Chapter: 5
Barefoot Revolution
- Revolution is not a Dinner Party
- The Tao of George
- Getting Slippery with Bob McTavish
- Bismarck with a Tan
- Plastic Machine
- Enlightenment at Honolua Bay
- Panic on the Showroom Floor
- Style Takes a Dive
- Everybody Must Get Stoned
- Surfer Goes Electrical Bananas
- No Contest
- There Will be Slaps
- Kook Straps, Cadillacs, and Sex Wax
- Blame it on the Boogie
- Country Soul
- Higher and Brighter with Alby Falzon
- Fresh Blood on the Newsstand
- Long Road to Bells Beach
- Speed Freaks
- Gods of Thunder
- The Impossible Wave
- Into the Vortex
- Gerry Lopez, Pipeline Firewalker
- The Rubberman Cometh
Bismarck with a Tan

Nat Young, 1966 world titles. Photo: Tom Keck

1966 world title finalists (l to r): Carroll, Young, Sutherland. Photo: Grannis

David Nuuhiwa. Photo: LeRoy Grannis

Farrelly (left) and Young, 1963. Photo: Tom Keck

Mimi Munro, 1966 world titles. Photo: Grannis
Halfway through the final heat of the 1966 World Titles, Nat Young rode a wave all the way in, stepped off his board, turned beachward with his fingertips on his hips, and looked out with satisfied defiance at the judges. The first place trophy should have been rushed down and placed at his huge wet feet.
Nat Young and Bob McTavish met in 1962, but didn’t become close friends until Young returned from the 1965 World Championships in Peru, and McTavish loaned him a stack of American R&B albums—an exciting new sound for the still-callow surfer. Young also met George Greenough in 1965 and, like McTavish, he soon came to view the peculiar little straw-haired Yank as a surfing savant. The three formed ...
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