John Peck, the surfer who is generally thought to be the first regular-footer to ride the barrel at Pipe, has died. He was 81 years old.
Peck was an interesting character with an outsized effect on surfing. He was among the first to use what’s now commonly referred to as pig-dogging.
“Archival surf movies feature a number of instances in which surfers, riding backside, find themselves momentarily ‘locked in’ as the curl peels over their shoulder,” wrote Sam George in a piece called The Origins of the Pig Dog. “In fact, as far back as 1961 filmmaker Bruce Brown captured shaky imagery of test pilot Phil Edwards flirting dangerously close to the barrel on his backhand on what is considered the first ‘real’ wave ever ridden at the ‘Banzai Pipeline.’ But it wasn’t until the next year, on New Year’s Day, 1963, to be exact, that the first deliberate attempt was made to ride in the tube backside. John Peck, a talented 18-year-old mainland transplant raised in Hawaii, attacked the Pipeline tube with a startling prescient approach: crouching and grabbing the outside rail during the drop, literally pulling his heavy longboard tighter into the curl.”
Photos from that session were latched onto by a handful of surfers who saw the usefulness of pig-dogging, most notably Herbie Fletcher, who began to perfect the art. Now, it’s used by all the best barrel riders.
Peck was born in 1944 in Los Angeles and began surfing as a teen. When he was 15, his family moved to Waikiki, where Peck began his rise to legend status. Surf culture as we know it was still relatively new back then, and surfers were often thought of as beach-bum burnouts like Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. As the years passed, Peck honed his skills in the water, but he wasn’t a well-known figure in surfing until 1963 when his pig-dog maneuver shot him into the public eye.
“By his mid-20s, he stood among the best surfers on the planet and was one of the early pioneers at Pipeline,” wrote Cyrus Sutton in a tribute to Peck. “John worked hard to overcome his desire to be seen in his ability to dance with nature and prevail, and use his intensity to shake people out of their trauma and complacency to see the world with eyes of joy. Cheers to the grand eternal tube we call time: thanks for your grin and always striving toward impeccable service. See you beyond the breakers, beyond the veil, in the endless dancing sea, brother.”
In 2016, when Sutton was running Korduroy.TV, Peck hosted an episode of a series called Health Nuts. In the years leading up to that, Peck dabbled in the party lifestyle, but gave up drugs and alcohol somewhere around the mid-’80s.
“Peck had meanwhile set out on a lengthy course of alcohol and drug abuse,” the Encyclopedia of Surfing’s Matt Warshaw wrote, “including a seven-year LSD phase beginning in 1965.”
He had slowed down his surfing considerably in the ’80s, but by the early 1990s he was back in the water on a regular basis. He was also a yogi of some repute, and claimed that he could levitate, according to Warshaw’s EOS. He was a spiritual man who found much comfort in the ocean.
“Our mother is Nature on a tangible level,” Peck told Jack Coleman for a short film released in April. “Feeling her love — the divine mother that is creating everything out of nothing — feeling her love that they call the holy spirit. Between her and the father that is creating all of creation… that to me is the ultimate natural high.”
John Peck played a leading role in what surfing has become, and for that we can’t thank him enough. Here’s to you, John. Thanks for everything you did.