“Almost killed many who rode it” The Untold Story of the Board That Rewrote Surf History

This is how creativity works. The link between madness and creativity is undeniable.

Growing up in Sydney in the 60s and 70s, in the art world, my brothers and I were surrounded by experimental artists. Both of our parents were exhibiting sculptors, and all of my uncles and aunts were highly acclaimed and award-winning painters and photographers.

Between 1970 and 1973, my mother’s brothers, Greg and Dick Weight, were part of Martin Sharp’s artists’ collective, The Yellow House.

​As kids, we spent many weekends exploring the three-story terrace in Elizabeth Bay, checking out the ever-changing artworks and installations and watching the live performances.

One Saturday morning, we sat with a small audience and watched as a little dishevelled blond-headed surfer called George Greenough rolled out a screen and projected the final sequence of his recent surfing film, The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun. The segment was called The Coming of Dawn and was the first point-of-view 16mm camera work, featuring what he called “Barrel Vision” footage from inside the tube looking out.

​But sometimes, it was thought, these creatives went too far, and it was not uncommon for them to be lambasted in the press for being too cavalier in their approach to the fine arts.

One example of this was when a family friend, the avant-garde filmmaker Alby Thoms, screened his new experimental film Marinette at the 1969 Sydney Film Festival. Marinette is widely regarded as one of Australia’s earliest avantgarde feature films and a major document of the late‑1960s counterculture. When my parents returned home from the film’s premiere, Dad told us almost everybody else walked out. The critics were scathing, attacking the film and the artist for wasting their time.

​But interestingly, when the jump cut editing technique that Albe employed in the film, the very thing that annoyed people so much, was used more sparingly in a film by another filmmaker, Dennis Michales, in his feature film Rhapsody in Blue, the critics loved it. My brothers and I saw that crazy film at the Co-op in Kings Cross, which was screened before the new surfing film we had actually gone to see, Morning of the Earth.

The Board So Extreme It Nearly Ended Careers… And Birthed Modern Surfing

​In 1990, my brother Greg owned a surfboard company called Insight. One day, he rang me and asked me to come and film a new young surfer he had just sponsored. By that stage, I had been filming many of the best surfers in the world, both in competition and freesurfing.

To say that this freckle-faced young kid blew me away is an understatement. The theatrical ferocity with which he attacked every wave was not something I had ever seen before. The smooth style and concentrated precision with which he violently desecrated these waves was unconscionable. His name was Shane Herring.

​Over the next two years, I filmed Shane and Greg’s other team riders, Mike Rommelse and Richie Lovett, for a film I made for O’Neill called Liquid Planet. During this time, we travelled to Lord Howe Island, the Great Barrier Reef, Indonesia and Hawaii. In 1992, Shane won the first pro contest he ever entered, The Coke Classic, beating Kelly Slater in a much-anticipated USA versus Australia showdown.

​But Shane was concerned that he might not be able to keep beating Kelly. And so he asked Greg to make him a surfboard that would let him do a 360-degree turn inside the tube. Greg thought about this for a while and came up with an extremely thin surfboard with exaggerated rocker and deep concave. What was soon to become known as the Banana Board.

I filmed the first surf that Shane, Mike, and Richie had on these new boards, at South Avalon in the winter of ‘92. There were four of us there that day, standing by the pool: me, Greg, still photographer Peter Aitchison, and Simon Anderson. After their first few waves, Simon congratulated Greg and told him he would forever be remembered for his innovative contribution to surfboard design.

But what happened next did not occur according to plan.

​In October, Greg shaped a quiver of Banana Board guns for each of his teamriders to take to Hawaii. We were all pumped to have a 1967-like, Nat Young, Bob MacTavish, Paul Witzig, shortboard-revolution-type experience, but unfortunately, that’s not what happened.

The failure of the Banana Board in Hawaii

What happened on the North Shore was a disaster.

The guys not only struggled to catch waves, but when they did, the boards didn’t work. After getting smashed and humiliated, they returned to the house we had rented with their tails between their legs to lick their wounds. Needless to say, they gave up on the new designs and asked Greg to shape them some new quivers of old-fashioned surfboards.

And this is when things got really interesting.

​Greg, being as creatively bullheaded as he is, told his surfers that he would not shape them new boards and that they just had to knuckle down, cop the beating from the waves and the critics, and push through to triumph. There was a secret meeting between Greg’s team riders, an uprising, and a coup d’etat. The boys all got other shapers to make them new boards.

​While Greg was demonised by some in the surfing industry for putting his surfers through that crazed test of loyalty in Oahu, I was impressed by his dedication.

Risking other people’s lives to make his point, what bravado!

But the media backlash was nothing compared to the beating Greg was going to take from the hundreds, maybe thousands, of surfers who bought Banana Boards and hated them.

​Some in the surf media also accused Greg’s creative innovation of contributing to Shane Herring’s tragic fall from the top 16 and, eventually, from grace altogether.

But I can assure you, Shane’s collapse had nothing to do with the Banana Boards; it had everything to do with his inability to deal with success and subsequent substance abuse. I should know. That binge led me into recovery and Shane to his eventual death earlier this year.

​But the moral of this story is simple.

The radical innovations Greg made to surfboard design, which I described at the time as “hyper neurotic to the point of psychotic” and which, despite almost killing many who rode them, did find their way into surfboard design more broadly.

​This is how creativity works.

The link between madness and creativity is undeniable.

And while it’s far easier to mock than make, sometimes the mockers are beneficial in getting the makers to settle down and pull their heads in.

But this doesn’t usually have any lasting effect, and the creatives go back to pushing boundaries, stirring the pot, and being attacked for it.

Something that becomes quite addictive.