Did you know the WSL didn't invent pro surfing?
Meet the gun-slinger who did!
The taxi van pulls into the semicircle driveway of the
Outrigger Canoe Club at the Diamond Head end of Waikiki. As
befits an icon of Hawaiian surfing (established 1908) and of Hawaii
Modern architecture (this version of the clubhouse built in 1963),
the low-rise Vladimir Ossipoff structure is engulfed by native
palms and plumeria. A rectangle of blue Pacific is visible through
a restaurant lanai built on top of the sand. From an unseen beach
volleyball court, grunts and slaps fill the scented air.
A dedication plaque at the entrance reads: “Let this be a place
where man can commune with the sun and sand and sea, where good
fellowship and aloha prevail and where the sports of old Hawai’i
shall always have a home.”
“Ah, member’s only, member’s only!” says the panicked Vietnamese
driver, and I ain’t kidding here, Mr Johnny Diep.
It’s true, the club is exclusive.
Join when you’re forty and you’ll pay $13,000. Today I carry a
golden ticket, an invitation from the former senator Fred Hemmings,
father of the Pipe Masters, the Triple Crown and the first world
pro circuit, and a member of the Outrigger Canoe Club since this
clubhouse was built.
Fred is waiting in the lobby, exactly at the appointed time of
one-thirty. He’s reading How to Party with an Infant, the
new book by his step-daughter Kaui Hart Hemmings, whose career was
made when George Clooney turned her first book, The
Descendants, into an Academy Award-winning movie. (It
won five, including Best Picture.)
Fred’s famous barrel chest and Popeye forearms inflate a a
powder blue 1982 Honolulu Marathon Finisher polo shirt, his
seventy-two-year-old ass is checked by flowered shorts, the beach
boy tableau completed by slippers on his bare feet.
On his left wrist is a vintage Rolex Date-Time, in gold, “the
most famous watch in Hawaii”, says Fred, and which we’ll reference
later.
Soon, Fred’s pawing at a Reuben sandwich, extra mustard, while I
eat the house Ahi and extinguish the summer heat with a Gin
Ricky.
We begin with political small-talk, Fred would’ve preferred
Marco Rubio over Trump and says at least Hillary isn’t an avowed
socialist like Sanders, until he shakes his head and says, “We
shouldn’t talk politics. America’s in the biggest mess it’s ever
been.”
I couldn’t agree more. Let’s surf.
DR: This is interesting. You’re one of the pivotal
figures in surfing. And, yet, there’s hardly a line written about
you, at least in surfing magazines.
Fred Hemmings: Have you ever thought… why?
DR: That’s what I was going to ask you. I would suggest,
because your political lean tends to the right…
Fred Hemmings: Part of it. A lot of it goes back to certain
individuals, especially journalists. Surfing became a Janus sport,
that is a sport with two faces. There was a cultural revolution in
the sixties and surfing, mostly through the magazines, took up an
image of being anti-establishment. And it was very hip to indulge
in the recreational drugs and have your finger in the air against
he establishment and I was, pretty much, a conservative. My hair
was short, I didn’t take drugs. I wrote an article criticising the
drug culture and what it was doing to some surfers I knew which,
among others, killed them. So I didn’t fit the profile of the
surfing in-crowd, as made by a lot of non-surfers who were
journalists. As a result I was never a darling of the surfing
world.
(But) I stand by my record… I’ll stack my competitive
record and my performances in surfing against anyone.
Anyone. You take all the big names. I competed against all
the big names. And I beat ‘em. I beat ‘em in Puerto Rico. And I
beat ‘em in Makaha. And I beat ‘em in Peru and I beat ‘em in most
events I competed in. I rode waves in three-to-four feet in Makaha
and won and up to twenty-five feet at Waimea. But because I was not
part of the… culture… that was being promoted by
people in the industry and I wasn’t part of the anti-establishment
culture I was never a darling of surfing. And your magazine
(The Surfer’s Journal, which this story was originally written
for) is a good example. How long’s the Journal been around
for?
DR: Almost twenty-five years, since
1992…
Fred Hemmings: And this is the first time I’ve done an interview
with it…
DR: I figured the Journal would’ve had an extensive
archive of interviews with you. But when I
looked…
Fred Hemmings: Never.
DR: It surprises me.
Fred Hemmings: It doesn’t to me.
DR: When I told the magazine’s editor I was going to be
in Honolulu and how about you sling me some work, he told me to
find you.
Fred Hemmings: Well, God bless Scott (Hulet), ‘cause he’s a
breath of fresh air for me. In a recent issue they did an article
by Nat Young on the world championship and for the first time ever,
in a surfing magazine, I was treated fairly. It showed a picture of
me riding an eight-to-ten foot wave and Nat was on a three-foot
wave…
DR: That’s 1968, Puerto Rico, World
Championships.
Fred Hemmings: Yeah, and therein lies the difference. The rules
were, catch the biggest wave, ride it the greatest distance in the
most critical part of the wave. I caught he biggest waves and rode
‘em the greatest distance in the most critical part of the wave.
And three eight-foot waves are going to beat ten four-foot waves
every time.
DR: What was the response like when you stomped those
studs: Nat, Midget, Reno etc?
Fred Hemmings: It was like some kind of sacrilege. Here’s this
throwback dinosaur Fred Hemmings beating all of our hot shots. It’s
a great irony. Surfing was a rebellious sport but I was like the
ultimate rebel. The surfing establishment was giving the finger,
like FU, to the establishment, the world, we’re different, we’re a
culture of our own, we’re anti-establishment, and I was the
ultimate rebel giving the finger to the surf culture.
DR: And there’s the irony of supposed freethinkers
rarely deviating from their opinion. And if you do differ from the
script, you’re ostracised…
Fred Hemmings: I was! And that’s the hypocrisy of modern-day
liberalism. You go to a college campus in America today and it’s
supposed to be a bastion of free thinking but if you differ from
politically correct thinking you’re ostracised. And they’re even
trying to take away your freedom of speech. One of my heroines in
recent American politics is a woman named Condoleezza Rice.
Secretary of State. Brilliant, went to Stanford, Rhodes scholar,
one of the smartest people you’d ever want to meet. And they kicked
her off a college campus ‘cause she wasn’t politically correct. So
here’s a bastion of academic freedom and they won’t let
conservatives talk. And I was in the same boat in surfing. I didn’t
fit the mold. But that’s just my perspective. The proof is in the
performance. I’m still standing.
DR:
Where does your conservative bent come from? Your
parents?
Fred Hemmings: It’s a wonderful question. I’ve ruminated on this
so much through the years that I almost think part of it is
genetic. I think there’s a proclivity in people’s very essence to
be conservative or liberal. I don’t think it came from my
environment which is my upbringing, as it came from who I am. We
seed from our ancestors and our individual parents and through the
magic of genetic coding, genes come together to make you who you
are. I guess mine is inherently conservative. Like, I have a hard
time as a conservative understanding people who make decisions with
disregard to facts and based on feelings. Rather than facts! And I
think that’s one of the finer differences in a lot of people. A lot
of people do their life based on feelings and others do their lives
based on facts and, of course, there’s extremes in everything. And
that’s not to say that feelings aren’t essential to a good healthy
life. But if you make a life-or-death decision it better have a lot
of facts in it.
DR: Surfing and politics…
Fred Hemmings: Surfing should have nothing to do with politics.
That’s a whole different realm. Surfing should have to do with
riding waves and enjoing the… sport. And there was big argument
made when I advocated professional surfing. I wrote an article in
Surfer magazine called Surfing Needs Professionalism. I listed why
professionalism would bring surfing more stature, that it would
motivate people to be on the cutting-edge of expanding horizons and
it’ll help surfing establish a reputation as a legitimate sport and
bring us respect in the hallways of decision makers and so they’ll
think twice about throwing us out of surfing boat harbours and shit
like that. And the magazine printed a response from one person who
said, “Fred Hemmings is Fornicating with Mother Sea.” And I said,
wait a minute. this is about freedom. If I want to compete in a
contest, that’s my line of freedom. If you don’t like it, guess
what asshole, don’t compete. If you don’t like it, don’t play.
These self-righteous people, all they can do is criticise. Rather
than saying, ok, these guys want to compete, tell Kelly Slater you
don’t like competition. Tell Carissa Moore. Tell these other guys
that are making four or five million dollars a year.
And one of the magazine editors in particular was
chastising… me… because of the money element. Making
money! So it wasn’t alright for me to advocate surfers making money
off surfing but it was alright for the publisher and owner of a
surfing magazine to make money off surfing by selling a magazine.
It wasn’t ok for the surfers to make money. That’s prostitution!
Give me a break.
DR: Can you describe what happened in 1982 when the ASP
took over the circuit from you?
Fred Hemmings: Ian Cairns, basically, a power play. I made a lot
of money, I wouldn’t say a lot of money, but I made money off
owning and operating contests and I devised a business that paid me
to put on events and I owned ‘em so I had television rights and
limited merchandising rights. And seeing the sport needed a world
circuit Randy Rarick and I organised a world circuit about the same time that Ian
Cairns and Peter Townend were talking about doing the same thing.
But they never got it off the ground. We did. I never made a cent
off IPS, it was a big money losing deal. In other words, the world
circuit was a money loser but it was a loss leader. It laid the
foundation for the growth of the sport and the growth of my events.
The great irony, yeah another one, is the coup to throw me out of
IPS and have ASP (Fred pronounces it like the snake, asp…) takeover
was conducted by the guy I awarded the trophy to for the first
world championship.
DR: PT!
Fred Hemmings: Peter Townend! So that was the great irony. I
made the guy the world champion. The point system was pretty much
Randy’s concept. Peter and Ian wanted a different system. If we’d
used their system, Peter wouldn’t have won.
DR: Who would’ve won?
Fred Hemmings: I think, Ian.
(Oh, we both laugh here! Forks clatter, some mustard flies
through the air, I knock over my Gin Rickey, which is quickly
replaced.)
DR: Did that make things tough between you and
Ian?
Fred Hemmings: I have a lot of respect for Ian Cairns. Everybody
cowered in the face of the Black Shorts but Ian. When a certain
character on the North Shore got indicted for a gun violation, they
had a bail hearing and I went and testified against him… and I
got a lot of threats. And Ian Cairns testified against him too. So
I got nothing but respect and praise for Ian Cairns. Ian’s a hero.
A good man.
DR: Describe the threats.
Fred Hemmings: Innuendo. People who are real thugs are smart
enough not to make direct threats to you. They’ll come up to you
and say, “Aren’t you scared that if you come out to the North
Shore, your car will get burned?”
DR: Did those threats concern you?
Fred Hemmings: They sure did. That’s why I always protected
myself.
DR: How, with a bodyguard?
Fred Hemmings: No, I got a license to carry a gun…
DR: It’s interesting, today, Kieren Perrow will paddle
out when it’s big, at the Box, say, to show the pro’s a wave can be
surfed. You were the originator of that dazzling technique. Can you
recount the story at the Smirnoff in 1974 when five of the 18
competitors didn’t want to surf and you used a little muscle to get
‘em in the water?
Fred Hemmings: It was a psychological ploy on my part to
challenge these guys’ bravado. Here’s a guy that’s retired, more or
less, and no longer actively competing, and if he’s going to paddle
out and catch a wave and we’re the young studs and young guns and
we’re not going to do it, and it becomes kind of a
psychological… gauntlet… I threw in front of ‘em. And they all
did it. One of my most prized possessions is a signed autographed
picture on my wall from Mark Richards. And Mark Richards is the
prince of Newcastle. He was a wonderful young man. But he thanked
me. For forcing him to go out there. He didn’t win but he went out
and he found out that he could. And that’s a huge victory. A lot of
guys found that out that day. And by the grace of god, no one died.
I would’ve felt bad about that! (Fred roars with
laughter.)
DR: As someone who grew up on the ocean, seventy years
on the beachfront, do you have an opinion on the issue of global
warming and rising sea levels? Do you see it? Do you believe
it?
Fred Hemmings: The last guy to voice a real strong opinion on
global warming was Al Gore who said by the turn of the century, I
forget what date he said, the ocean would rise thirty feet. And it
hasn’t raised thirty percent of a centimetre, not even an inch. I’m
very much a conservationist but I’m not for using environmentalism
to be anti-capitalism or anti-anything else. I think all of us have
to take a very deep breath and make decisions based on conservation
and preserving our environment, which I’m very much for, but based
on fact not on feelings, which we talked about earlier. (Adopts
sing-song voice) “Oh, global warming, I have this feeling, it’s
terrible, the world is going end!”
I don’t know (whether global warming is real or not). I do know
it’s in all our best interests to get off carbon, our carbon
addiction, and I do know it’s in our best interests to do a better
job of moderating pollution. With a lot of extremists it’s all
about feelings… The ocean hasn’t risen here that I’ve noticed.
If it went up a foot in the last ten years that would be big news.
But it hasn’t. What has happened, here in Hawaii, and it will
happen some day, is there will be no Hawaiian islands. It’s called
erosion. These islands start out underwater, and it takes hundreds
of millions of years, they come above the water, they live a life,
they get bigger then erosion starts taking ‘em down. It has nothing
to do with global warming. It’s erosion and the birth and death of
the Hawaiian islands. It’s been going on for several hundred
million years.
DR: Ageing, getting old, how does that fit as a
surfer?
Fred Hemmings: I… I… I’m having a real hard time. I’m
paying the price for my previous lives: Runner. Football player.
Surfer. I helped take Rabbit (Kekai)’s ashes out. In 1968, I was
there when Duke’s ashes went out. I’ve taken a number of great
watermen and waterwomen’s ashes out to say goodbye to ‘em,
including Rell (Sunn)’s. I can’t have mine. I have to
get… melted… down. It’s a joke! Because of my
abuse, I have two titanium knees, a titanium hip and because of an
accident that almost killed me I have a titanium shoulder
joint…
(The previous October Fred was cutting a tree down, it kicked
back and crushed his ribs, punctured his lung, crushed the shoulder
and almost killed him with internal bleeding. Fred was
over-medicated and his heart stopped. “It was a kinda traumatic
experience,” says Fred.)
All in all, I’m not ageing gracefully. It’s a painful
experience. I’ve got some ailments, but I don’t wanna complain
about it, There’s nothing worse than an old guy complaining about
it. I find that there’s two things surfers talk about: waves they
may or may not have ridden fifty years before, or they talk about
how much they ache.
DR: Do you take comfort in the great ages reached by
Rabbit Kekai (95) and Doc Paskowitz (93)?
Fred Hemmings: Who? Me? I do know that quality of life has a lot
to do with it. If I’m not capable of getting up and enjoying life,
what’s the point? It’s an interesting question old people face.
Remember when we talked about genetics? I believe there’s certain
codes in all living things and the most basic and strongest code is
the will to live. We fight to live even if it doesn’t make sense.
And it’s necessary. It really is an innate genetically coded desire
to live even if you’re living a miserable life. I better keep doing
this, even if it kills me!
DR: Tell me about that mid-sixties Rolex you’re
flashing. Was it a celebratory buy?
Fred Hemmings: Do you know anything about this?
DR: No.
Fred Hemmings: How come you ask?
DR: I got a ’62 Air King. I like ‘em.
Fred Hemmings: This is the most valuable watch in Hawaii. And
probably one of the most valuable watches in the world.
DR: Did the Duke wear it?
Fred Hemmings: Read the back of it.
(Fred takes the watch off and hands it to me. It
reads:
Fred
The Champ
From
Duke)
Ain’t it amazing? We were on a trip to Houston Texas in 1966 to
promote Duke attire surfwear in a department store and we were
flying Pan American airways to the west coast and Kimo McVay, the
great manager of Duke Enterprises in the last years of Duke’s life,
handed Duke a box and said, ‘Hand it to him now’ and Duke handed me
this watch. It’s my only heirloom. It’s he only thing I’ve
kept.
DR: Anything you want to put on the record considering
you’ll probably be close to one hundred before anyone wants to
interview you again?
Fred Hemmings: I want to tell the people that read Surfer’s
Journal, first of all I’m honoured, to sit here and talk to you and
hopefully be included in an article. But don’t take ownership of
surfing, take responsibility for it. In other words, represent the
sport with dignity and honour and try to be a surfer that makes
surfing a better sport, yeah, but also for the community. That way,
everybody wins.
