A slightly longer version of Vaughan Blakey's interview with Shane Herring ran in the April 2013 issue of Surfing World Magazine. Herring was the closest thing Australia had to an answer to Kelly Slater in 1992—Herring in fact beat Slater in their first and only finals encounter, at that year's Coke event. By 1995, however, he was off the tour, and for the next decade, as Blakey reports, Herring "suffered from an alcohol and drug addiction that would cost him friendships, work, his health, and all his teeth." He spent nearly a year in rehab in 2010; Blakey notes that while Herring was sober for the interview, "he admits to enjoying his drink."

How did it feel to get out in the water today?

You were saying today was a struggle for you.

Well, yeah. It was worse a couple of weeks ago because I hadn’t surfed for six months. I’ve probably had five or six surfs since then. It’s been good to get back in the ocean a little bit. It’s not really about trying for me now. There’s no looking into the beach for the judges' tower, thinking, “What score am I gonna get?”

It’s easy when you’re doing it. It’s not hard. Once you get your legs it’s like riding a bike. You go six months without surfing and it takes a bit to find your legs but it’s always there. And I don’t have to make an impression, I mean, I’d like to be impressive, everybody does, everybody wants to feel like they’re surfing well, we all want to be a little superstar, but I’m too old for that shit. I’m 42. So I don’t feel like I need to be impressive. But my surfing, when I’m doing it and I’ve got my legs, still feels good.

How would you describe your relationship with surfing these days?

Untidy and intermediate. I do it to get a bit of exercise.

So going for a wave obviously isn’t the first thing on your mind when you wake up in the morning.

I surf when I want to surf. I don’t have to do it. And I don’t like being told I have to do it. I do it when it comes around.

Do you watch the Tour now? Does it interest you?

Yes, I do. I watch it on telly and stuff like that.

I’ll tell you what I think of modern aerials. There was Christian Fletcher and Matt Archbold aerials and those were real. They weren’t twisting and turning. And so my comment on the modern aerial is that it’s easier to twist and turn than it is to do a real aerial. Martin Potter invented ’em pretty much and it was an extension of hitting the lip. Nowadays they’re doing the twist and, I mean, well done Chubby Checker, but I consider a re-entry aerial better than a twisty thing at the end of the wave. It's becoming too repetitive and common now. That’s my comment on that.

What aspects of modern surfing do you like?

Ry Craike I love. That Gabriel Medina kid did something at Santa Cruz that was incredible. It’s not acrobatics when it goes to that extent. Joel Parkinson. He’s very stylish, very refined. He doesn’t fuss about like the rest of them. He creates time for himself on waves by being so smooth. Mick Fanning is just fast, fast, fast. Power. There’s a lot to like everywhere you look.

Is it fair to say you still love surfing?

Oh shit yeah. I love surfing! It’s just that I don’t like doing it sometimes 

Well, let’s talk about where that love comes from then. When did you first feel it?

I stood up on the first wave I ever caught. And that was the moment. It was at Curl Curl. I was nine. My uncle Gary Balnave pushed me into my first wave. I thought it was six foot. It was probably only one foot 

At Frenchs Forest, where INXS are from. So I’d carry my foamie on the bus down to Freshwater Beach, where my great-grandfather watched the Duke introduce surfing to Australia, and where my grandfather used to watch Midget Farrelly wag school to surf, and I’d surf there. Not long after, Mum moved to Dee Why and I started surfing there. I’d catch the 180 to Dee Why for 35 cents. I used to wear my Belrose footy jacket in the surf.

When did you start to become part of the crew at Dee Why?

Well, I was a Frenchs Forest boy so at first I wasn’t really accepted. There were two main hang spots, Crud Hill and The Rat’s Castle. Once you started hanging at either one of those places you were pretty much accepted.

What was surf like for the groms at Dee Why?

Fantastic. First and foremost there was the Point. Then we had the stormwater drain that’d make these beautiful lefthanders that would break all the way into Kiddies Corner. It was a full-on semi-big-wave left. And then there was Kiddies, in the basin and we’d surf in there and watch these waves out the back and aspire to get out there and surf with the big guys. There were some really fantastic surfers at Dee Why at the time. So you wanted to surf where they were surfing. It was good for a kid to see that stuff.

And what about the scene on land? Dee Why had a reputation at that time for being a pretty wild place?

Dee Why was the lower-class beach. No doubt about it. And the lower classes of society live with problems. Lots of problems. Dee Why is a lot of people living in a small space. We were fine, though. Us kids. The older fellas were protective. They’d scold you if you fucked up but for the most part they looked after us. Everyone knew everyone’s business. We just hung out and surfed and rode skateboards hanging onto the back of the buses and go all the way up the street. It was normal. All that stuff was normal kid’s stuff for that time.

At what point did you feel like you were beginning to surf well?

Phil Murray gave me a board with Jerry the mouse from 

 on it. It was a little single fin. And I started doing these cutbacks. A guy came up to me one day and said, “Shane, that bloke on the beach says you’re one of the best little surfers he’s seen.” And that stoked me out because I’d never even thought that before. And then next thing Phil was shaping for Terry Fitzgerald at Hot Buttered and that was my first sponsor until I started riding Daniel Surfboards.

When did you start getting noticed outside of Dee Why?

I got this thing called "Surfer of the Month" in 

 magazine. It was a little square photo and I was doing a cutback. It was around that time I started doing aerials and I remember my uncle saying to me, “What are you doing man? You’re supposed to surf 

videos and I saw Christian Fletcher and Archy and Pottz and I thought, “That’s me.”

How was your life outside of surfing around this time?

I had a job as a milk runner because my grandfather was a milk runner. I had a job, I was doing school, I never wagged school, and I was starting to think about being a pro surfer.

Did you party at all as you hit your teen years?

Yeah, we had ABBA parties and safari parties and there were parties every weekend but I was pretty serious at that time. Parties were a Friday night thing. I’d have a few but then I’d be up early the next morning and straight back into the surfing.

When did your surf career start to really take off?

My Uncle Gary was training me and getting me into it but things became more serious when I walked into Terry Day’s shop with Greg Day and my Mum, and I said, “I wanna go on Tour.” Terry had coached Wendy Botha and Damien Hardman and helped them to win World Titles that year. And Terry looked at Greg and my Mum and said, “Is it tangible?” I didn’t even know what tangible meant. I stood there and I said, “Tangible? I want to be World Champion.” He just pulls out this sheet and hands it to me. I looked at it and it was a goal sheet, a sheet I had to write my goals on.

Yeah. So Terry took me under his wing and I began training with Damien Hardman and Wendy Botha. Skipping, boxing, cardiovascular, all that sort of stuff. Solid training. Terry was a big influence in my life at that time.

I did my HSC [Higher School Certificate]. I wouldn’t say I passed with flying colors but I passed, and at the time that was important to me. By then I’d done three to four years of solid training and I was ready to surf. I came 13th in the Aussie Titles the year I left school and that’s when I was ready to go the next step.

When did you first start surfing Pro Tour events?

I won the Pro Junior Trials at Avalon and suddenly I got an invitation to compete at Santa Cruz for the Cold Water Classic at Steamer Lane. So I flew to Hawaii and then on to San Francisco by myself. There I was at the San Francisco airport with five boardbags, all by myself, with no clue how to get to Santa Cruz. [Brazilian pro surfer] Renan Rocha comes up and taps me on the shoulder and says, “What are you doing?” I said, “I have no idea.” And he drove me to Santa Cruz with all his Brazilian mates and I’m hanging with them for the rest of the comp.

Not at all. I had no place to stay and didn’t know anyone, and Renan just walks up and saves me. I didn’t know how to get to Santa Cruz and he gave me a lift.

I got through three heats in the trials and nearly made the main event.

Is this when O’Neill Wetsuits first noticed you?

Well, they'd invited me to surf in the contest; that’s why I’d traveled there in the first place. I was riding for Quiksilver at the time but O’Neill wanted me to ride for them. So Greg and Terry sent me over to Santa Cruz and, truth be told, that’s kind of how I ended up going that way.

And after that contest you were officially on Tour?

After the Coldwater at Santa Cruz, I went to the Bundaberg Pro at Burleigh and made the main event. Me and Powelly [fellow Aussie regularfooter Shane Powell] made the main event and that’s where it really started for both of us. I’d met Powelly at the Aussie Titles and he was younger than me but we hit it off straight away. We did very well in Australia and were on Tour after that. But we were broke. By the time I got to Europe, I had $100 left in the bank. I remember I was sitting in a hire car reading Stephen King wondering what I was going to do and the next comp I went in I won the trials and got two grand. I finished the year rated #54.

How were you and Powelly accepted by the older crew at that time?

There was full camaraderie and it was like, welcome, welcome, welcome!

You’re telling me the most ruthless competitors of all time, Tom Carroll, Barton Lynch, Gary Elkerton, Damien Hardman, etc, are saying, “Welcome aboard”?

We were just part of the crew. I never really got any of that cold shoulder stuff. I didn’t see any of that sort of shit. I mean, if you were in a heat with those guys, yeah, they were ruthless, but on land they were the guardians. They were the men.

1990 is your first year on Tour and it’s also Kelly’s first appearance on Tour. What did you think of him?

Unbelievable. Kelly Slater was unbelievable. I didn’t know anything about the bloke. He turned up at Hossegor that year and he had a wildcard or something and he just whipped everyone’s arses. He just blazed. And I honestly believe Kelly was thinking at the time, “Well, this is easy.” He was a phenomenon. Very flexible. Extremely fit. The thing was, he lost a heat to Curren. And Curren that year had been surfing through the trials and he was untouchable. And so enigmatic. Back in Santa Cruz I remember I’d seen him in the competitor’s area and he had these sunnies on and was looking just like Michael Peterson. He wouldn’t look sideways. He’d just look at the ocean, timing his sets, timing everything. I think that's what he was doing. I dunno. Who knows what he was thinking? It’s true that was the year we all saw Kelly Slater for the first time, but 1990 was all about Tom Curren. And in that heat they had together Tom just shut Kelly down.

The following year you finished 36th, inside the all-important Top 44 and well on the way to living your dream.

Yes, I was 19 and I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing.

And at this time it’s well known and widely reported that the party scene on Tour, particularly in Europe and Brazil, is absolutely crazy.

The parties were next level. I’d drink. I’d take drugs. I instigated that sort of thing and indulged in that behavior. Some guys were into it, others weren’t. It was just a bit of fun.

Would you party on nights the contests were on?

Yes, because you were strong. You had no supervision. You had opportunity. It wasn’t like it is today. No coaches. No team managers. Racing from this place to the next. Half the time you’d sleep in the contest tent and go and get a baguette in the morning and do what you had to do to get by. And eventually, people are inviting you to stay, local people. Then you start to do well and you start earning some money. And then you start to have fun because you’ve got the stamina, you’re doing well and you think you can handle it. These days, it’s nothing like that.

How did drugs become a part of that party scene?

It wasn’t like we searched them out. I’d get up in the morning, eat breakfast, go surfing, hang out, go surf beautiful waves again in the afternoon and then go party. If there were drugs there you took them. Coke. Acid. Whatever. You just didn’t think about it.

Let’s talk about 1992, because this is the year the big push is happening. New School versus Old School. And the hype around Kelly Slater is huge.

That’s when Greg Webber made the Banana Board. Or just before that, at the end of '91. At Kelly’s first contest in Hossegor, the year before, we saw that he was riding wafers. Greg knew I was surfing well and that I was fit and so he came up with the Banana, as a way to combat the emergence of Kelly. The boards I got were incredibly radical, with something like four inches of lift in the nose and tail. And in good waves I was just going up and down, up and down. I wasn’t doing aerials but I could surf them because I was super fit.

At first I liked the Bananas because I could do so many turns in the pocket. But the problem was the boards didn’t work unless the waves were punchy and hollow.

Let’s talk about that in a moment. First tell me about the Coke Classic, the opening salvo in what was supposed to be a major generational shift on Tour. You and Kelly in the final of the richest surf contest in the world.

Were you feeling like you were at the top of your game at this point in regards to how you were surfing?

No, not at all. I was just surfing. Same as always. There was no thought process going into the Coke contest. I was just glad I was home. It was local, the waves were small, I was living at my Mum’s. I didn’t have a license so I was catching the bus down to Narrabeen to surf my heats. They put me on the front cover of the 

 as the surfer who catches the bus to work 

. I beat Barton Lynch and Dave Macaulay. I beat Jeremy Byles. And suddenly I was in the final.

Did you sense that people felt as though they were seeing the future of surfing in that heat?

No, nothing went through my mind like that at all. Once I made the quarterfinals, all I thought about was winning. It was very small and it was just a shorey. I remember I did a small air in the final. But, you know, it was just like winning boardriders to me.

I don’t recall, but he would have been spinning. He'd be thinking, “How did this little Australian drunk beat me!” He probably paddled out thinking he would beat me easily but he didn’t. I was very happy. Except they gave me a Coke can as a trophy. I would have thought it would be something a little more extravagant than that.

You won $33,000. Is it true you put five grand on the bar at Dee Why RSL after the final?

No. I bought 55 jugs and put sambuca shots in the bottom of 44 of them. I don't remember how much it cost.

How was that night on a scale of one to 10?

Cripes. They wouldn’t let us in anywhere. So we went to the city. And we went to DCM nightclub and guess what?

Well, I was allowed, I’d won the comp, but nobody else was allowed. So we just ended up at some pub.

After the Coke win you took the World number one ranking?

Yep. And stayed there for six or eight months.

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