I interviewed Joey Cabell at length (read 

) for a 1996 Surfer's Journal profile. There was a lot there, but a lot seemed to be missing, too. I began calling around and eventually talked to a dozen or so of Cabell's longtime friends, including Mickey Munoz, Mike Doyle, and Nat Young. It was fascinating to see how Joey's view of himself both overlapped and veered from how his friends viewed him.

My first trip to Hawaii was in 1954. Joey at that time was the King of Queens, and he was kind of snobbish and wouldn't talk with me. I lived up on Liliuokalani Street, almost straight up from Queens. One day I was walking home from surfing and Joey was sitting on the curb, in tears, next to his Model A -- he's gotten in a minor accident and dinged his car, and was really bummed. So I went up and kind of consoled him. After that he'd talk to me, and we've been good friends ever since.

You guys hung out a lot after he moved to California?

Starting around 1958. I was living in Laguana and we started hanging out together; surfing and partying and all of that.

I did, and I was really into it. But Joey got 

 into it. Just like he does with everything.

Didn't you work at the first Chart House?

No, not the first one. He and Buzzy Bent got started in Aspen, but the second one they opened was in Newport, and I was their first bartender there. That brought us together even more. You know how the restaurant business is; partying and all that. We hung out with a lot of the same people, same friends, same girlfriends.

Yeah, yeah. I've always described Joey as having two speeds, wide-open or asleep. And that can be intimidating to a lot of people. Joey never really intimidated me, though. Like Mike Hynson, who I spent a lot of time with—he always intimidated me. I don't know why. He had this side to him that I either didn't understand, or it was so unstable or so radical that I just kind of wanted to back away. But I could always understand Joey's thing.

Yeah, he's always had that going too. Joey is Mr. Perfect. Except he could never quite keep his pecker in his pants. You know what? I take that back, about not being intimidated by Joey. That did happen, sometimes. I remember, years ago, when I was living on the North Shore, he invited me to Kauai. So I flew over, he picked me up, and we went to Pine Trees, sat around, did a giant bomber joint with the locals, one of these huge, terrifying homegrown things. Then Joey says to me, "Let's go surfing." I can hardly walk. He gets out the White Ghost, and I've got whatever board I've got, and he goes, "I've never surfed this spot, but I've always wanted to," and we paddled out at Dump Trucks. It's outside Tunnels. As far as I know, nobody had ever ridden it before us, and it was about 15'. It's a really radical wave, a right, out in the middle of the ocean, and it kind of ends up on bare reef. Anyway, it was kind of raining and dreary, we rode two or three waves apiece and it was just terribly scary, and I finally went, "Joey, I'm not having fun, I'm paddling in." Joey is just so macho, and I couldn't believe it, it was one of the few times he actually went, "You know what, I'm not having fun either." And instead of being too macho about it, and calling me a chickenshit little bastard, he actually paddled in with me.

It was amazing to me, the way Joey would just quit surfing for a year, two years, three years at a time. He'd just go off and do something else.

That was so different from the rest of us. Surfing was kind of the whole deal, or at least it was always first choice. Joey would just get really obsessive about what he was working on. His cars, or skiing, his restaurant, his boat. I remember also, if he didn't have a perfect board he wouldn't go out. Everything had to be perfect with him.

Tell me about when you guys dismasted during that sailing adventure. How did that whole thing start?

I flew to Tahiti to meet up with Joey and Louie. He picks me up and we get to the boat, and Joey is the captain, of course. It's his boat. And, you know, he's obsessively neat. So he's showing me around the boat, and all our possessions, everything we've got has to fit into this, like, two-foot by two-foot cubic space. Clothes, bathroom stuff, books, everything. Joey says to me something like, "This is how you fold your pants, this is how you roll up your T-shirts, and nothing can 

 go onto this ledge right here," he goes through this whole deal. And I said, "Joey, I can't live on a boat this way," and I took off my T-shirt, wadded it up and threw it across the cabin onto his sacred ledge. So we weren't off to a great start.

Anyway, the whole point was to cruise through the Tuamotus, then the Marquesas, then we were going to go flat-out from there back to Hawaii. So there we were on that last leg, just ripping. Like I said, Joey is just set to run wide-open at all times. I'm a speed freak too, but it was a little tense, it was full-on without a break. Anyway, three days out the mast comes down. It happened at night, in a squall. I got hit; I was knocked out for a few minutes. Joey was in the water. Louie hit the deck and dodged it. I came to, thinking, "I'm really screwed up here, I'm gonna be a quad." But we pulled it off after a day or so.

Now, needless to say, at this point the trip took on a new perspective. Instead of being this intense race across the ocean, it was suddenly—or not suddenly, but after we got our shit together and found out we could sail, and weren't going to die—it was, like, feet up on the wheel, singing songs, talking story, and pretty relaxed. We hit the doldrums. But we had water, enough food, we weren't freaked out. We were making slow progress. Those first three days, we'd gone something like 900 miles. After the mast came, over the next five days we went maybe 100 miles. For me, this is where the trip got really interesting. I think it was maybe the first time in Joey's life where he really slowed down. He'd been all set to break a record, Marquises to Hawaii, now suddenly everything changed. He discovered what it was like to live at a different pace. We never talked about it, but I think it made a big impression on him.

Can you give me an example of how he was acting differently?

Okay, so Joey and Louie had gotten into this Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Kauai. In fact, I think that's where they met. Their wives were into it; they were into it. Both Louie and Joey weren't going to drink. I had brought aboard eight quart-sized bottles of Hinano Beer when we left the last outpost in the Marquesas, and they were a little put out by that. I'd brought a little pot with me, too, and neither one would smoke a joint with me. And Joey, in the '60s and '70s, there pretty much wasn't anything he wouldn't do, as far as that goes. But here it was, a few days into the slowed-down portion of the trip, and I'd break out a Hinano and roll a little joint, and pretty soon we were passing 'em both around.

The most endearing part was right at the end. I can't remember if it was 14 days or 17 days, something like that, but finally we sighted the Big Island. Louie saw it first. But by that point, Joey and I were just totally into what we were doing. We knew we getting close, we weren't gonna die, it was under control. So Louie spots the Big Island, and he's yelling out and everything. And Joey and I, both of us, without really communicating, it was like—aw, man. We're here. It was like, we weren't done, you know? We were loving it.

He didn't say anything about all of that when I talked with him. About what it was like during the slow part of the trip.

No, I'm not surprised. But I remember that last moment so clearly. We didn't want it to be over.

No, but I do remember that he was into skiing before me. I was still in high school, and he'd come down out of the mountains, and all of a sudden I'd see him at Trestles or Malibu, and he'd have all this ski geat inside this VW van. He'd be gone all winter, then paddled out still surf great.

What do you remember best about his surfing?

One thing is, Joey never walked the nose by cross-stepping. He shuffled. To this day he shuffles; he's never taken a cross-step in his life, as far as I know. That was the big thing for the rest of us, you wanted to get four or five cross-steps to the nose. But he shuffled so fast and smooth. Just, you know, blink and he was up there, blink and he was back.

Probably because he gave him more control that way. Less chance of blowing it. The thing you have to understand about Joey is that he never got dirty. The wave never touched him. He wanted to make ten out of ten waves. The total opposite of a guy like Barry Kanaiaupuni, or Jock Sutherland. Both of those guys, if there was even a 10% chance of making it, they'd just charge. Joey would kick out.

But he also put himself into really heavy situations.

Oh man. He got me into places and situations I never would have taken on myself. Sometimes it was fun and I was glad he talked me into it; it was really rewarding. Sometimes they weren't. The scary parts were just too scary. What Joey thinks is fun scares the hell out of almost everybody else.

There was a lot of talk in the surf magazines in the late '60s about "speed surfing," and that all seemed to go back to Cabell. Was he going faster than everybody else?

[Pause] Yeah, probably. I think so. He could ride into the flats, keep going, and make it into the next section still hauling ass, where a lot of guys couldn't get over the flat spot.

The White Ghost, yeah. He got into these really thick boards with a lot of nose rocker, super hard edges. They were super floaty. Really light. But really edgy and catchy. He could ride them, with the style he had; he could handle those boards. I never could have.

I like to put a lot of power into a turn; I like to sink the rail. These boards Joey rode—he'd just be skimming along.

No, that wasn't Joey's thing, really. Especially not with those thick boards. But even before that, he was always kind of a skimming-type of surfer. He'd get into the wave really early, from way back. No late takeoffs. He'd get in early, pull up and run the high line. That was his thing. But I don't want to sound like he was a pussy, because he was incredible. He'd be standing up, on an angle, planning, while the rest of us were still paddling for the wave. At Sunset, he'd just come from so far back behind the rest of us, it was amazing. He just had a whole different approach to surfing.

Tell me about the 1964 world contest. Midget won, you get second, Joey got third.

He got bumped. I thought Midget won and I should have got third. Joey should have got second—or maybe even first; I didn't see it as well as others, I was out there. But he was pushing it pretty hard.

He was dropping in on everybody. I mean, you'd get a wave, set the thing up, and he'd just dust you. Usually back then it didn't matter. It was just the best ride wins. The judges didn't care how you got the wave. They'd never had a drop-in rule before that contest.

When you say Joey "got bumped," what does that mean? He got penalized?

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I think the guys [contes tjudges] got together right after the final and said, "Well, this guy won it, but it wasn't doing it by fair play." I don't even think they had a name for it back then. But yeah, he got bumped down from first to third, or second to third, something like that.

You hung out a lot of Joey around that time; what was he like to be around?

[Pause] You'd have more fun doing things with him, surfing or skiing, for example, then in conversation. He liked to do things; that's how our friendship developed. When we were skiing, it was unbelievable. But the long drive up to the mountain, to Mammoth or Aspen—that was a different deal. He's a soulful guy and everything, but he doesn't really know how to show his love for his friends, I guess you could say. [Another pause] I don't really know how to talk about this. Joey was my best friend in one way. In another way, he wasn't. I think we're just really different that way. He was never, like, "Hey, how are you? How've you been? Let's grab a beer and catch up!" He was always just off on the next adventure. It was nonstop. At some point the rest of us would take a break and be sort of be lounging, and he'd still be moving.

Did you meet Joey the first time you were in California, in 1963?

No, but there's kind of a connection there anyway. I stayed with Butch Linden's family during that trip, and from hanging around with Butch I got a real understanding of the Malibu area. When I went back home, I started a thing called the Collaroy Surfer's Association, which was modeled exactly on the Malibu Surfers' Association, because I was so impressed with how well these guys had put their scene together. So I had 30 or 40 friends at the beach in this club. A year later they had the world contest at Manly, and of course me and my whole Collaroy gang were there for every minute of it. And there wasn't a person from within our group that wasn't unbelievably impressed with two people: Mike Doyle and Joey Cabell. Doyle was so nice to me that he actually came down to Collaroy and met my parents. I'd met Doyle in Hawaii. He was great. He was a hero on those big purple boards with the white stripe across the deck, and he was doing those cutbacks that I was trying to hard to do. So I was immediately more impressed with Mike because of all that. On the other hand, I remember sitting on the beach there at Manly with all my Collaroy mates, and there was no doubt among this us, absolutely no doubt, that the person who won the world contest was Joey Cabell.

He got nicked by the new interference rule.

That was a new thing. Before that, there hadn't ever been a rule saying you couldn't drop in. Now all of a sudden there was. And I think we all knew it. So my call about Joey winning is based strictly on his wave-riding performance. In other words, by applying the rules, maybe he didn't win. But as fas as sitting in a group of 20 people, it was just, "My God, Cabell is unbelievable," and we all thought he won.

He was going faster than anybody else. That's what I remember best. He was just so light on his feet, and just beautifully accurate with his turns and positioning. Doyle was fluid too, with the big roundhouse cutbacks, walking the board, getting up on the nose. Joey was taking off on waves that looked like closeouts and beating 'em.

Did you go to Angourie after the contest with Joey and Bob Evans and everybody?

No, because my mother made me go back to school. Which was a real piss-off for me. Evans called my parents and said he wanted me to go, but they said no. I left home six months later, and that had a lot to do with the fact that I didn't get to go and watch Cabell surf up the coast. I really wanted to see that.

Mike was telling me how Joey was a "glide" surfer; that he didn't much care about burying a rail and doing big turns.

Mmmm, maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure if I totally agree. I recall one morning a few years later, on Kauai, sitting outside my room at the hotel overlooking Hanalei, watching Cabell carving some incredible up and down lines on these huge waves. Yeah, I mean, Doyle is right in the sense that there was a lot of placement and gliding. But no, Joey could lay up a bloody rail when he wanted to.

[Joey Cabell photo at top of the page by Jim Driver]

FILL IN THE BLANKS: MUNOZ, YOUNG, DOYLE TALK ABOUT JOEY CABELL

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