“Tom Curren connected his love of surfing to his love of music.” Photo: Joseph Aguirre
Curren connected surfing to his love of music, grown in his free time not riding a surfboard.
Taking everything the wave – his canvas – offers him, the artist begins his masterpiece. Smooth and artful are his motions, his surfboard the artist’s brush, flirting with a roaring freight-train of water, carving turns and weaving through barrels, charging down the line, nothing left to waste. A wave ridden to perfection. A wave mastered.
Or for the literary crowd, poetry in motion.
Many people forget, if they even knew to begin with, due to Kelly Slater’s eleven-years-and-counting reign atop the surfing world, that Australians such as Mark Richards, Tom Carroll and Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew ruled surfing in the ’70s and ’80s – until a soulful Santa Barbaran named Tom Curren entered the scene and became the first modern American surfing champion and icon the sport had seen.
One does not typically read about Curren without the words “enigma” or “genius” mentioned. He remains relatively private in a sport clamoring for its stars to live in the public eye. Known the world over, tales exist of Curren arriving to events without a quiver, then outgunning the competition on boards he either bought at local shops or borrowed from shapers, at times on unmarked boards, free of sponsor’s stickers. He is genuine, soft-spoken, unassuming and, as a steady presence in professional surfing for over 30 years, remains widely admired. A man of such few words who lets his surfing, and later, his music, speak for him.
Countless surfers tirelessly attempt to imitate his style. His style and power on a wave are a benchmark for today’s surfers. He’s also a man of the people, an inspiration to thousands worldwide.
Throughout his vaunted career, Curren connected surfing to his love of music, grown in his free time not riding a surfboard.
“Well, in the culture of surfing,” Curren says, by phone on an August afternoon from New York City, where he will continue touring behind his latest album In Plain View, “we always had surf movies, and they were backed up with a soundtrack, and I guess that’s one way to look at it. That rhythmic part of it may have something to do with it.”
Thomas Roland Curren was born in Santa Barbara, California, in July 1964. He was the eldest of three children of legendary big wave pioneer Pat Curren and wife Jeanine and grew up with famous right-hand pointbreaks such as Rincon and Sandspit at his disposal. He was given a surfboard from his father, first surfing on a trip to Oahu at the age of six. Up until his early teens, Curren spent more time skateboarding, yet once the ocean began calling, it wasn’t long before he spent more and more time learning to master waves.
Curren, 49, also spent his teenage years shaping his musical skills. He took up the drums in his early teens, playing along to records. Soon after, he started learning the guitar at around 14, following with the bass, ukulele and mandolin.
While his musical career would not get under way until decades later, Curren’s early wave-riding genius was unprecedented. Through the late 70’s into the early 80’s, Curren racked up the hardware; winning the 1978 Boy’s U14 Western Surfing Association title, the 1979 Boy’s National Champion title, 1980 World Amateur National Championship, and the 1982 Amateur Men’s title. The natural-footer stormed through the NSSA, handily winning event after event, leaving only the ASP World Tour left to conquer.
In the early ’80s, Curren took the next step, joining the pro tour alongside Carroll, Mark Occhilupo, Martin Potter, and Gary Elkerton. Winning his debut event (the 1982 Stubbies Pro at Trestles), and the first tour event he entered as a pro (the 1982 Marui Pro in Japan), the mellowness Curren kept on land was eclipsed only by his competitive drive in the water. Curren won early and often in the mid-’80s, taking his first two world titles consecutively, in 1985 and 1986.
He also found a nemesis in the Australian hellman Mark Occhilupo. Curren’s legendary bouts with Occy became one of surfing’s first and most heated rivalries, years before Slater and Andy Irons would go head to head. The heats of Curren versus Occy at the OP Pro finals in Huntington and the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach semis – where Curren claimed his first world title in 1985 – inspired the “Clash Of The Icons” events, where the two faced one another in expression session heats at Jeffreys Bay in 2009 and at Bells in 2010.
In the late ’80s, Curren left pro surfing with two world titles and settled near the seaside town of Biarritz, off the Basque coast of France, with his first wife Marie and their children–daughter Lee-Ann and son Nathan.
