This interview by Drew Kampion originally ran in the January 1971 issue of SURFER, and was titled "In the Pope's Living Room With Jock Sutherland." Sutherland was 22, and halfway through his Army training.

You had one of the most promising surfing careers going. Why did you decide to enter the Army?

Well, things are kind of nebulous and cloudy as far as my surfing endeavors. As to the reason I originally came into the Army, I would say it was for a communal paving, like to set up a situation where, if and when I returned home, I would have a respectable community base to operate from.

In other words, you'd be more accepted in Hawaii for having been in the military, than not?

Seeing as how most of the people where I come from are immigrants or from working families, they can appreciate the opportunities available [through the military], and I think this is carried on through their children as a sense of duty, or an obligatory sense of patriotism.

Are young surfers normally not accepted in Hawaii?

Young surfers as a whole are considered perhaps lackadaisical or non-striving in regards to contributing to the community, or to being responsible members of it.

You said you were using the army ‘‘to set up a situation.” Is this the same kind of “setting up” that you employ as a surfer?

Yes. It’s like you’re planning your trajectories ahead of time. You can’t anticipate fully what will happen, but you can have the skeletal framework, and then as things happen from day to day, month to month, you can apply them to the framework and solidify and make full the skeletal notes on your musical system, so to speak.

That’s the same thing you do in the water?

It’s definitely an analogous thing. You case out the surroundings as fully as possible, find as many variables as you can and their differentiating planes. So for example: you're working with two main mediums—sea and air. First, you understand the air variables, the wind and the clouds and the sun, recognize them as part of the territory, and apply them. Then you recognize the water variables, such as consistency of swell, number of people in the lineup, the different types of reformations occurring, and you apply all that to your surfing. By separating the two mediums, by creating a dichotomy, you have that much more in the way of sundries to work from. In other words, if you’re going to exploit the situation, selfishly almost, if you’re out there to surf—and for myself I like to catch a lot of waves—and you understand the situation more than your fellow surfers, then perhaps you can exploit the waves more, thereby causing a situation where you might be more deserving of the waves. It's definitely a lusty situation. You’re out there pushing and grabbing for all the gusto you can get, to plagiarize a bit. This applies to the Army too. By warming myself up here, through surfing, I can apply what’s happening in the Army, because actually I am inherently, innately, as well as inner-protectively, a surf person.


So you can to bring that surfing experience to bear on the Army experience in order to survive it? 

Right. My background, all my previous training as a surfer, can be directly applied to the Army. Surfing is so bred into me, is so much a natural part of me, so much a part of my feelings and expression, that it’s almost an automatic tool for me to work with. Hence, all I have to do is recognize something, even if it's just a small bit, of the potential that this surfing expressiveness can lend me.

How are danger and fear relevant to your surfing?

Danger and fear are direct stimuli and push for you to understand more fully the situation you're in. Danger is constituted as a situation where you might get some bodily harm, whereas fear, I think, is in the area of mental harm, like paranoia or ignorance of a situation. But danger and fear combined are both aspects of your involvement, and both can be overridden by understanding. You have a greater fear beyond the territory that you’re accustomed to, for sure, because you’re ignorant; you don’t know what’s happening in the places or situations you're not familiar with. But as far as danger is concerned, that’s a thing separate from your own fear—although it’s sometimes supplemented by fear.

So danger is objective and fear is subjective?

Right, although the subjectiveness of fear can supplement the objectiveness of danger.

There’s a story around about how you surfed 25-foot Waimea last winter and got caught out after dark. Was there any fear going on in all of that?

Well, on the other hand (laughs), maybe it was mostly fear and not any danger. Actually, yes, the way I felt was that danger was secondary to fear.

I wasn’t watching the outside indicators and lamed-out, just let myself get sucked too far inside. I tried to catch a smaller wave and missed it and turned around and there was this big set coming. I didn’t make it, even after some furious scratching. Righteously broke a good board, too!

Oh, just to get some refreshing waves before dark. Everybody had split already, so I thought, Well, it’s gonna have to be kind of a lone-wolf deal. Gonna have to get out there and earlobe the whole thing. I got about five or six waves before I broke the board. Pretty decent 18-to-20-foot waves. Y’know, drop in, glide for a while, kick out. Or heavy left rail down into the maul for a good turn, then pull out. I wasn’t trying to be too creative. Just an evening go-out.

Do you prefer big waves or smaller waves? And where do you like to surf?

I like a fair-to-middling 8- to 10-foot wave best. Anywhere. The Trestle on a good day is keen for drawing long lines or for elevators [top turns], whereas the Pipe is keen for getting in the tube.

The tube at the Pipe is a very clean divider. The tube at the Pipe is like an ax. You either make it or you don’t. If you do make it, then you have all kinds of various and sundry other places wherein you can go, such as up to the curl or back around, or straight down the line for a hundred yards, then back up into the white water for an el rollo. But if you don’t make it, then it seems like there’s only one thing to do, and that’s to protect your life from getting obliterated by some rambunctious coral head. Cantankerous coral head, I should say.

Does the fear thing ever come in for you at Pipeline, or is it your home break enough that it doesn’t scare you?

I’ve become pretty familiar with it. But still, y’know, if I see some giant, double-up, thick, gnarly, heavy monster moving in, and breaking further down than I would care to take off, with a dangerous bottom situation and a heavy suck-out and whitewater boils going up into it and face chops and all kinds of things making it unpleasant to ride—well, then I respect it as something I would rather not do. It’s not necessarily fear, but it just gives me a kind of feeling that nullifies any desire to get on it. On the other hand, that could just be my own shortcoming, which doesn’t allow me to go out and get on it. There are people like Buzzy Trent and Peter Cole where a big gnarly thing doesn’t bother them; it actually stokes them because here’s all this juice wanting to snuff them out, but instead they're gonna just try and use it.


 where you spend quite a bit of time in the tube.

That was all right. I knew it was kind of a fat situation before I took off because earlier waves had been walling up in a similar manner, but when I dropped in I didn’t realize it was gonna happen as quick as it did. So what I did was almost automatic. I hit the bottom and had to pull it off quick, ’cause I was watching the fringe and saw what it was doing. I had to pull up into it as fast as I could, instead of drawing off a long turn. I saw that there was no other way to make the wave except to get tight into it, knowing the Pipe as I do.

Spacious for sure. Just like the Pope’s living room. Even with all the bric-a-brac, paintings and big overstuffed chairs and sofas, there was still a lot of room inside the thing.

Is being in the Pope’s living room as big a charge as, say, riding those evening waves at Waimea?

Maybe more so, but it’s hard to say. You can’t say that riding the tube is necessarily better than riding big waves. They’re on similar planes; they’re all coming from the same airport, so to speak. You can get blown out by riding a big wave, and you can get blown out by riding in a tube. But, yes, I would say that riding back in the tube at the Pipe is a more enlightening occurrence.

Do you spend most of your time in the tube watching the fringe of the lip?

Yeah, ’cause when you drop to the bottom, even when you’re hitting your turn, the whole point of those first two or three seconds down the face, is setting up your trajectory. From then on it's an animalistic reaction because you’ve already set up the pattern. Your physical expressiveness is just following the pattern your brain has created for you from a particular situation of variables. So when you’re three-quarters of the way down the face, you’re already feeling out the fringe, trying to perceive what it’s going to do for you or at you. You’re figuring out a trajectory even before you hit your bottom turn. It seems like the majority of the times you get in the tube, getting in there is just a reaction. Recoiling and absorbing what the wave is doing.

Mushy waves, on the other hand, give you room for expression. There’s that much more time to work with, that much more area. Like the Trestle. You can rip a cutback into the white water, or rip up into [the lip], or do a fin drift, or stand on your head. Do a one-legged el rollo for the audience on the beach.

Have you ever had any really close calls where you nearly kicked it off?

No, I can’t say that I’ve ever come really close to the ultimate touchdown. But as they say in football, you can’t win ’em all.

Plus, there’s the point-after-touchdown conversion.

True. True. But the fans might rip out the goal posts, and we’d have nothing to aim for. But then you could always go for the two-point pass play.

But if there’s no goal posts, they’ll be looking for it.

Yeah, but you could run a giant screen on ’em so they’re lookin’ for it from the right. Run a double handoff. Handoff to your left half, he comes across and hands off to the right half, and he hands off to the quarterback, then the halves cross to confuse the defense and the quarterback passes to the right end.


I don’t think the army’s hassled me to such an extent that my surfing can’t nullify it and proceed to give me pleasure from it. In other words, the Army hasn’t hung me up so much that I can’t dig surfing. Although there is definitely a certain amount of frustration involved in the limitations that the Army imposes on you. But that in itself is a challenge to work with and through. If you can accept the Army’s limitations and the frustrating framework, you can make it work for you.

Does your trajectory in the Army just serve to make you acceptable to your community, or will you derive other benefits?

I feel that my work in the Army can be a definite supplement to my later life. I’d say the army’s already taught me a good skill by teaching me how to type. Also I’m trying to solidify a base for a career in marine biology. In other words, all the Army is means for further indulgence in the ocean. So what it boils down to is that I’m getting involved with the land for a good long stint just so I can get back to further enjoyment of the ocean.

How’s the Army going to help you in marine biology?

Well, like I say, it’s already taught me typing, that’s one good thing. It’s taught me a few functional procedures as far as administration is concerned, administration being a general term for office work. Anyway, I figure that as long as I have no choices, and I’m into it right now, and as far as the army’s concerned this is the work that I’ve gotta do, I might as well do it and try to enjoy it, and think about how I can utilize it in outside life, how I can sock it back into the work I’ll have to do when I get out.

What kind of person are you in relation to other people?

Kind of introverted and maybe disrespectful at times.

How has surfing helped you in relations with other people?

I’m a bit of a cynic, and my own frustrations can supplement that cynicism. But if you can realize your frustrations in relation to other people’s frustrations, then you can understand more fully the future potentials with frustrations resolved. In other words, if you can take your faults and other people’s faults and not harp on them, if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then things will be a lot purer.

[Photos: Drew Kampion, John Severson, Bernie Baker]

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