SUNDAY JOINT, 3-23-2025: LAST CALL FOR SHANE HERRING

Hey All,

Shane Herring of Australia died at home last week at age 53, on Saint Patrick's Day, not long after falling down the stairs in his West Tweed Head apartment. He went to bed that night with a headache and never woke up. Herring is remembered for two things, more or less equally. He outsurfed Kelly Slater to win the 1992 Coke contest, the second event of the season—both were 20-year-old sophomore-year WCT pros, it was the debut finals appearance for each, and nothing in the sport seemed more obvious at that moment than the idea that these two would together reshape high-performance surfing and take turns winning many world titles. Slater of course did that and more. Shane's star had the same velocity as Kelly's—but in the opposite direction. He never won another CT contest, never made another final, never even made another semi, dropped off the tour at 23, vanished into sundry addictions and became a cautionary tale to everybody but himself. This incredible flameout is the second thing Shane Herring is known for.

Herring would later acknowledge there were forces at play that contributed to his jumping the rails—too much money at too young an age; not enough supervision—but laying blame was never his strong suit. Bitterness and self-pity, same thing. Herring always seemed to believe, more so than the rest of us, that as far as his career went, things turned out the way they did, and there you go, so let's just get on with it. His rapid-fire sense of humor never dimmed—the wreckage of his brief pro surfing career, if anything, provided Herring with his best, if bleakest, one-liners, as was the case with his 2013 interview with Aussie writer-filmmaker Vaughan Blakey:

Did you and Kelly talk during the [1992 Coke] final?

I don’t recall, but he would have been spinning. He’d be thinking, “How did this little Australian drunk beat me?”

At the end of 1994 you’d fallen off Tour. In two years you’d gone from fourth in the world to failing to requalify. How?

I got last in every contest.

Where are you at with your addictions today?

I don’t take drugs anymore.

What about drinking?

Drinking is okay. It’s legal. I like it. But basically, I’m not allowed to drink in the morning. I gotta wait till lunchtime. It’s an afternoon food.

Wit and self-acceptance came naturally to Herring, but my guess is these traits were also strapped on like armor, to make life easier on himself and others. And the flow of gallows humor probably allowed those who loved and admired Herring to deflect or mitigate or otherwise not dwell on where Shane was and where he was likely heading—but maybe it was just the opposite; maybe the quips just made it harder as this perpetually upbeat screwup time and again drank and drugged himself to near-death. The rolling damage and the laughs, in combination, must have been jarring. Heavy amphetamine use eventually led to Shane having all his teeth removed. Which he then joked about. For years he was on antipsychotic meds that left him overweight and lethargic. More jokes.

A one-year rehab stay in 2010 allowed Herring to get past the worst of his addictions. He did ding-repair and a handful of non-skilled jobs over the next 15 years, but mostly just seemed to be in a holding pattern, not spiraling, but not looking for a restart of any kind either. He surfed now and then.

Everybody who knew Shane Herring was saddened by his death—this incredibly likable ginger who once said, "I don't try to be handsome, I don't try to be cool, I just try to be nice." But nobody's out there saying Herring's death caught them by surprise.

I wrote about Herring in a 2022 Sunday Joint:

There are songs where the uplift comes straight and true, and I love these songs, and will kick my heels up to “Walking on Sunshine” until I’m strapped into a mobility scooter—and even then, I’ll pop a wheelie in appreciation.

Then there are songs where the uplift is shifty or ironic or just plain deceitful, and I love those too, maybe more, and one of the best is Buck Owens’ “Together Again,” a first-dance favorite for Johnson-era newlyweds stepping onto the floor after exchanging vows, believing, as Buck says, that the “the gray skies are gone” and the “long lonely nights are now at an end.” Except, as Tyler Mahan Coe points out, the pedal steel on “Together” sounds like “a kicked hound dog crying,” while the rhythm section players "sound like they’re on Quaaludes,” and the track in general, despite the positive lyrics, “rains misery down on us.” Why? Because the singer, consciously or not, knows that he's at the top end of a cycle that will soon pitch him back into an ocean of tears. He’s kidding us, but not half as much as he’s kidding himself.

Iggy Pop’s “1970 (I Feel Alright)” is built on the same idea as “Together Again,” except replace the love interest with a three-day methamphetamine bender. The song is ridiculously two-faced, in other words, and it sticks like a magnet to this new clip of Shane Herring, the heavily freckled Dee Why dead-end kid who for a hot moment in 1992 pulled even with Kelly Slater as the most exciting surfer in the world. Thirty years ago, Herring and Slater met in the finals of the Coke Classic at Narrabeen. Both were 20 years old. Both were making their first WCT finals appearance. As coach Terry Day later recalled, Herring, up on the scaffolding before an adoring crowd as he was announced the winner, began “jumping up and down like an excited little kid at the zoo.”

Tim Baker was with Shane during, and the day following, his Coke win, and the article he wrote for Australia’s Surfing Life is by and large a beer-soaked profile in triumph—except you can already see that Herring is too young (lives at home, shares a room with his little brother, doesn’t yet have a driver’s license), and that he is already dealing with serious real-world pressures (a chunk of Herring’s $33,000 Coke check was used to pay down medical bills for his mother’s recent brain-tumor surgery.)

Herring was the top-ranked surfer in the world for the next three or so months. Then things slid downhill. Slowly at first—he dropped to #4 at the end of 1992, while Slater won his first world title—then faster, and by early 1995 this freckly good-natured comet of a human being with the scorching forehand carve that would not be bettered until Filipe Toledo hit the Top Five, was back home at Dee Why, was drinking and drugging his way to poverty, psychosis, and all manner of bodily ailments.

Five years ago I received an email from a surf industry figure who knows Shane well, telling me that Herring had just weeks to live. But as he’s done time and again over the past quarter-century, Herring rallied. Although what that means, exactly, is open to interpretation. Read Tim Baker’s 2005 update on Herring here, and Vaughan Blakey’s 2013 interview here. And by all means watch this short Cyrus Sutton-produced video interview, also from 2013, which is basically a spoken-word variation of “I Feel Alright,” and will break your heart.

Herring’s knack for mitigating the tragedy of his adult life, meanwhile, is as remarkable as the speed and flair he brought to his surfing as a teenager. He does this in part because somehow, and against all odds, he continues to lean optimistic. Herring’s wit and humor have survived the past 30 years intact—although it’s hard not to think that everybody involved with the above-mentioned media confabs, Shane included, is to some degree laughing to keep from crying.

Steve Shearer's newly-posted "Memories of Shane Herring," on Swellnet, puts a wealth of first-person detail to all that I've said here, and is 100% worth a few more minutes of your time. 

Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

Matt

[Photo grid, clockwise from top left: Shane Herring wins the 1992 Coke contest at Narrabeen; surf photo by Alex Williams; smiling Herring in 1992; surfing the Great Barrier Reef in 1992, photo by Peter Aitchison; post-Coke-win party photo with Herring in the middle, photo by Peter Crawford; Herring in 2021, photo by Jimmy Whitford. North Shore, 1992, left to right: Shane Powell, Kelly Slater, Shane Herring, photo by Jeff Hornbaker. Herring at 1992 Coke contest. Herring smoking a cigarette in a 2013 Cyrus Sutton video. Surfing photo by Tony Nolan. Herring and Michael Rommelse on the North Shore in 1992, photo by Tom Servais. Herring surfing, photo by Peter Wilson. Herring and Slater on the winner's podium at the Coke contest.]