk the thing all quiet, and when you see something, your heart’s all going, and to look through a scope and try to breathe steadily, it’s really hard. You have to be some semi-ninja, semi-jedi. And, I’m neither.

Do you think, wow, I’m about to end this animal’s life? 

Well… no… I don’t. If you kill it and you eat it, it’s fine. So everything I kill I eat. Tuna are the most beautiful looking fish out there and we eat ‘em. Just don’t fucken take more than what you need. Killing animals? I’m fine with it as fine as long as you eat ‘em. What is this? Fucking Outdoor Hunters Magazine?

I want to know what it was like when you first starting getting attention, going from your idyllic poverty to pretty much instant wealth? 

Here’s the background. My dad was a carpenter and my mom worked at a little shop in Hanalei. They’re divorced so we had that going, mom hates dad; dad hates mom That’s why we’d go to the beach and surf and surf as much as we could all day long, go home sleep and go to school. But, before we go into that other stuff, let me say: the good thing about that is our dad and our mom never pressured us into doing anything. We’d go to contests with our friends and that was our thing, we’d go there, my dad would work, my mom would work do her thing, we’d go to contests and surf and I’d watch their parents snap at them and I’d be like, God! I feel sorry for ‘em. So, not having my parents at my contests was a good thing.

Anyway, I’ll tell you from the beginning. Richard Woolcott (who would start Volcom) used to come to Kauai when I was younger and he’d come and hang out with Kaiborg, Chava (Greenlee), Kala Alexander and Woolly was Quiksilver and he took care after the boys. And, one time, I was fourth grade, I did my first 360 at Pine Trees and somehow he was there and I ran into him at the shower and I had already had a Quiksilver sticker on my board. Back then, you’d have as much stickers as you could put on your board. And, he was like, what’s up with this company, do you like it? And, I was, like, yeah, fuck, and he asked, do you want to ride for us? He gave me a pair of elastic shorts a bright pink shirt that were way too big. But, I was, like, woo-hoo, I’m sponsored!

Anyways, I rode for Quksilver for a couple of years and then when I was 13, Danny Kwock brought me into his office. I was in California doing amateur contests and he brings me into his office and he tells me, and I’m not even listening, I’m 13 years old, but I did catch the line, “Oh yeah, if another company comes along your way, if you get a better offer, you should take it. We’ll always be family here.” I was thinking, you’re Quiksilver! What do you mean?

Two weeks later, Richard Woolcott (who’d left Quiksilver to start Volcom) calls my house and offers me this HUGE deal and I’m fucken 13 years old! It was fucking big! And my dad was, like, “Volcom who? This radical fucken company? These fucken crazy fucken punks at Volcom with their ads flipping people off?” But, the money was too good and we didn’t have any money at home so we had to take it. But the funny thing was, two weeks after I had the talk with Danny Kwock telling me that if a better offer comes along I should take it, what do you know, Richard Woolcott calls. And, it didn’t make sense to me until Volcom went public and so and so made a shitload of money and had to step away from Quiksilver and I started thinking, hmmmm wow, this guy delivered me to Volcom. Which, to me, isn’t a bad thing because, you know, I’m very happy how everything turned out BUT do you think he owes me some money? This is all hypothetical, of course.

 Two thousand and four was an interesting year for you. You’d qualified, you were at your peak, and your contract was up. You had a fantastic opportunity to sign what could’ve been a milestone contract with an opposition company…

I knew I was going to stay with ‘em because the relationship that I have with Richard Woolcott and Troy Eckert, to me, it’s not a company. Richard’s like a father; Troy’s like a brother to me. So, 2004, the contracts are coming, I’m in the WCT, and I wasn’t just gonna let them expect that they had it. I had a sit-down with Bob McKnight and Strider (Wasilewski) from Quiksilver. They were in my mind because at that time, Quslilver was big. They were 1.3 billion dollars so it was lavishing and crip and big. But, I knew what I had at Volcom was way deeper than that. I’ve been there since the beginning and I knew I was going to be with them for the rest of my life but…  ha!…  I was fucking with them. Bob knew. He said, “I know in the back of your head you already have your decision made but, hey, we’d love you to  blah blah.”

I let Volcom sweat the whole year until New Year’s and I went out to dinner –  me, Borg, Dave Riddel and Troy and Woolly. And, they thought we were just going out to dinner. I just told ‘em, “Are we going to do this forever or are we just fucking around?” And, they weren’t expecting it. And I said, “Well, I come as a package deal.” I told ‘em, “I will sign the fucking thing tonight BUT I’m bringing Borg and Riddel with me. Borg’s my guru and Riddel’s been like another father to me. He’s my comfort zone. Riddel’s been taking care of me and my brother since we were 12 years old.” Back when I rode for Quiksilver which is now Volcom. And they said, “No worries.” And here we are, six years later and I just re-did the thing with ‘em, a 10-year contract.

Did they cut you a little piece off when Volcom went public? 

Everyone thinks that I got handed the whole fucking shebang-shebang. But, it was in my contract that if they ever did go public I had the option to get x amount of shares which I bought. Volcom! They’ve taken care of me since I was 14. They will care of me, I’m pretty sure, until the day I die.

Who attaches more importance to money? You or your brother?  

Who gets weirder over money? My brother! My brother! That’s who he is. He’s a real competitive, jealous person. And, yeah, he wants to make the most, be the best… and that’s the reason for his competitive success. He wants to take whatever the person in the water has, contracts, or heats. That’s where me and my brother are completely different because I’ve never been the fucken contest fucken world champion. To me, I’m fucking thrilled with everything I’ve got. There was a point in high school where I was just partying with the boys. And, my real friends, the ones that cared, told me, get your shit together. We’ll always be here. You have a chance to go and fucken do shit that none of us can even imagine. We’ll always be here.

What emotions did you attach to his world title wins? 

My brother won the world title and I was very proud of him. I was, like, fuck, this is the guy I’m surfing with every day and he’s winning the world title? What the fuck? So at that time, I was, I can do it, I can fucken do it! I WILL WIN THE FUCKEN WORLD TITLE! That’s what I thought. Fuck, I’m not going to lie, I might’ve had big dreams, expectations, but I cracked under pressure. Fuck! I got so fucken nervous. I was never nervous… ever! But, god, you know, all of a sudden I’m in my heat just…  (choking sound)…  I was out there surfing to impress the surfers on tour not the judges. I was going out there trying to do a hundred and fifty per cent on my first turns…  blowing the fucking board to fucking space…  ‘cause I was worried that I didn’t want to surf like a kook. I didn’t want the competitors to think, god, what the fuck is this guy doing on the tour? And outside, I had crowd anxiety. I couldn’t handle the pressure. I would, like, lock up and surf like a fucking kook, a robot, I hated it. I barely fucking made the first year by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin. But, the next year I found that, ok, I belong here. But, fuck, I still couldn’t, I just didn’t like the way I was surfing. I couldn’t get this fucking glitch out of my head, like, fucking three to the beach. I felt like I had a stick up my ass. I felt like I was still a stiff robot. I did not like what I was seeing. Even when I made it clear in my head I wasn’t going to do the tour the next year and I was out there with nothing to lose, I still didn’t like the way I was surfing. It was fucking weird. I looked like a stif fucking robot trying to do…  cutbacks.

Tell me about the most intense fight you’ve had with your brother. Was it the night before The Eddie, the year you won?  

Oh, no, no. That was just a typical fucking fight. Him saying some stupid things he shouldn’t be saying to certain people and I was not happy with it. This was in the daytime. And, I was screaming shit at him. Everything you could think of to get him to come out of the house to fucking attack me. And, I said the perfect things and he came flying out and fucking tried to karate kick me. He kinda got me and then we started swinging… some guys grabbing me…  and then he got me a couple of times and gave me a black eye and a bloody lip. I think I barely got him. But, fuck, that was a good reason I won the Eddie because I had so much rage in-fucking-side of me. And, I don’t want to use the word hate, but I was very, very upset with him. He was in the heat before me and it was the pulse of the contest and he was…  it was 25 feet…  and he was getting big waves, probably the biggest waves of his life and I was just…  screaming…  paddling out, looking at the sky yelling…  YOU CANNOT!…  because he has won everything. I was, like, he’s not going to win THE FUCKING EDDIE AIKAU! I fucking wanted it really badly. Winning the Eddie Aikau, that contest, I think it picks a person. There’s so much energy in that thing. The winner is already set in stone. It might’ve been for someone else that year, but I wanted it so bad I took that energy, I got those waves, the biggest waves of my life, and, you know… I won. And, a big part of it was how I was feeling. The depth of feeling inside me. Everything was in fucking fifth gear.

Did that intense feeling disappear once you’d won, once you’d beaten your brother?

No! Actually, it did about a couple of hours later, but I had a black eye when  I was on stage and, fuck, I was jumping up and down on the stage like a little girl but, uh, he went to shake my hand and I fucking walked right by him on stage. And, I went back to my house, he came over with a bottle of champagne, we went upstairs and talked. I told him, fuck, you can’t do that. You can’t act like that. We hugged and that was that. We got in a fight in Fiji three years ago and I realised after that fight that it’s not cool. I punched him and cut his eye, he broke my surfboards afterwards. It didn’t feel good punching him even though he’s punched me hundreds of times. I realised, fuck, I’m punching my own blood. I told myself, I’m never going to let it get to that point again. I will fucken walk away. I’ll be the bigger man. Even though I don’t want to. Like, just recently, we got into a fucking fist-fight and it’s hard to be the bigger man, I’ll tell you that. It sucks! It sucks having to be the bigger man and you’re the younger brother. But, if it stops the way I feel afterward because, fuck, he’s my brother, I’ll suck it up. If he wasn’t around I don’t know what I’d do.

Who’s your one closest, most trustworthy friend? 

Shit. You guys are not going to know him.

It don’t matter.

It’s hard to find. Now that I’m getting older and had a kid I look at my life. You start to wonder, who are your real friends? Who is your friend because they’re you’re friend? Or, who’s your friend with their hand out? A lot of people, where I live, there’s a lot of negativity. It’s weird. A lot of people, they’d rather see you fall than rise. Instead of working together, they like to work against each other. I’m not saying that about everybody, but there’s a lot of people. Especially in my situation, a lot of people hate, hate, HATE the fact I came from nothing have a lot of things and live life not really caring what they think.

Have you ever wanted to die? 

Yeah. But, that’s hypothetically speaking. And, if anyone out there says that they’ve never wanted to die is full of shit. But, not since I’ve had a child. I actually try to take care of myself these days. I’m not as reckless, careless because me imagining my daughter growing up without me, her father, to take care of her, fuck, that scares me.

When’s the time you’ve been most grief stricken? 

Oh fuck! My friend Ronnie-Boy, fuck, shot himself two years ago. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. It’s still hard for me to deal with. It’s very sad. Yeah. Someone that you never think would do that but is crazy enough so when you hear it… I did have a dream about him. He’s doing good.

What was the dream?  

It’s weird ‘cause he was a crazy, crazy guy but he was for real. He was one of my best friends. Someone who said they’d die for you and who would actually die for you. And, I was waiting for this dream because I’d hear people say, oh, I had a dream, but a lot of those people who say that, they’re just full of fucking shit. So, I was, like, WHERE THE FUCK IS MY DREAM? I was waiting for, like, a year-and-a-half and any chance that something was coming I’d get really excited and wake up and be, like, awwww fuck! So, when I finally let go of it, he was in my dream. I’ve had two. I just had one two weeks ago. The first one was, I was down at Pine Trees, me, my friend David, he was another one of Ronnie-Boy’s really good friends. Ronnie Boy was a nuts Hawaiian hunter, scrapper, tough as nails, but a really fucking sincere person. Big fucking heart. And, he did not care what you were. I was a little white haole surfer and he was a fucking nuts Moke hunter trapper guy. But, we were best friends. He wishes he grew up surfing because his dad made him hunt. So, in my dream, I came back from Molokai and I was telling him, “I just shot some fucking deer, you’d be so proud of me.” And, he was, like, “No way, Red!” ‘cause he used to call me Little Red, “You did it, you shot some!” And, in my dream, I said, “Where the fuck were you?” And he was real mellow, usually he was high strung. My friend Dave had his back turned to him. It was weird. The three of us were fucking real when we were together. But, he wasn’t looking at him. And, I was thinking, fuck, why? It took me a long time to process it. I woke up and I was, like, fuck, I thought he was still around and I realised it was a dream and, fuck, I started crying.

(Bruce talks about Ronnie-Boy at length and a few more dream guest appearances as well as the arrival at Ronnie-Boy’s house of a spiritualist who presented his mom with her favourite chocolates and flowers, a gift, she said, from her son.)

You got something else for me? You’ve been uncharacteristically reflective tonight…

You’re supposed to tell me what to say. Shit, I miss my wife and daughter.

How about you tell me how you feel about getting older? 

You know, my brother’s kinda going through that right now (Andy’s 32, one year older than Bruce). I think he’s maybe just starting to accept it a little bit. But, me? I always thought I was the shit, I was the young guy, until two years ago when I had my 10-year (high school) reunion and I didn’t go. In your mind, you think you’re always going to be the shit. But, then you have guys like Dane Reynolds arrive. It’s hard at first. Like, fuck, FUCK THESE GUYS! First instinct, fuck them, fuck that, fuck everybody. It’s an easy thing to do. Fuck this. But, uh, I just said, you know what? Fuck being jealous and fuck being angry. I was a cocky FUCK growing up. I still am.

 

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Andy Irons on Tavarua Island, Fiji
Everyone wanted to be around him. He had it. He was bigger than the room, the beach, the islands, the ocean. Bigger than even life. | Photo: Brian Bielmann

Andy Irons Broke Our Heart

Chas Smith remembers the most captivating surfer of the modern generation. Three titles on the shelf! Hawaii's greatest!

 

 

 

 

“Man, that kid made fucking-up look cool.”

“I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it.”

Andy Irons broke our heart. And he made it beat. And he made it pound and he made it shudder and he made it shake and he made it soar and he made it crash and he made it pound.

He made it pound.

When he was on, he was on. Machine-gunned truths coming out of that jaw. His jaw was like granite, carved and huge. Like Cary Grant. His eyes would blaze, blue and touched with pterygium, and he would fix you right in the dead center of that blaze. And those truths would pop pop pop pop pop. He would never hold back. Ever. Pop pop pop pop pop.

When his surfing was on, my goodness. Massive drops at Waimea and into the shorebreak and into the detonation. Late take-offs at Teahupoo standing straight and tall with the fury of thick turquoise hell all around. Pipeline. Pipeline. The only wave that truly matters. Low crouching Backdoor thrills, disappearing so deep, gone forever, and then getting shot from a watery crypt into the sunny haze, surrounded by millions of particles of salt and water and screams from North Shore decks, two fingers to the sky mouth open in a victorious sneer.

When he was off, he was off. Buried and burying his ghosts. Surly and aggressive. Surfing like he had concrete fins and a mind completely elsewhere. Screaming obscenities at those he loved.

But he was always captivating, on or off. Always. Magnetic. Everyone wanted to be around him and everyone knew he was as combustible as fire. Damien Hobgood, kind Floridian twin, gentle family man wanted to be around him. “Lots of times I’d talk to him and it’d be fun to see which Andy I was gonna get. He’s got such a big big heart…it didn’t matter what he said, or what sort of mood he was in you knew that he loved you. He was raw. Raw Irons. One time we were battling at Backdoor and I got a wave and came out right next to him and he just snapped. I paddled back out and started going off on him. Battling. And I won the heat.

Later that night I went to a party with my girl and I told her, ‘If Andy’s there and comes over here don’t make a scene…’ I didn’t want it to get weird if he punched me. So of course I see him and of course I gotta go talk to him. I went over and he looked up at me and, you just never knew what Andy you were gonna get, and he looked at me and said, ‘Ahhhhhh I don’t care’ then gave me a big hug. Cool moment for me. He had lots of love.”

Everyone wanted to be around him. He had it. He was bigger than the room, the beach, the islands, the ocean. Bigger than even life.

And his greatness was always known. It hung around him like a halo. Reef McIntosh, fellow Kauaian, with him since the second grade knew it. “I always knew he would be what he grew into. Even as a little kid I knew he was gonna be a legend. He never held back and he could do anything. From shitty Huntington to Waimea, he wasn’t a one trick pony. He could do it all.”

He could do it all. And he did do it. All. Kai Garcia, fellow Kauaian, Wolfpak leader knew it. “I remember watching him as a little little kid surfing Pinetrees. You could always see that he had it. Fucken hood rat ripper. Surfing was different for him. Wasn’t mechanical. Fucken Picasso in the water. Einstein. He looked at the ocean different.”

Across that ocean and a continent CJ Hobgood, world champ, twin of Damien knew it. “The very first time I went to Hawaii I was twelve and they were holding this contest at Diamond Head. I had heard about Andy Irons but had never seen him before. So I was at the contest site and he rocks up the hill in a Lincoln riding shotty with his board hanging out the window no leash or nothing. He hops out, grabs his contest jersey, and I remember it was breaking way way out the back, and he cruises right out. When you’re twelve you don’t even think about surfing those kinds of waves without a leash but that was Andy.”

That was Andy.

He surfed like a man possessed. Like a man not bound by natural law or twelve year old law or any law. He defied gravity and he did it with ease. Style. Always so much style. Arms behind the back, back arched, looking at the roof of lurching pits. Punts so high and effortless and. Effortless. He surfed with almost too much power and power is rarely beautiful but Andy Irons made it thus. When he hit the lip it was like a bulldozer. He destroyed it. He ravished it. He committed to its death with every ounce of his strength but he made it look like a piece of art. Like a dance. Like a tango. The lip became complicit in its own destruction and thrilled at becoming immortal. It was all there and it was all brilliant. He surfed his personality. He surfed without limit.

And he competed the same way. Ever since he first put on a colorful singlet. Freddy Pattachia, Andy’s closest friend and North Shore standout and North Shore legend, remembers, “It was the first time I thought, ‘this guy is radical.’ It was, like a junior pro I had known Andy and Bruce for a while but this must have been one of the first events or something. It was at V-Land. And Bruce was beating him in the final and had this little barrel and Andy purposefully tried to get in his way. He, like, bailed his board and tried to hit Bruce in the barrel but he still made it out and won. And you know Bruce, he rubbed it in. Andy chased him around V-Land for a minute and then we all left and as we were leaving I saw Andy’s trophy jammed in a tree. I thought, ‘Holy shit, this guy’s on another level.’ He wouldn’t take losing. Didn’t accept it. Wasn’t in his vocabulary…to see him get rid of his trophy…I would have been stoked just to have any trophy but second place wasn’t good enough for him.”

Andy won an event at Pipeline as a seventeen year old. He won Teahupo’o too, later that year, but of course it took a hot minute for him to really dig into the world championship tour format with the judging and the monotony and the procedural expectations and the blah blah blah but by 2002 he was there. He arrived, competitively, just in time for Kelly Slater.

King Kelly. Royal hand around the neck of competitive surfing. Too good to stay interested in the other plebes blaséing in the water, too bored of beating them senseless, so he left for three years. And when he became too bored of whatever else he was doing in those three years, Pamela Anderson, acting, he came back. To rule for another thousand years. But blocking the gate to his kingdom was a carved granite jaw and two blue eyes touched with pterygium blazing pure hatred.

CJ Hobgood, world champ during one of Kelly’s three absent years, witnessed the boil. “Andy was the first person who came along that hated Slater. He hated everything about him and I know hate is a strong word but he really hated Kelly.” (Reef quote) Hate. Rage. Rage. Passion. Brodie Carr, CEO of the Association of Surfing Professionals described the passion. “He attacked and destroyed waves with an element of flair that only he has. Competitively he was UFC meets ASP. He attacked every wave of every heat of every contest.”

And those attacks and that hatred and that passion and that style and that flair and that hatred meant victory. Kelly banished. Kelly locked out in the cold. The sexiest moments in competitive surfing’s history, those battles. And three in a row to Andy. The Champ cometh. The Champ cometh. The people’s champ.

Victory meant cock sure swagger. Andy would strut around the parking lot, the club, the awards’ show, the Foodland and everyone would know he had it. Was it. Barking, chest pounding. And in an era of humble athlete love Andy’s “Here the fuck I am” was the greatest show in town. We all enjoyed. Reef McIntosh enjoyed. “He was the best and he beat the best at their best. He was the only one who could and he let people know it.”

And victory meant victory parties. Celebrations. Mad burn it all down, down, down to the ground bangers. Tom Dosland, Maui surfer, underground charger, remembered Andy partying, “because he was always winning. That guy would go the gnarliest. His benders were legendary. He’d party and then charge the next morning…I mean, his whole trip… a real rock star life.” Kai Garcia added, “That’s just how we were raised on Kauai. Win and earn your right to have a good time. When you get older you realize better to treat yourself to a Pepsi…but we were young. It’s a reward thing.”

A rock star and young victor’s good time is coke, not Pepsi. And other uppers and also other downers. And drinks and drinks and drinks. The World Tour is not an iniquitous den of damnation and it is not a preschool of saints. It is a good time. A modern good time and let he who is without sin cast the first stone for Andy Irons partook in that good time. And there is no need to report on what, exactly, he took or in what quantities but, yes, sometimes Andy went overboard and sometimes he sat quietly in the corner but mostly he was in the center because, always, people wanted him. He was the motherfucking Champ. Kai Garcia witnessed. “Everybody was always pulling on him. Everybody always wanted this or that…” And Freddy Pattachia corroborated. “He’d light it up. He’d light up a room and every one wanted something. People freakin loved him all over the world.” And Reef McIntosh corroborated. “Nobody could take their eyes off him.” And I corroborate. He was magical. Magnetic.

Andy Irons was raw and that is what the people loved. He surfed raw. He partied raw. He was raw. Each nerve and sinew and emotion laid bare which meant, also, he was sensitive, extremely sensitive, which is rough when combined with a white hot spotlight perpetually burning. CJ Hobgood knew the feeling. “I’d always said being a professional surfer is sick, but you are definitely signing up for a job where you’re gonna be judged. You’re judged during your heats but also outside of the water you’re getting judged. You’re always being judged which might have been real hard for Andy.” Kai Garcia added, “All eyes were on him for his good days and his bad days. People always want the dirt and that took it out of him. It took it out of all of us. When he was doing good he was on a pedestal and when he was doing bad people just….it’s real hypocritical. You’ve got to be strong and Andy…..he didn’t roll with the punches.” And Freddy Pattachia, who was there for each step of the way, saw. “People either wanted him to be winning or they wanted a controversy with his lifestyle. That got to him, being judged all the time. He was a pretty insecure guy. He always looked up to Kelly and he’d seriously ask me, Borg, his brother, ‘Fuck am I a kook?’”

And the wheel kept spinning. With every unpredictable and throaty top turn, with every towering barrel with every big night out with every victory and with every loss with every bit of bit of introspection and every lash out and every hug Andy Irons kept spinning. Kai Garcia knew the feeling. “Those are the pros and cons of being famous and we both came from a small little island. It was gnarly.”

Andy Irons, raw, sensitive, big-hearted, sucking the marrow out of life and maybe also medicating the constant pressure, the constant attention. Burying his ghosts.

And then Kelly Slater crashed the gate, winning then winning then winning and the pressure and the lifestyle and all of it. Too much. Just too much. So Andy Irons went off the rails then went off to rehab.

He didn’t share much about those days with the public or even his closest friends. He didn’t share much with Freddy Pattachia. “He hid a lot from me with the drug use. I didn’t ever know exactly what he was doing because he took a big brother roll with me. Sometimes I’d show up somewhere and it was clear he wasn’t acting normal but he’d never show it to me. He didn’t want me to be a part of it…And so when he went to rehab I’d never bring it up. I didn’t want to be the friend who was all about his problems in life. I was more like, if you want to surf, let’s surf. Or if you want to go out to dinner with our wives lets do that. I didn’t want him to have to talk about it though. I didn’t want to be that guy…”

Freddy wanted him to be free. So many wanted him to be free but then there would be the people always looking to party and Andy Irons was only ever raw and he was sensitive and he was raw. He was a force of nature.

So last year he showed up to Puerto Rico and didn’t surf. Depending on who is speaking he was either genuinely sick or heavily drugged. And he left the island early, heading home, but stopping in Miami for one last giant night out.

And then stopping at Dallas/Fort Worth.

And he was too genuinely sick or drugged to continue home so he checked into room 324 at the airport’s Grand Hyatt and he dragged his backpack up the elevator and he opened his door.

And he closed his door.

And he got into bed.

And he closed his eyes.

And he broke our heart.

 

His last moments, life even, have been picked over by tabloids and men’s magazines and with the release of the toxicity report have been picked over even more. But none of it matters. It doesn’t matter if his blood is soiled only with disease or if it is soiled with heroin and OxyContin and cocaine and prescription sleep aids and any wild sort of poison. Because Andy Irons is not a cautionary tale about the dangers of drug consumption. He is not the sum of his parts.

He is a legendary tale.

He crashed this earth and lived completely. He loved his wife. He bore a child. He partied, yes, he surfed powerfully and beautifully, yes. He lived more in his lifetime then most ever do or will. Yes.

And those who argue that none of vices should ever be made public, that his existence should be whitewashed and all we should look at is his only at his surfing rob his life of its complexity and its power and its beauty. Of his rawness. Andy lived like he surfed, remember, and his living and partying wildly and going mad are as much a part of his legend as those three titles.

And those who argue that he was a degenerate, that he should not be glorified because of his tainted record, should go to hell and on the way there should look in a mirror.

Andy broke our heart.

And he made it pound.

And that pounding will reverberate throughout eternity.

 

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Andy Irons and Lyndie Irons in Fiji
"He was the most handsome man I’d ever seen," says Lyndie, "and now when I look back at pictures it takes my breath away. So handsome …  and so…  perfect…  he was… perfect…  it’s still really hard for me to even look at photos… I always tell my friends I can’t believe how handsome he was." | Photo: Brian Bielmann

He was Magical and Crazy: Lyndie on Andy

Lyndie Irons remembers the whirlwind of her nine-year love affair with the Champ…

They were perhaps the fiftieth or maybe the hundredth couple to make out beneath the tall Ficus tree between First and Third streets, Encinitas, after a night at The Saloon. Andy Irons, 25 back then and a world champ too, but only one-time and not thrice, although he was mid-way through his second, pulled the brown-skinned Californian gal toward him and then pushed the both of them back into the trunk.

Ms Lyndie Dupuis, 20, held her breath and felt like…felt like…well, how can she explain now, what it was like, back then, to be held, pushed, owned, by a Hawaiian god who’d suddenly become, unexpectedly, the most exciting and dominant surfer of his generation?

Years after, when they’d come to town, married now, Andy’d reenact the whole thing, back at the Saloon, under the tree, and behave like “a real donkey, ” says Lyndie, laughing, something rare these days, except maybe when their boy Ax goofs off or runs, which he does with the same loping gait as his dad, the dad dead not one month before Ax saw daylight for the first time.

What does that make Ax now, four? Can you believe it’s been that long since we woke up to the stupid, the insane, the this-has-to-be-a-prank-but-we-all-know-it-ain’t, news of Andy’s death?

I spoke to Lyndie in Sydney, in Hawaii and in Costa Rica. Tears interrupted most sentences and that’s hard when you’re the one pushing her to remember certain memories or reviving buried stories. But, the gal is, maybe not tough, cause that conjures up a hardness and Ms Irons is soft as butter, but…brave, brave because it’s hard to cry in front of someone and brave because she knows it’s up to her to carry the legacy of Hawaii’s greatest ever surfer and ensure its luster never dulls.

DR: I want to read you a quote from his last interview and, if y’could, I want you to interpret it for me. It’s a recurring dream he’d had since childhood: “I’m on top of a mountain and I’m trying to stand on the pinnacle without falling off. The wind gets really strong and it turns into this radical Wizard of Oz trip with the wind coming up and with lightning bolts appearing around. It starts to rain and the mountain starts getting real slippery. What does it mean? Probably that I’m trying to hold on…

Lyndie: Interpret it? His life was a whirlwind. Every single day he was… he wanted more than anything to be normal. That’s what he’d always say. His lifestyle and his job kept him on this crazy 100 miles an hour treadmill. He was always trying to just hold onto life, to normalcy. I could see him in his dream just thinking that everything around him was just crazy and chaotic, which it was. He just wanted to stand still.

DR: When he spoke about normality, what did he mean? Living at home, splitting from the tour?

Lyndie: Everybody caring about what he did, his business, his personal life.  It’s really hard to be an athlete and to perform for everybody else. He’d always say, “I’d love to be a valet worker at St Regis, have a normal job and not have everybody watching me and wanting me to perform.”

DR: Did Andy dream a lot? Were they sweet dreams, nightmares?

Lyndie: Definitely nightmares. He’d wake up screaming a lot. And, he was talking to Koby Abberton about it. Seems like they had similar dreams. Andy would wake up sometimes screaming out or he’d sit up and start punching the bed. He had some very, very radical dreams, and a lot of them.

DR: Did he describe these dreams?

Lyndie: Sometimes. When he had radical ones. There’s a few I can remember, but I’d prefer to keep them to myself. He definitely had emotional, physical dreams even though he looked so sweet and peaceful when he slept. I look at Axel and get the same feeling. Axel goes a million miles a minute and when he goes to sleep I feel like I can take a breath.

DR: Andy spoke about being a terrible insomniac.

Lyndie: He had a really, really hard time sleeping. I think, the travel, the pressure and everything that comes with it. It was hard for him to relax.

DR: Can you talk to me about the Tahiti contest win in 2010, what he said to you on the phone after he won? You were at home pregnant, yeah?

Lyndie: I was really pregnant so I stayed home. I wish I was there. I watched most of the contest lying down.

(The proximity of the contest win to his death, his surprise success given the unspectacular nature of his earlier contest results in his comeback year and how visibly moved he was immediately afterward, makes it extremely difficult for Lyndie to talk about the period without crying. But, she knows it was a pivotal moment in his life, a peak before the endless trough, and so she talks through the rain.)

DR: How long after the contest did he call?

Lyndie: He always called me right after. I… I… to watch him… to see him beat Kelly… and see him splashing the water and seeing him so happy…  it was definitely the most emotional contest for him. I’d never seen him so happy. Cause I know… he loved to win and he needed that…he was so happy… I’d never seen him so happy, too. He said to me on the phone, “I really did it! Can you believe I can still do it?” Well, of course. He had been doubting himself for a long time. That was my favourite win by far in the nine years I was with him. It meant the world to him.

DR: Around the world there were a lot of fuck yeahs! And fist pumping! The comeback kid. Like the best Kenny Powers episode y’ever seen…

Lyndie: I know! Words can’t explain how happy I was for him. That he…  ohhhhhh…

(The intermittent tears and mewing and shudders turn into the wail of a human being torn away from their soul mate. We pause and start again a few minutes later.)

DR: Sorry… Maybe you can talk to me about the whirlwind of those world titles, you the gal next to the guy. How about the year he made Kelly cry? That was intenso!

Lyndie: When I was first started dating Andy he’d already won one world title and was already in the middle of his second one and so him winning every contest seemed like the natural order of things. I was shocked if he didn’t make the quarters or the semi finals. He was so happy and so on top of the world. He never second-guessed himself. He was such a magical human, particularly in those world title days. It was like he was floating on air. He never even, it’s so hard to explain it in words. I wish he was here to explain it for me because he was so good with words…  But, that year that he beat Kelly in the final was magical in itself. It was so unexpected. I remember G (Graham Stapelberg, the then VP of marketing at Billabong) adding up the points and he was like, “Whoa, Andy, you can actually win this world title.” He wasn’t a long shot for me, and not for Andy either, but for everybody else it was shocking. It was magical and crazy.

DR: After that final, when you were finally alone, do you remember what he said, what you spoke about?

Lyndie: He was always, uh, these are my personal moments. But, he was so focused on wining and he was so shocked that he won.

DR: Tell me about Andy’s qualities…

Lyndie: One quality that was crazy about Andy was that he never talked bad about anyone’s surfing. No one. Not even to me, personally. There’s not one person on that planet who could say otherwise. He thought everyone was an amazing surfer, from Kelly all the way down to that guy that’s just learning how to surf. He never had a negative thing to say about someone’s surfing, which is pretty crazy. Most athletes talk shit about other athletes.

DR: He was a great surfer, and I mean great in its literal sense, but he didn’t believe how good he was, particularly later on…

Lyndie: He had all the confidence in the world but then he’d also be shocked that he could win. But he was such a dominating person outside and in the water.

DR: When you want to put yourself in a good place, what memories do you access?

Lyndie: I never think of the negative, the hard stuff, the hard part, I know a lot of people know that, but since the day he passed I don’t even think about them. We travelled the world together and we were best friends. We had…  (tears)…  so many good times. I think about it hourly, minutely. There’s not a day that goes by or a minute when I’m not thinking about it. I can push it away when I’m not alone. I try not to cry in front of Axel or my friends anymore. Nobody can say the right thing. Bruce’s (now ex-) wife Mia is my rock, the only one who says the right thing when I’m that sad, when I’m having a rough…  Every day with Andy was amazing. I’m not saying that because he passed, either. I’d say it if he was still here. I just loved him, every inch of him, everything about him.

DR: Here’s another quote from that last interview: “You gotta go in the sometimes to figure who you are. I’ve had my fair share of hills and valleys, but life’s been radical and exciting. Stuff that kings would die to do. The lifestyle we’ve got and the life I led since I was 17, I couldn’t even tell my friends. I try and tell stories and they think I’m making it up. Straight up. It’s the life I wanted since I caught my wave.” Now, ain’t that a classic quote from the Champ?

Lyndie: He’s not here and I have a very quiet life with Axel. I think back and my life with him was like a movie. It was unbelievable. I don’t think, I know the guys on tour, they all travel and do their thing, Andy was just…  he had so many demons, I guess, that set him back a little bit in life, but I never felt that way. That’s who he was. He got dealt these cards and he was just trying to figure out life the best he could. He had a lot of ups and downs but it came along with who he was. He was up high and on top of the world and then he’d falter a little bit and then every day was like a movie. I think back now and wonder how I had the energy to keep up with him. I don’t even have the energy to keep up with baby Ax and Andy was on a whole other level. He lived every minute to its fullness. He was the only person so far that I’ve met who actually lived that quote. He really squeezed everything he could out of every day and it was game on the second he woke up. It was crazy, but I loved every minute of it and I wish I could…  still have it.

DR: Talk to me about how the movie Blue Horizon affected him. It played on him for years.

Lyndie: It really did. For many year after it came out, he was really, really hurt and unhappy with it. He didn’t want to seem like the bad guy in the surfing world against Kelly and he thought that was how it portrayed him. I thought it was a really beautiful video. It was his video but he thought it made it seem that Kelly was the good guy and he was the bad guy; that Kelly was the white horse and he was the dark horse. He didn’t like that. He didn’t want people to think that he was the dark horse. He wanted to be the happy, good guy. It affected him for many, many years afterwards. People would bring it up and say, “Oh! I saw Blue Horizon! And he’d be like, “Yep, so what!” and look at ‘em, like, “What have you got to say about it?” He was ready for… war!

DR: I believe it was a study on what it takes for a human to beat Kelly Slater and Andy, being Andy, wasn’t going to hide a thing…

Lyndie: I felt that it showed Andy had an amazing life, that he was human and a little more radical and confrontational than Kelly. But Andy never wanted to play up that side of himself. He really wanted to be the happy, loving guy, which he was, but he came with a little bit of…

DR: Graphic honesty?

Lyndie: Totally! He was so honest it was crazy. Sometimes he would be getting interviewed and I’d hear him going in a direction and I’d literally hold my breath… thinking… please don’t! Don’t be too honest! Now, I’m, like, why did I even care? He was who he was. He’d always be honest. There was never a moment where he wouldn’t be honest. Every interview, maybe because he was my husband, I listened to every word that came out of his mouth because he was so funny… so real…  I think a lot of people felt that way. He was so interesting. On the tour it’s so mechanical, the same thing after every heat. With Andy, he was either really excited or really upset.

DR: The physical attraction when you guys met was kinda off the chain, wasn’t it?

Lyndie: Yeah! Totally! He told me loved me after a week! It was on from the second we were together. He was the most handsome man I’d ever seen and now when I look back at pictures it takes my breath away. So handsome …  and so…  perfect…  he was… perfect…  it’s still really hard for me to even look at photos… I always tell my friends I can’t believe how handsome he was. I’m shocked now that he’s not here.

(There’s a raw silence for a while as the built-up pauses and stutters pour into a wail…)

DR: How will you describe Andy to Ax when he’s older?

Lyndie: Maybe in a few years it’ll be a lot easier… but today… I’ve never met anybody like him. Even Bruce. When I didn’t know Bruce as well as I do now, I used to think, they’re so similar it’s crazy, maybe it’s why they fight so much, but now, I know Bruce, they’re nothing alike. Andy was… so amazing… so full of life and love and happiness he could make anybody laugh and get along with anybody, a five-year-old kid, a 90-year-old woman. He had so much charisma, and he was so witty, he was just perfect. I’ll be able to explain it to Ax a little better and in a little more detail. In a weird way, I really think that he knows. Sometimes when I look at him I see so much Andy it freaks me out for a minute. I’ll tell him, well, you’re exactly like your Dad.

DR: Is there anything that we don’t know, something you think it’s important we should know? I mean, for one, he was a dynamic motherfucker!

Lyndie: (Laughter! Rare laughter! So sweet!) He just wanted everybody to like him and to love his surfing. He became so doubtful about that. He cared so much. I guess everybody cares in a way.

DR: He loved that in 2010 that people, fans, were finally cheering for him.

Lyndie: Yeah, exactly, the first time he felt people were backing him and backing his surfing. He had a couple of years where he felt everybody was talking about him and being really negative, which they probably were. He struggled with his demons at times and people were extremely judgmental about them. Everybody has issues and Andy’s were broadcast around the world. In 2010, when he was on a good path, when we were living in Australia and surrounded by really good people, and when he won that contest, he couldn’t believe how many people were happy for him. I can’t even tell you the amount of many texts I received after that contest and the phone calls from people telling me they cried, like he did, after he won. If any surfer said anything good about him, and he was always reading magazines, he couldn’t believe it. He was so stoked. If someone talked about their favourite surfers and mentioned him he’d be… wow! He couldn’t believe he could ever be someone’s favourite surfer.

 

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The Doc is Alive! It’s a Hanukkah Miracle!

Yesterday we pronounced the great Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz dead! But he ain't!… 

I’ve never been happier to’ve been so wrong. Y’see, BeachGrit had it from a usually good source that Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, the 93-year-old surfer who developed the most common-sense guide to eating (“Pinch an inch of fat anywhere on your body and you’re overweight”) and living (“Don’t screw another man’s wife!”), and who was still surfing until a few weeks ago, was dead.

But he wasn’t! Not even a coma, as reported.

Just got off the phone with Josh his youngest son and he said he’s actually doing better!” said a more reliable source.

But, while you’re here, let’s revisit his remarkable life.

I bought Doc’s famous book Surfing and Health a few years back and was turned onto his fabulous ideas. In the intro, Doc says  “This is a book about Health – a new and entirely different definition of Health. Health is much, much more than just not being sick. Health is the presence of a Superior State of Well Being – a vigour, a vitality, which must be worked for each and every day of your life.”

It came a few weeks after I ordered it (from here) with the inscription, “I can’t tell you what a kick is gives me to send this book all the way to Australia.”

Lately, I’d been trying to get hold of Doc for weeks for a piece I wanted to write called “A 93-year-old man tells you everything you need to know about sex” and, so, me and his son Mo started a little back and forth via email.

“Doc is thrilled at the idea of meeting you and helping you with an original article.There is only one catch, when you come here to shoot/write this… You have to feed TheDOC….”

and…

“Bring Black Card. For Snacks.”

Just as it was about to happen, I got an email from Mo, saying:

“All on HOLD. Will give more info later…”

Damm, ol Doc, the Russian Jew, who went to Stanford, became a doctor, threw it all in to chase surf, introduce surfing to Israel (and later to the Palestinians of Gaza) rear children, surf up and down the American coastlines with nine kids in a 21-foot van, following his philosophy that wisdom comes not from formal education but experience, write books, teach at community college, inspire the hell out of cats like Rob Machado and Kelly Slater and, still, in his nineties, surf the waves of Hawaii’s South Shore, albeit on his knees after his hinges gave out.

A documentary of his life was made called Surfwise (Click on the photo to watch) and, even if he comes across as a little tyrannical, maybe crazy, the stories of him and his wife fucking in the van while the kids blocked their ears and living on gruel and beans and surfing their lives away, is an example of life as an experiment, as a Great Dream.

Doc’s legacy for most of us, maybe for you, will be his book. It’ll change your life, swear to god.

And keep rooting for the Doc! Maybe it really will be a Hanukkah miracle!

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