The quotes below are excerpted from "The Secret to Making the Cover, $80,000 a Year, and 360s: Or why Larry Bertlemann Had to Have His Phone Disconnected and Other Startling Facts about Surfing’s Rubberman," by Phil Jarratt. The article ran in the December 1979 issue of Surfer. Bertlemann was 24 years old.

What’s it like trying to combine a family life and the life of a pro surfer?

Pretty difficult. It splits your life in half, especially when you’re traveling and you have to think of just the contests. When I’m at home and when I’m at the beach, I’m two different people.

Has family life stopped you from competing overseas as much as you’d like?

Yeah, it has. There are so many contests scattered over the world that if you went to them all you'd hardly ever be at home. So I’ve been cutting out a few, yeah.

Can you do that and still make a decent living?

Oh yeah. In fact, I think I make more money not competing than competing. I don't make that much prize money, compared with the endorsements I have. Like in Australia this year, I got more attention than the guys who placed first in the contests.

Why is that? Why do you attract so much attention?

I’m not sure. I dunno. I just try to be friendly with everyone.

I remember talking to you a few years ago and you had no connection to the surf industry, or any other industry, outside of Ben Aipa. What’s happened since then? Did you get a manager?

After I left Ben, everything started to happen. I put together a portfolio, and found out there were a lot of people willing to give me money. There’s a hell of a lot of people who want to give me money. I had to turn down of people who wanted my name on their products.

But did you have an advisor or did you just work out who to approach for yourself?

Colonel [Albert] Benson helped me out, gave me some guidelines.

When you say "portfolio," what do you mean? What's in there?

All the surf magazine covers I’ve got. I've been on more covers than any surfer in the world. It’s just a gigantic thing, all my press clippings. After that I’ve got everything sectioned off on how much it costs to travel the world, all the expenses, food costs, ground transportation, flying, all of that, so I can go to a potential sponsor and lay it on them. See if they want to pick up the whole tab or just a part of it. So far, they’ve just been picking it up a little at a time.

Explain to me what you do when you approach a potential sponsor.

I try to do my homework before I go. I try to figure out what I can offer them, and then when I go in to talk to the guy, I tell him what he wants to hear.

Obviously your approach is quite successful. How come the other guys haven’t worked it out?

I don’t know. It’s all in the way you dress, and your attitude. Just getting along with the guy you’re talking to. Like if the guy’s a golfer, you talk about golf, that type of thing. I go in there with a full-on suit and tie.

In Australia, I recall you saying that you could be making better money in Arizona.

Yeah, I went to Arizona for OP Sportswear, and I did make more money. We went to Big Surf, the wave pool there, and after that I did a bunch of shows in Texas.

Would you rather be out surfing than doing all that promotional stuff?

Sure. I’d rather surf than anything, but I get off on doing promos too. Your fans are what make you, so I try to keep them happy and in return they'll keep me in business. I like to sign autographs and do all that stuff.

Looking back over your career, you were with Ben Aipa quite a while.

When we started together I was really young and didn’t know anything. We made a lot of boards, millions and millions. At first it was the swallowtails that I actually designed, but after a year or so my name was dropped and it was just Aipa's name on the boards. And the stingers, I never really liked them. I couldn’t ride them, but I had to because Ben was shaping them. I lost a lot of money riding stingers, you know? So I quit the whole thing with Ben and started shaping my own boards.

Is there a Larry Bertleman model on the market?

Yeah, through Hawaiian Pro Design. I’ve shaped them all for the past three years.

It takes me about 40 minutes per board; $70 a board.

Wow, that’s fast; that's faster than [Tom] Parrish.

Well, I just try to get it done and get out of there as fast as possible.

I like shaping my own boards. I shape a lot of stock and custom boards, and once in a while I’ll do one that I enjoy, and I'll get bummed that it’s not my board.

How do you feel about surfing in competition these days?

I kind of enjoy it. I enjoy any competition; riding motorcycles, water skiing.

Oh yeah. I like that a lot. I learn so much from skateboarding. About four years ago, I saw the 360 done, and I dreamt about doing it in the surf, and over the past year I’ve perfected the thing. Now I’m looking at this other move where you come off the bottom, hit the lip, and as you come out of the wave you turn in midair. It’s like what skaters do when they come up out of the pool. Aerials. Except they don’t call them aerials anymore, they call them Larryials. (Laughs)

Your style of surfing doesn’t really seem suited to competition. I mean the judges aren’t going to score you highly for maneuvers you can’t yet pull off.

No, that's right, they don’t. In fact, I pulled off the first 360 to be done in a contest, in Florida, and I still lost the heat. Here’s a maneuver that millions of people have been talking about and only three or four guys in the world can do. And they just didn't know how to judge it. The contest scene is all about the guy who catches the biggest wave and rides the longest distance. You can stand on your head and still win the heat. That stuff doesn’t please me at all. What pleases me, and I think what pleases people watching on the beach, is radical surfing. People like to see radical, go-for-it stuff

Buttons, Mark Liddell and Dane Kealoha. We all used to surf together, and we're all good friends. Those are the only other guys I've ever seen doing it.

I agree with you about contest judging, but one thing I wonder about; how can you keep your name in lights if you never win a contest

My name doesn’t live or die on a surf contest. Some people just die if they lose. I don’t work that way. The public is what makes me. If you win a contest, that's great, your name gets in the magazines and a few people read about you. But if you really stand out in the contest, even if you don't win, I think even more people will hear about you.

How do you compare your ability with the current top contest surfers?

I think I’m just as good or better because I do maneuvers in places on the waves that other guys wouldn’t even think about. Take Shaun, for example. He does these kick-turn rollercoasters where he stands on the tail and lets the whitewater hit his board. That’s not even difficult. When you come off the bottom and fly straight through the lip, that’s ten times harder, but you don’t get the points.

Have you ever tried to change things by explaining to the judges what your surfing is all about?

A lot of times. I’ve tried to get everybody together to talk about it. If there was more money in surfing, they could put the judges in a room and show them movies and explain to them what it’s all about. Half the judges don’t even surf anymore. They don’t know how hard it is to do a maneuver in the critical part of the wave; they’ve never even been there.

You had a bad accident a couple of years ago, didn’t you?

I sprained my ankle trying to do a 360 at Off the Wall. It was two days before the Smirnoff. I went to the doctor and had him numb my leg. I could hardly stand on that leg and I still won my heat. I just took off on the shoulder and rode the waves the longest distance. I didn’t do anything at all. That just goes to show how worthless these contests are.

I was out for five months. No pictures in the mags, no promos, and people thought I was gone. Then after five months I went back to Off the Wall and got a cover shot within a month.

You’re originally from the Big Island, aren’t you?

Yeah, but I’ve been here on Oahu for about 12 years. My mother lives here, but my father is still on the Big Island. Later on, I’ll go back there and run his shop for him. He has an auto mechanic shop. Very laid back. It’s nice there.

That’s your ambition? To go back and run an auto shop?

Yeah, when I get old and I can't surf anymore. But right now the future looks pretty good with Op. I might just be a salesman with them for a while.

I hate to keep coming back to money, but you must be doing quite well at the moment.

I wouldn’t say I’m a millionaire, but I'm happy.

Toyota sponsors me, and they give me a car every year.

It’s hard to believe that you’ve set this all up by yourself.

Yeah, other surfers keep asking me who to go see. I laugh and tell them to find out for themselves. It’s just determination, figuring out who to talk to.

Not far. All the teachers said I’d be a bum. Later on, I did well in art, working things with resin. I got art scholarships to go to college in Europe, but I didn’t go. I had a scholarship from the University of Hawaii, too.

Did you get into resin painting through messing around in glassing rooms?

Yeah, fooling around with resin drips on the floor. One thing led to another,

Motorcycle riding. And I like listening to music. I got a $7,000 stereo system in my house, and I got another one in my car worth $2,000.

Honolulu. Downtown in an apartment, but I'm making too much money, I gotta move out. I gotta buy a house, the taxes are killing me.

Most days, if the waves are good. I surf a lot on the Outer Islands.

So you go to the Outer Islands to have fun and the North Shore to get your picture taken?

Yeah, because this is where the money is. Until I make enough money to be satisfied, I’ll stay here. I'm busy, which is good. I just reinstalled my phone, and I’ve had so many people call me, I remembered why I pulled it out in the first place. I had it out for a year-and-a-half because too many people were calling.

If your phone's plugged back in, how come I couldn’t ring you? I had to call Louis Ferreira.

You gotta go through channels if you want to get in touch with me.

And you really find that people calling you up is a hassle?

Oh yeah. It's 24 hours a day. All hours of the night.

Some of them offer me deals. But mostly it's fans. They want to know how tall I am and what color my eyes are, stuff like that. It blows my mind.

As soon as they find out my number, I have to change it. It's terrible.

[Photos: Warren Bolster, Lou Perez, Tom Sutherland]

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