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

Barefoot Revolution

 founder and publisher John Severson didn’t just embrace the counterculture, he turned it into sound business practice. In early 1968, 

 remained the bulwark of surf media conservatism. The photography was first-rate, the magazine was well-organized and professionally assembled, and circulation was holding steady at a hundred thousand—by these and other measures, no other surf periodical was close.

 was also as predictable as oatmeal. If it wasn’t yet square, it was heading in that direction, with how-to advice on forming a college surf team, lengthy coverage of the new USSA ratings, and a worn-out reader-submitted “Surftoons” section. Twice the magazine editorialized against marijuana use: the reader was sternly warned not to rely “on the fumes of a burning Mexican weed to give him a physical edge” and reminded that “there’s no substitute for good reflexes, conditioning and the will to win.” Severson, then thirty-four, had taken up golf, joined a country club, moved into a gated San Clemente development—next door to just-elected President Nixon’s “Western White House,” no less—and bought a new Jaguar sedan, which he kept clean and sand-free.

Severson’s introduction to pot in early 1968 seemed to break his bourgeois fetters at a single blow—or exhale. Before Christmas of that year, he traded his longboard for a new shortboard, grew a luxuriant Sergeant Pepper’s moustache, and began to remodel his magazine. The first and biggest change was to turn the editor’s seat over to Drew Kampion, an intense, Dylan-loving, twenty-four-year-old Buffalo-born transplant with a college English degree who put in enough hours at Malibu during the boom years to know who was hot and who was posing. Kampion was a prodigious writer; earnest and cynical by turns; a peacenik with a sharp tongue and a great sense of humor. He was the driving force behind what was called the “new” 

 newcomers also did their part: art director Hy Moore, photo editor and utility man extraordinaire Brad Barrett, and a sublimely gifted teenage photographer named Art Brewer.

The turnaround was astonishing. Kampion covered the 1969 US Championships with a single vertiginous 2,500-word run-on sentence, and wrote articles with titles like “Conversations with Spirit Forms.” Within a year of his arrival, 

 had a poetry section, a fondness for experimental fiction (sometimes presented in stage-play form), and was set to launch an environmental column called Our Mother Ocean. Anti-establishment bona fides were flashed at every opportunity: 

 subscription ad, and a mock editorial notified readers that “at this very moment, the PTA, John Birch Society, Daughters of the Revolution, and the Four Freshman are rallying their forces to march on 

 magazine.” When an Aussie surfer passed a message via 

 to the American team flying in for the 1970 World Championships that “we await you with open minds and open hearts, and our girls await you with open legs,” the remark sailed through copyedit without raising an eyebrow.

Then Murphy returned. Rick Griffin’s wildly popular cartoon surf-imp was last seen in the pages of 

 in 1965, just before Griffin moved to San Francisco, where he contributed to 

 logo, and did album art for the Grateful Dead. Severson and Griffin had parted on bad terms, after arguing over Griffin’s small but unconcealed pro-drug references in his 

 strips. With Severson now reborn as a middle-aged flower child, the two reestablished contact and the publisher asked for a new Murphy strip—“something really electric,” as Griffin recalled. Murphy’s 1969 return to 

 came in a hallucinatory four-color gush (previous installments had been black-and-white), with our once-chipper little hero now wearing a Hopi Indian mask, gibbering in acid-speak, and briefly igniting into a fire-rimmed eyeball.

 design changes were just as radical. The magazine’s format during the boom years had been loosely modeled after 

. Cover blurbs were eliminated altogether for a while, leaving just a full-bleed photo and logotype. When the blurbs returned, it was mostly to give Kampion a chance to do some irony flexing: one 1970 cover read “First Annual End of the World Issue.”

 new direction. “What happened to your magazine?” one long-time reader asked. “It used to be a colorful portrayal of a good, clean sport. Now you’ve stooped to yellow journalism, poetry, rabble-rousing, ‘cosmic communion,’ ‘soul encounters,’ and all that other psychobabble.” Severson himself occasionally blinked at his own creation. “Drew Kampion came on flashing like a strobe light, but often got a little too serious,” he later wrote, recalling the supercharged effect of his new editor. “Remember, we’re just a surfin’ magazine.” Severson’s own sister gave up her free subscription when the magazine began printing swear words.

 counterculture plunge was a great success. 

 magazine, publishing’s graphic design arbiter, did a five-page spread on 

 in 1970 and gave the July issue an “Outstanding Cover Design” award. Ad revenue in 1969 and 1970 was actually 

 what it had been during the surf boom years. Every issue in 1969 was over a hundred pages, a 

 first, and a minor economic miracle, given how the boardmaking industry was spiraling downward.

 high didn’t last long. Severson sold the magazine in 1971 and retired with his family to Maui. Kampion defected not long after to rival 

. New publisher Steve Pezman—who twenty years later would introduce luxe surf publishing with 

 alternative-press credentials from lapsing, but in the mid-'70s the sport’s underground period drew to a close, as the sport once again groomed itself for a general audience. No more ironic cover blurbs. No more direct sex and drug references. Lots of great photos and plenty of readable articles. Clean, slick, and safe.

John Severson's introduction to pot in 1968 broke his bourgeois fetters at a single blow—or exhale. Before Christmas of that year, he traded his longboard for a new shortboard, grew a luxuriant Sergeant Pepper's moustache, and began remodeling his magazine.

Chapter: 5

Barefoot Revolution

Surfer Goes Electrical Bananas

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