Barton Lynch
Barton Lynch, former Pipe Master and World Champion, tour vet, and all around jovial aussie, is the a great surfer. We caught up with Barton, interviewed by his good mate, Ross Clarke-Jones, and recorded the following interview the day after his last day on the ASP tour. I personally remember Barton when he and Shaun Tomson came by "California Dreamin", a surf shop in Texas, for an Instinct promotion. Barton was really cool back then ten years ago- fully razzin the shop grom, Jason Mullins and having a good time. That was way back when "Beyond Blazin Boards"by Chris Bystrom came out and it seems like Barton has not changed a bit. Read on to share 15 years of tour ripping and see what Barton has in store for the future.
Ross Clarke-Jones: Hi. I'm Ross Clarke-Jones. I'm here with Barton Lynch in Hawaii for Hawaiian Soul Surfing. So Barton, tell me, after 15 years on the tour it's all over today. How does it feel?
Barton Lynch: Um. I'm amazed that I'm not hung over. (laughs) I've always thought that today I`d be in no shape at all to even communicate with anyone, let alone to do an interview, so I was actually quite surprised. It was, yesterday was the hard day. It was not sad or anything like that, it was just emotional you know and I didn't even think about it until I got down there in the morning and I was sitting there looking at it and I realized that that was the day I'd been dreading all my life.
RC-J: Yeah. This morning when you woke up, how was it?
BL: It was good. I got up and went and had a look at the surf and the next thing I knew I was actually jogging the sand to Velzyland to check it out there and I haven't done that in 10 years coming to the North Shore so (laughs) I started on the right foot, it most probably will go downhill from here, but it felt good. I think I'm looking forward to surfing and, you know, not having to go out and perform when your heat's on and you only get 25 minutes to show what you can do. I'm looking forward to just being free and going home and spending as long as possible at home and growing some roots for the first time.
RC-J:> So your going to be a legitimate soul surfer, as such, or how will you classify yourself now, as from today?
BL: Yeah. I suppose the soul surfer tag is something that it's, to define it is something that's hard in itself. You know what I mean? And um, I suppose you consider that you have soul even though you derive your income from riding your surfboard and I remember there was a point a long time ago where you had the choice and you sort of, everyone was starting to talk about what they were going to do, and I said there's only one thing I'm going to do, I'm going to surf, you know what I mean? Like, I reckon you could do all right, so you get out there and you start competing and really the only reason you go through that whole process is just so, essentially so you can surf, and you can avoid work you know and so for 15 years I was able to do that. I think, you know, I think now I will still have to derive my income from the easiest source possible which is surfing and that is what I'd like to continue to be paid to surf but I'd like to be paid to surf and not paid to compete. That would be nice. But I'd think that may be..
RC-J: So there's no soul left? (laughs)
BL: (laughs) There's no soul left. There is no, every moment's full of soul I reckon. You know what I mean. It's just, quite literally the realization that I had to quit the pro tour came about a year ago when I was sitting on my veranda early one morning and we just got home from being out and I realized that for the first time in my life I actually was just surfing for money and I was going to the contests and the only reason I did any of that stuff was just for money and really I've never done it for money. I've never even thought about money. It was just something you did. It was what you felt you had to do. There was nothing else I was ever going to be, you know. I've never thought of anything else. It wasn't like I'll be a burger (cook), no no, I'll be a doctor, uh now I'll be a pro surfer, you know what I mean. It was none of that.
RC-J: You'll be a politician? (laughs)
BL: (laughs) No, no, not even that. We'll do that next.
RC-J: And so, there's a rumor that your putting on a contest for another era of surfers. Is that true?
BL: What we want to try and do is, we want to put on some surfing festivals next year and Damien Hardman and I, that's what I'm going on, we've created a company that, it's in consultancy. It's going to consult on surfing issues and you know surfing concepts and it's surfer management as well as event and tv production and the first thing we want to do is put on, stage these surfing festivals around the world and try to put on events that the focus isn't so much on money and winning and losing and you know having all the stars and the heroes of the magazines, there more just some events that embrace surfing's culture and..
RC-J: We'll try that last time?
BL: Yeah. It's so people go down there and even if they're people that don't surf they go down there and they leave at the end of the day feeling what it's like to be a surfer you know. With the ASP, I think you go down there, you really don't leave with that much of a, you're absolutely outstanded by the surfing performance, but there's not much of surfing's culture in it around it, so we'd like to try and...
RC-J: Who would be included in your festival?
BL: What I did was I, we took the decade originally of from 1984 to 1993, which we saw as our generations decade. You got 16 points for finishing first in the world all the way through to 1 point for the sixteenth and we added up the ten years and invited the top 12 guys who there's, it's a really strong line-up and now we want to expand it a little bit and embrace some of our, some of the same people from the same generation who weren't in the top 12 then or top 16 then but would be today because they stayed with this surfing while other guys have sort of faded away from it. But uh, it's all piss in the fan until you make it happen, isn't it? (laughs)
RC-J: Thank you Barton...So one last question Barton. What is Hawaiian Soul Surfing mean to you?
BL: That's a good question isn't it, um, I think...
RC-J: Throwing this microphone (laughs)
BL: (laughs) You know, George Downing took me one day I was here in the summer and I was staying in town and there wasn't much surf around and George Downing, I was riding their boards at the time, and George said, “I'm coming to get you, we're going to surf some mals and we drove down to Waikiki and it was dead set nearly dark and we paddled out and we surfed the last half-hour of dark and then surfed into the moonlight for another hour or so and then there was all these little things going on around that he was pointing out and highlighting and it was like, and at the end of it he said, “you had to see that”. And to me that's always been the memory that I have and was, it's just the whole way he did everything. It was just, it felt like those old beach boy days you know when they were hanging out on the beaches, doing their thing you know, and he sort of let me in and showed me that for the evening, for the afternoon and that was, that was insane. But that was what it sort of, especially as an Australian, it's got such a rich culture you know, and the whole surfing thing is what you grow up embracing that, and its, that' just Hawaii, isn't it? |
