George Greenough Interview

BT:  In Crystal Voyager you said that surfing was…

GG:  Is it aimed properly?  It looks like it’s aimed a bit low.

BT:  It looks alright.  You’re framed in there pretty well.  Um, you said
that surfing was your biggest passion in life.  Is it still your biggest
passion in life today?

GG: I still very much like surfing.  I wind-surf and I fish, too. Basically
surfing’s getting more crowded.  So, you don’t get the opportunity to ride
really good waves anymore.  As much as you used to.

BT:  How do film-making and surfing compete for your attention and time?

GG:  Well I still like surfing best.  I mean, if you look at Innermost
Limits, there were some days there that were unbelievable, that were never
even shot. The surf was too good.  I don’t know how many other surf movie
makers would be that dedicated.  My excuse in those days was to strap the
camera on my back and go out and get the point of view shots.

BT:  What’s your recollection of the times when the shortboard came about
and caught on? What’s your history of that change?

GG:  Well there’s always been people around riding short boards.  There’s
always been the odd one around.  You know, people out there screwing around,
experimenting with things, but I think it was really, about Sixty-six,
Sixty-seven.  That’s when it really went off in Australia,  and it just
spread.  Within a year or so, ninety percent of the boards produced were
short boards, and within two years virtually a hundred percent. Ninety Eight
percent of the boards produced would be short boards.  In the meantime, The
U.S was still just so obsessed with nose-riding and with David Nuiiwa at the
same time, and the end result can be seen in The Fantastic Plastic Machine.

BT:  Can you describe your role, McTavish’s role, Brewer’s role, and anyone
else that you feelS

GG:  Well, I know very little of what Brewer did, because I wasn’t really in
Hawaii.  I was over in Hawaii in Sixty- Eight, Sixty-nine and met Brewer,
and talked with him a little bit.  But, Brewer would be the main key in
Hawaii.  There were developing things on a different line. They were going
from big boards to what they called Pocket Rockets.  And in the States, I
was basically surfing more in out in the boondocks.  Here(Australia), I ran
into alot all the good surfer’s straight away. Like, McTavish would be the
first one I met, of the well-known surfers of that time and we surfed a lot
together. Nat came around, and Robert Kneely, Ted Spencer, Wayne Lynch,
Russell Hughes, others I can’t even remember.  We all surfed together all
the time and pushed each other.  There were design things, people started
modifying boards.  The big, big influence that I had, that really made the
shortboard work, was the fin.  I was using a narrow high-aspect ratio fin on
the spoon.  On the longboards they were using area fins, and a fin like that
just doesn’t work on a shortboard.  Once they put the high aspect fins on a
longboard the handling of it was just so much better.  It worked so much
better that it did before with the typical big lump of aS you’ve seen old
longboards.  They’ve just got a big slab glassed on the back and you can’t
even turn things.  I was hopeless on a longboard.   And then, of course the
fin design immediately led into the change of size in boards.  I was riding
a spoon at the time and people could see what I was doing with the wave so
they imeediately started cutting surfboards down. Innermost limits was fimed
in Nineteen Sixty-eight, Sixty nine, and you could see the evolution in the
film of boards coming down.  They were basically all on shortboards.  I
think the only person riding a longboard was Russell Hughes.

BT:  Why did you decide to ride kneeboards and mats  rather than a stand-up
surfboard?

GG:  I had a normal surfboard.  I’ve had several boards.  I’ve had a couple
of short ones and a longboard, but  I basically really like the feeling of
being close to the water.  The illusion of speed is high, I mean, if you’re
riding a mat and it’s 1 1/2 feet, like the stuff you shot, that looks like
it was shot in Santa Monica bay in the dirty water down there, even those
waves are overhead waves on a mat.  It’s pretty hard to have a wave that’s
not an overhead wave.  Same thing on a boogie:  you’re right down there on
the water, the illusion of speed is really high.  Same thing on a kneeboard:
It’s a very short package, it’s low, it fits in the barrel easy, and things.
You can withstand really high-G turns on it.

BT:  In the sixties when you were doing those turns, that were influencing
Bob McTavish and the other guys, where were you deriving your influences
from?

GG:  Well, basically I was breaking new ground.  It’s hard to say, because
there wasn’t really anyone I could see that was influencing me because I was
the one who was building the gear.  What was driving me, was I didn’t really
like the crowd-factor that much, even then, and basically,  you go down to
Rincon and there’s thirty longboarders in the cove and there’s no one at the
Indicator, and the Indicator’s a couple feet bigger, a lot more horsepower,
a bit more sectiony and obviously the boards were developed to ride that
style of wave and that’s what led to the evolution of the spoons.  I mean
the first spoon was built in 1962.  It’s a balsa wood spoon and it’s now up
in a surf shop in San Luis Obispo or Santa Cruz, up in that area.  A
collector up there bought the original balsa wood spoon, and then the first
flexi board, I used the balsa wood one as a mold because it’s a good test,
you got two basically identical boards.   The first Flexi was built off that
and the other board that was used in the Innermost Limits, the other round
bottomed spoon, which I used most of the time.  Which was slightly bigger.
The first two spoons  were 4’9 by about 20" wide and I believe the other one
was bumped about two inches in length as was just under 22" wide.  In very
hard bottom turns they used to lift the fin right out of the water.  You
weren’t even aware that the board was doing it, until I saw photographs of
it , the onethat John Witzig took at Honolua bay the end of the fin was 2"
above the water.

BT:  Can you tell me about your commitment to high quality materials and
high performance equipment over other such concerns as cost and
marketability? 

GG:  Well you turn around and look at pro surfing today, how many pro
surfers pay for their surfboards? Basically none.  So you’re not finding
very many high-tech surfboards at all.  Look at Mark Thomson. Mark Thomson
was going to build a flexible board for Tommy Curren one time, and Tommy
Curren didn’t want to pay for it, and Mark says "Well, I’ve got to support
my family and kids."  Mark’s not a big surfboard manufacturer who can afford
to pay for dozens of free boards for people.  He’s making a couple of boards
a week in kind of a background factory.  That basically holds back design,
that kind of attitude.  If I was in Kelly Slater’s situation, or Tommy
Curren’s situation, you’re in a high income situation, you’ve got a six
figure income, I’d be budgeting a fair bit of it to surfboards.  I mean
carbon fiber and shit like that’s not cheap, but I had a carbon fiber spoon,
and basically no one had even heard of carbon fiber.  I had two spoons break
in about two months in big surf at Rincon. I broke two on bottom turns, and
you hear this thing, just a little bit, about carbon fiber,in the aerospace
magazines. It was just starting to be manufactured and I called Hexcell and
they passed me on to their R&D plant up in San Francisco and I talked with
this guy Gary , and said "look, what’s this stuff cost? I’d like to buy 10
yards of it to build something," and he said, "Shit. We won’t sell it to
you, we’ll give it you, Ocause the information will be valuable to us. It
costs us 50 dollars and hour to do Research, and stuff like that.  And
that’s what the first spoons were built out of.  Not only was there a weight
reduction, from seven pounds down to four and a half, but not one of the
carbon fiber boards ever broke.  Also carbon fiber has 4 times the
kick-back that fiberglass does.  The return. Obviously, that’s why they use
it in fishing poles.  So when you cast, it projects the lure better.  So if
you’re using a flexible carbon fiber fin it’s going to have better
projection.  It’s going to return quicker.  Same with a flex tail on a
board.  And it doesn’t fatigue.  I’ve got a windsurfer around here that’s
probably got the equivalent of twenty-five years of surfing on it.  If you
look at windsurfing, even though it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with
surfing, you step off the beach and light this thing up, every jump, every
skip that things goes across the water is flexing the tail.  A Polyester
fiberglass one, I tell you, would not last very long at all, it would just
pound that thing apart.  The pounding it takes.  I mean it hurts your knees,
sometimes you hit the water so hard it stings the bottom of your feet when
it’s on the board.  I’ve had boards I’ve literally driven my feet through.
You know it’s taken such a pounding, I mean, and the stuff just thing keeps
going on and on and on.   The original polyester spoons had to rebuilt every
six months or so and you figure, surfing, well over ninety percent of the
time you’re paddling, you’re sitting around waiting for waves.  Five percent
of the time you’re actually up and riding.  Whereas windsurfing, it’s going
one hundred percent of the time.  You know, if you look at windsurfing, you
can get massive air off the top of waves and things, and you know,  if you
come down and land flat, you can drive the mast right through the bottom of
the board or break it in half and you can imagine what it does to the rest
of it.  Carbon fiber just keeps going, it doesn’t fatigue.  I mean the old
spoons, the polyester ones, just used to fatigue, they’d just get tired...

...To be Continued