"Professional surfing is 80% skill," Peter Townend said in 1977. "The other 20% is entertainment." You may not agree. You may think that hair gel, jumpsuits, pink boards, preening interviews, and a compulsive desire to go Hollywood doesn't really have a place in a worthwhile surfing ontology, and thus shouldn't be valued at the professional level. Or not at a 20% share, anyway. Let's not put on a show. Let's just go surfing. Let us hold up and admire Tom Curren and Phil Edwards and Lynne Boyer and Jeff Hakman and a hundred other brilliant pros who, consciously or not, made a decision to not go out of their way to entertain the rest of us. 

I understand this point of view. I respect it. I just think it's sad.

The older I get, the less serious surfing becomes. The less serious it becomes, the more I enjoy the 20%. The more I enjoy the 20%, the more I appreciate Peter Townend. He did not have huge natural talent, like Shaun Tomson. He made up for it with keen intelligence, a fine design eye, and a Rommel-like drive to succeed. Which he did. In competition, certainly, topped off with the 1976 world title. But just as important (to Townend, anyway) he found achievement as a media star. During Townend's prime, from let's say 1972 to 1980, the money in pro surfing was trifling. The world title didn't even exist for some of those years. Image and reputation filled the void, and PT played the image game masterfully. Played it in a way that seems to resonate more clearly as time passed. The soul arch, for example, was a gimmick move at first—a pose. Townend in fact struck more poses while surfing than all the other Free Ride surfers combined. But go through all the old photos and movies from the era, and the soul arch jumps out as much Shaun's tuberiding or Mark Richards' off-the-lip. Same with the pink boards. And PT dancing on a tabletop in storm-trooper boots, tight jeans, slicked-back hair, and a torso-hugging white T-shirt with the Fonz printed across the chest? I kiss my fingertips. I imagine a tiny shiver of envy climbing up David Bowie's spine.

 was fantastic. All the shit the magazines have never been game enough to print! It's funny, I’m pretty good friends with Eddie Rothman these days, and this winter I called him on the phone, he picks up and goes “What’s up, brah.” And I say “Welcome to paradise. Now go to hell.”

Ahhh, yeah, I think so. The statute of limitations has run out on all the shit that’s in there, so yeah, he’s cool with it.

I was thinking about what Chas has done in terms of bringing fashion front and center in surfing, and how it compares to what you did in the ‘70s.

Well, David Bowie, of course. Bowie just sort of loomed over everything at the time. The other person that had a big influence on me was Fred Astaire. Just for being so smooth, and so cool. Those two guys, together. And not just for my surfing, but my street sense.

How do we get from there to the infamous jumpsuits?

 shoot, I was hanging out a lot with Lopez. One afternoon we were walking down Kalakaua Ave, and we come to this one sort of men’s wear hipster place, and see the mannequin in front has on a gold lame jumpsuit. Lopez turns to me and goes, “You’d wear that, right?” And I go, “Well, yeah!” So I walked in and bought it.

The matching black ones that Ian and I had, those were the first.

I’m guessing you got the whole thing started.

No, everyone thinks that, but Ian did. He’d been wearing ‘em for a while, in fact.

Did you end up with closets full of jumpsuits?

No, no, no. Just the two, the black one and the gold one.

The black one is in hanging in the Huntington Beach Surfing Museum, right now!

I found a quote from an interview you did with Drew Kampion. “I consider myself an entertainer. That’s why I wear flashy clothes. Every day you gotta put on a show.”

That’s it. We wanted to create attention. We wanted to be rock stars. That was kind of the whole deal.

Was fashion something you came into after you became a pro surfer, as a way to turn people’s heads?

I was that way from early on. I was always pretty flamboyant. Drama club in high school, that kind of thing. I played Bill Sikes in 

 Up on stage, in front of the whole school!

Yeah, well, but I have to give my mother a lot of credit, too. She was the one who told me to make my boards pink. There was a breakfast conversation we had, at the beginning of the ‘70s, sitting around the table with all my siblings, and I said, “Mom, I’m getting a new board, what color should it be?” And she said, “Son, you should get it hot pink. That way they’ll always know it’s you.” And I've been riding pink boards ever since.

Which surfers are doing a good job entertaining us today?

Of the guys on tour, there’s only one who has any sense of flair. Matt Wilkinson. I love what he’s doing. Love it! He’s fantastic! He’s doing it the way we did it!

Ah, well, that’s the difference, yes. We always wanted to back it up in the events.

"YOU GOTTA PUT ON A SHOW!" PETER TOWNEND INTERVIEW (2014)

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