"I was overwhelmed by a feeling that there wasn't a wave that God could produce that I couldn't ride."
The Californian big-wave icon, Greg Noll, one of the first surfers to charge Waimea Bay in the nineteen fifties and who famously quit surfing in 1969 after riding a thirty-five footer, then the biggest wave ever ridden, has died, aged eighty-four.
His fam announced Da Bull’s passing on Facebook.
It is with a heavy heart the Noll family announces the death of our patriarch, Greg Noll. Greg died of natural causes on Monday June 28th, at the age of 84. We invite all of our friends and family to celebrate his life by sharing this post and your stories, pictures and experiences through your preferred platform.
Aloha, The Noll Family
The great surfing historian Matt Warshaw describes Noll as “Boorish but charismatic … A loveable blowhard, hustler, raconteur, and bullshitter. But not an outright fabricator. His big-wave cred, furthermore, extends from here to Valhalla. He led the opening charge at Waimea in 1957, and for the next 12 years rode anything that came his way, fearlessly. ‘I was overwhelmed by a feeling that there wasn’t a wave that God could produce that I couldn’t ride,’ he said. ‘It was sort of a blind, stupid feeling, but I had all the goddamn confidence of a rhinoceros.”‘
Of the wave at Makaha on December 4, 1969, “Greg Noll’s monster drop-to-annihilation wave” Warshaw says it was the “the defining wave of surfing’s defining big-wave swell. World champ Fred Hemmings watched from the beach and said it was the biggest wave ever ridden. Noll himself said it was five or ten feet over his previous best, and not long afterward he tapped out of the game, moved to Crescent City, and became a fisherman.”
He was a good guy, even Marilyn Monroe said so
Learned to surf in Waikiki with his mom and some General dude.
There’s photos of him on the walls in the bathroom of the Royal Hawaiian.
Truly, Peter Lawford brought a Malibu chip to Australia before the Olympics.
This was early 1950s.
Lawford was working on a movie called Kangaroo with Richard Boone and Maureen O’Hara.
That’s why Australians still call longboards “Malibus.”
Apparently they stopped in Hawaii along the way.
Mickey Munoz and Tubesteak and others say Lawford was the real deal.
He surfed all the time.
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Lucia Griggi took a great photo of wave breaking on an iceberg in Antarctica.
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So that inspired a day-long project to put all her skateboarding portraits online – because goldangit she can shoot a glacier but she can also shoot a portrait.
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While poking around came across more Greg Noll stuff.
Kinda sad, really.
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If and when they make the Greg Noll movie, this is the guy to portray him.
Big and brash:
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Someone had to take this 11′ 4″ Noll gun off the wall at he Hobie shop in Dana point.
Is that the 1969 Makaha board or the Second Reef Pipe board?
I guess we’ll never know.
Someone had to put it in a box and take it to the airport where they almost didn’t let it on the plane because it was such a beast.
Rails were four inches thick.
Someone was afraid to strap it to the roof of a rental car because the car might lift off.
Someone rented a UHaul truck to take the board to the North Shore – Handle Like Eggs.
And then Brock rode it at Waimea.
Board weighed as much as he did but he gave it heaps.
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Thanks for posting that Ben. I seem to remember this article, was it was in Surfer? Crazy to think they are both now swinging late on the other side..
You’re alright when you aint ringing the grammar getapo, and, mongol race bell.
Its Gestapo. Germans capitalize everything.
And Mongol.
SURFER Magazine. 1992. All caps.
Jamie Brisick wrote it. Ben thought Ben wrote it.
Vintage Ben Marcus!
He went to Waipahu High School I think. Moved over at 16. Hanging with the Boys
Beautiful
ya’ll need to shut it..LOL.. fishermen hunt too..
never expose fishing holes. just saying… but we surfers never follow rules it seems… thanks for the goods above, nice shots and nice stories
More than a legend, a Titan.
In my most proper grammatical English, I would kindly ask you to please enjoy the fond and dear memories of your hard charging friend, and consider your own inevitable failings and just STFU…thanks benny
You know he’ll be triggered that you did not capitalise “Benny”. He’s probably going to try to change the Z to a S in Capitalise but he speaks Queen’s English nowadays.
it was between Ninilchik and Homer.
RIP Greg, what a legend. Btw, anybody agree that riding maxed out 35 foot Makaha back in the day was just as big a feat, if not bigger, than contemporary big wave surfing? No inflatable vest, no skis buzzing around, hell – not even a leash. Not to mention the uncertainty of how much pounding a human body could endure.. total legend!
He told a bloody good story. A great loss RIP. It’s great that several people across multiple platforms have been putting in the effort in recent times to get these stories recorded before the inevitable occurs.
My favourite story was how he said of his nickname: “well at least it was better than shit head”.
According to Gebauer he and Noll forced Dora to spend his last stolen dollar on Malasadas in Waianae to bribe the Guards at the Kolekole Pass road which cut the time from Makaha to the North Shore by more than half in the early sixties … Dora sulked the whole way like a baby and they both picked on him mercilessly the whole time, so says Paul who charged it all at Waimea with Noll and Pat Curren … and when Fred says it was the biggest wave believe it these guys were closer to Hell’s Angels than anybody else if you really knew them … R.I.P. Pioneer of it ALL Greg Noll!!!
Del Norte and Humboldt are pretty magical places. I had been to Rhyns surf shop in CC a few times before it closed. Never mets his pops though.
You have right to bullshit over every bullshitter, wannabe, boogieboreder…you earned it, Greg!
Thanks for the above homey clips, another side of Greg, looks like he was happy with his life.
Marcus
This is a frame grab from that lost and found Shaun Tomson footage of the big day at Makaha.
This was on the wall of Stacy Peralta’s editing room when he was cutting together Riding Giants.
Look close and you will se Noll’s giant 11′ 4″ stuck in the lip of that wave like it ain’t nothing.
Some people say that day wasn’t abnormally giant but this frame grab says it was.
Greg said he got caught inside, pushed his board over that wave, couldn’t believe the board made it.
He got on it and caught that legendary monster wave soon after.
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(P.S I saw Riding Giants right before Stacy took it to Sundance. It was well done but I argued they had missed a God-given transition: The same swell that created the epic 1990 Eddie Aikau contest which threw the best of the old school and the best of the new school into giant, absolutely perfect Waimea Bay – the one that Keone Downing won and Brock rode into history… that was the same swell that went to California and where Jeff Clark introduced Dave Schmidt and Tom Powers to Mavericks and opened Pandora’s Box.
I begged Stacy: “You can’t make it up any better than that!!! That’s God sayin, ‘And now for something completely different!'” I called Quiksilver and had the Eddie footage ready to go, but it was too much work to change it. Oh well. Nobody listens to Turtle.)
it’s Da bulls day not yours fuck off ben!!
And that should be: “It’s Da Bull’s day, not yours. Fuck off, Ben!”
Greg believed in proper spelling and grammar.
sounds nice.
I did some good steelhead fishing with weighted wet fly on a secret river on the Kenai peninsula.
Guides kept icing up, it was November.
RIP Greg Noll.
Rest in Power, Icon!
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