Jeez well I recall watching him do that cuttie into the barrel, I was off to the side and it was bullshit.DucksNuts wrote:I'm fascinated by paranoid schizophrenia and the link between people afflicted by the disease and some of these individuals' capacity for brilliance in a given field.
Ignoring the statistics (3-times Bells champ, Aus. champion, etc.) just how brilliant was MP compared to his contemporaries (from the perspective of someone who would have seen him surf first-hand) and can you give any anecdotes of particular waves that his book and Searching for MP movie footage might not have shown? e.g. TC's biography gives an account of one wave at Newport where he cuts back into a barrel and comes out. That footage of late drop at Sunset, to heaving keg in a comp.
I was a bit young to see MP in full flight but I do remember being in an Aussie Titles up in Qld in May 1979, the Snapper bank was really good, barrelling from outside the rock. In the day an Aussie titles was held in rounds, like you'd surf in effect two or three contests in a row. I'd just come second in the first one's final and was paddling out for the first heat of the next round, feeling pretty fcuken clever. 19 years old and hunting down the Aussie title, yeah. It was late in the arvo and the light was gorgeous. So as I get round the corner, this perfect four foot wave comes barrelling down from behind the rock. I'm watching this wave, captivated by it, the only guy in position for the first perfect wave of the heat. I start to turn to catch it, then I hear this whistle. Where the hell is it coming from? The wave is still barrelling toward me and I hear it again, this whistle, "Yeeeeep!" It has a little echoey sound to it and I suddenly flash, holy crap, there's someone in this barrel ... and as I think that, who should burst forth from it but MP. He's not in the contest or anything, just free surfing, and completely schooling the lot of us.
I think Shaun was right in a way, but I think he was also missing the point, surfing was never gonna just straighten up and fly right just like that, it was and still is a sport for people who are pretty loose, and indeed in some eyes, guys like MP reflected its essential rebel cool, the thing that separated surfing from all the mainstream daggery of the time. I was completely impressed by MP's surfing to the point at times of slavish devotion, but never much by who he was as a person, not in a disapproving way so much as a distrustful way -- he seemed so unknowable, especially compared to all the still-reckless but much more normal crew at Narrabeen who were our real surfing role models growing up. I do not share the Retro Glamour affliction of so many modern nostalgia buffs concerning him; he seems to have paid a pretty god damn massive price for being hero-worshipped by a bunch of middle aged wannabees as the Surfing James Dean. I wouldn't want anyone to pay that sort of price.DucksNuts wrote:Also, MP's biography mentions that Shaun Thomson suggested MP had held back professional surfing due to his fcuk-the-establishment persona, drug use, etc. What is your take on this? Did you admire MP as a person and a surfer, or just a surfer?
