Finally got around to watching "Beware of Mr. Baker," a 2012 documentary of Cream drummer Ginger Baker. What an opening scene! Baker, the craziest bastard to ever pick up a pair of sticks—Keith Moon at his loony best was a church deacon by comparison—is offscreen ranting about who does and does not get to be in his movie, and ends the discussion by whacking the filmmaker in the face with his cane. Netflix this one tonight. You won't be sorry. Knife-fights, schoolyard bullying, heroin, punch-outs with Jack Bruce, shit-flinging at John Bonham—and that's just the first 20 minutes.

Baker and Moon and Bonham were on my mind when I read 

Surfline's "10 Best Power Surfers of All Time"

 article this morning, along with the reader comments bunfight that followed, which, names aside, are identical to the comments following any "Best Rock Drummers" list.

So first of all. Barry Kanaiaupuni and John Bonham, okay? Issue resolved. Best power surfer, best rock drummer. Now let's move in for a closer look.

Surf-wise, this really needs to be broken out into three lists, as follows:


Apart from Phil Edwards and Nat Young, longboard power surfing was mostly about squaring up your stance in bigger waves and making it to the channel. A little flow would be nice, which is why Greg Noll and Buzzy Trent don't make the cut.


The original power surfer. Edwards rode the big stuff, but it wasn't really his bag. He turned, and turned hard. Rough and smooth at the same time. "A blunt, almost heaving change in direction that left him half unbalanced, then a rapid bebopping set of nods, bows, twists and hand feints as he pulled everything back to center. He'd go into a turn looking as if he'd been unexpectedly shoved, then finish off smoother than Gene Kelly." (


First surfer to match power with Pipeline. And a powerful right hook, too.


Rode Sunset Beach like Jim Brown on a broken-field run. Power and finesse. Rudely underappreciated at a longboard surfer.


Pele's little brother at Waimea. A force of nature. And we're going out on a limb to say that, with the fire-engine red board and pristine red-and-white trunks, Eddie was the best-dressed power surfer of his generation.


Nat was Phil Edwards squared. The power connection between longboarding and shortboarding.


Mostly this is about the bottom turn. Sunset Beach so dominated the age, that I can't think of a single goofyfoot power surfer to nominate here.


Okay, I may have a blind spot. Ask any kind of surfer-related "best" question—best style, best bottom turn, best sandwich-maker—and I will blurt out "BK" before the query has actually hit my brain. Habit of a lifetime. But if we're talking power surfing in the shortboard single-fin's Golden Age, I don't believe I'll get much blowback in putting Barry on top. Power took him places on a wave that nobody else could go. BK had the no-bottom bottom turn, which he'd do halfway down the face. He could turn at something very close to a right-angle; a kind of pivot turn. At 250 MPH, he would turn by simply leaning, not crouching, and I don't know what kind of ridiculous tensile strength you need in your hips, knees and thighs to do that. Kanaiaupuni jammed the radar signals in the satellite dishes above Velzyland, he was so powerful. And on the beach, he would unleash that smile—which, no surprise, was incredibly, brilliantly powerful.


Power from precision. Did not electrify like Barry. "You could always tell what I was going to do before I did it," Jeff said. But Hakman nailed those turns together like John Henry spiking down lengths of railroad track. And if you could freeze time and actually get down there in the trenches with a pressure gauge, I'm guessing Hakman's bottom turn PSI was right up there with BK's.


The only other surfer I can think of who, like Barry, could not only lay it over before hitting the bottom, but do it straight-legged. And didn't he just know it! "I've got so much power in my bottom turn it's berserk," Kanga blushingly told us.


Like Butch, gets the nod for keeping Pipeline on a short leash.


Nat out-powered Phil. MP out-powered Nat.


Nearly a dead heat. Tom had the edge in raw torque, and ran at full power even in huge surf. Last day of the 1991 Pipe Masters—the Snap was just one of six or eight power moves for the ages Tom dropped on us that afternoon—seals the deal for me. But Occy's power, like BK's, had more variance, and more flow, and if I think too long about what Mark did at Bells and Jeffreys I'll have to re-write this paragraph, so let's just leave it there.



Darth Vader eating raw dinosaur leg during a 9.2 magnitude earthquake is not quite as powerful as JBG at Backdoor.


The Millenium Wave. Those Mariana-deep trenches at Jaws. These are gilded moments in the history of power surfing. Yet the image of Laird that sticks with me is from the '80s: a pre-tow photo of him at Backdoor, bottom turning, looking like a bronzed Lou Ferrigno, muscles on top of muscles, surrounded by more muscles.


Makes the list on his own merits, and also as a post-Johnny-Boy palate cleanser. Always end on a nice note, Mom said, and Taylor is as nice as he is powerful.

I SEE YOUR POWER LIST AND RAISE TWO MORE! 15 GREAT POWER SURFERS

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