The Pipeline bits you see here were filmed on January 1, 1963, when John Peck was an 18-year-old high school senior visiting Hawaii from San Diego. He'd ridden Pipe for the first time a week earlier, but this particular morning, New Year's Day, was his real coming out. Peck was an instant sensation. The big surf-media guys were all on the beach filming and shooting and raving about John's late drops and rail-grabbing line through the tube, and a few weeks later SURFER put him on a gate-fold cover, saying "Peck takes chances and make waves that seemed impossible . . . his riding has to be seen to be believed."

All credit to Peck's talent and valor. But spare a thought as well for the miracle of teenage metabolism. Given what took place the evening before, anybody but Peck (and Pipe mentor Butch Van Artsdalen, as we're about to see) would have missed the session completely, and instead woken up around noon wrapped in a piss-dampened sheet, with a mixing bowl of vomit off to the side.

We were at a party at Bud Browne’s Rocky Point beach house. Bud hated parties, so a bunch of us played a joke and threw a New Year’s Eve bash at his place. We sent word all around the North Shore and everybody showed up: Dewey Weber, Buzzy Trent, the Calhoun sisters, Diffenderfer, Hynson. Weber bought cases of Black & White scotch and we proceeded to have a chug-a-lug-a-thon. It was loud, and it was wild. Dewey was cheering everyone on and Hynson went under the house and started setting off fireworks. Poor Bud was hiding in his little editing room and refused to come out; he was freaking, holding on to his films, trying to protect them.

We raged on and eventually the drinking contest came down to me and Butch, because everybody else had either quit or passed out. Butch had already been drinking beer all day, but he finished his bottle of scotch anyway. Then he goes over to the icebox, opens it, pulls out a beer. Turns around and suddenly goes completely still. Then he slowly pitches forward right onto his face. Candy Calhoun drags him into a corner and starts mothering him. Dewey is on the floor, barely coherent, slurring, “Well, that’s it! I guess you won, John!” I slide onto the floor, crawl out the back door, fall off the porch, and roll down the lawn into oblivion. Just before I went totally unconscious, Buddy Boy Kaohe is out there pissing on me, laughing his head off. “You may have won, but I’m still standing and I’m pissing on you!”

Then Bud and Buzzy are holding me up, and Buzzy is going “Look what you’ve done, John! Look what you’ve done to yourself!” They pick me up and carried me to where I was staying and threw me on the bed.

Next thing I know someone is shaking me awake, saying “Butch is already out at the Pipeline! Come on, John!”

[From "Windansea, Butch, and the Art of the Caper," by Douglas Cavanaugh, published in the February 2011 issue of 

WATCH: JOHN PECK, 86-PROOF AND BREATHING FIRE AT PIPELINE

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