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If you are a subscriber you would have unwrapped your Tracks postal delivery to find either Michael Peterson or Mark Richards gracing the cover. If you wandered into a news agents then you may have been forced to make a choice between MP and MR. And if you are a die-hard collector, I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to get your hands on both versions of the cover.
Why split the cover run? The decision about who or what to put on the cover is never made lightly and we’re always acutely aware that a cover image offers a certain immortality, particularly in a high-consumption digital world. Millions of photos may be glimpsed on social media but long after the daily phone scroll is finished the cover shot will remain as a crystallised moment of surfing history – something that will always have more cultural capital than a fleeting image on a two-inch wide screen.
Modern, media debates aside, the reason we had an each way bet this issue is because we felt that the two figures and the corresponding stories reflected very different but valid aspects of the surfing milieu.
Michael Peterson has always been celebrated for his frenetic surfing brilliance and ruthless competitive savvy. The sleek, muscular frame matched with trademark aviators and chevron moustache also gave him high value in surfing’s omnipresent economy of cool. MP has been mythologised more than almost any other surfer.
However, despite the cool image we might have emulated and the sort of brilliance we all envied, MP’s infamously mercurial temperament was a pointer to a mind that raged with the volatility of schizophrenia. In part two of his series ‘Dark Lineage’ Monty Webber continues his discussion around high profile figures in Australian surfing who, at some point in their career, succumbed to shadowy forces. MP’s complex story has been explored several times, although the tale of Joe Engel, which also features in this issue, has perhaps been less frequently told. Revisiting these romanticised figures in a different light helps generate honest discussion about the challenges many surfers (that’s all of us) face. Hopefully, by acknowledging the mental fragility of our surfing heroes we might be more willing to address our own demons; either through talking with our friends or via professional help or maybe both.
What then of the Mark Richards Free Ride cover?
When we chased up Shaun Tomson, MR, Rabbit Bartholomew, and Peter Townend we invited them to reflect on their time on the North Shore in the late 70s when Bill Delaney was shooting his celebrated film ‘Free Ride’. We sent each of the surfing icons a bunch of photos and suggested they write extended captions to accompany them. As the detailed memories poured through via email it became increasingly apparent that the quartet had been part of a special time in surfing’s history. Captured in colour-saturated film shots by the likes of Dan Merkel, Steve Wilkins and Jeff Divine the whole era had an idyllic almost surreal feel.
The craft featured striking sprays and thrusting Lightning Bolts, the board shorts were becoming brighter and more sophisti- cated, and the barrels were getting deeper.
Between sessions the surfers lazed on the beach at Off the Wall. They may have been rivals in contests who were also drawn into daily tube duels at Pipe and Off the Wall, aka ‘Kodak Reef’, but there was interdependence to it; they needed each other to feed off and take surfing to new levels. It’s a past worth re-visiting to remind us of the magic we felt when surfing first cast us under a spell.
This is the kind of candy-coloured surfing dream you want to believe in. MR clinched the cover with the first line of his caption about the Dan Merkel shot that sees him nonchalantly tilting into a 45-degree bottom turn at Off the Wall. “Possibly the best surfing photo of me ever taken,” he wrote. That’s the most successful Australian male surfer in surfing history telling you it was likely his finest surf shot. While the image had run as a full poster pull out in ‘Surfing Magazine’ it had never been a cover. We figured it was never too late to give its due.
Surfing will always be something we seek to believe in. A ‘Free Ride’ we hope brings pleasure and also makes us better equipped to deal with the challenges life throws our way; a reason for being that delivers meaning and purpose. Our sun-kissed, dance with nature can cure many of life’s ills, but we can’t always hide from the dark forces between waves; and we shouldn’t feel bad if that’s the case.
