Anthony Pancia of Tracks magazine recorded this phone conversation with Brock Little two weeks before Little died, in late 2015, of cancer.

Hey, did you watch Kelly win Pipe? [Kelly Slater won the Volcom Pipe Pro a day prior]

No, I wish, but I’m actually in the hospital playing with my cancer. I would’ve loved to watch Kelly win Pipe; we’ve been hanging lately, so it would’ve been really fun to see him win

It’s up in the air. The chemo I had wasn’t really going perfectly, so right now I’m in the hospital just waiting. I look like shit because of the chemo, it’s yuk. But hey, what’s up? What did you want to talk about?

How did you come to be a big wave surfer? From what I recall, your parents grow flowers or something?

Sort of. They’re both teachers, so they moved to Hawaii when I was four for work. My mom was a speech teacher. My dad got a job at Punahou High School, which is where Barack Obama went, and my dad was teaching when Barack went through. We ended up staying for the rest of our lives.

I recall a story about you falling or being dropped in the water or something similar at a young age?

Yeah, I don’t know is even true or not, but we were in San Francisco on the beach somewhere, and the water was freezing. My mom and dad say I was playing along the water line, and there was a big surge, and I fricking went up and down and out in this freezing cold water, and when I came up I was laughing instead of crying and freaking out. I was three years old, and don't remember a thing, so who knows if the story is true. My parents have been telling it forever though.

Your introduction to big waves, how did that happen?

Ken Bradshaw was making me boards at the time, and I’d say he did a little bit of introducing. But we were all such rugrats that nobody wanted to take us out to Waimea. This was 1983, the big El Nino year. Every day I'd come home from school and it was 15- or 20-feet, and I'd just be going, “Fuck, I need to go surfing! I want to go surfing!” I was about 14 or 15, and finally I just went, “Fuck it” and borrowed a board off a friend, and went out and surfed Waimea.

I paddled out on a 7’8” single fin, four-inches thick, no leash plug. It wasn’t gigantic Waimea by any means, but at the time I was a string bean; maybe 125 pounds. It wasn't that big of a deal. I paddled out and thought, “I can do this.” Caught one on the shoulder, caught a couple more. It wasn't like a light went on in my head. I wasn't thinking, "I'm going to spend the rest of my life riding big waves, and it'll be the best thing ever!" it was just, "Yeah, I can do it, and that’s cool." That was pretty much it.

The crew you were running with at the time, was anyone else doing it?

Jason Majors, kind of. I wasn’t really running with Jason, though. He was already 150 pounds and shaving, too. I didn’t have a fucking hair under my arms or pubes or anything. It wasn’t a rivalry or anything between us. We were just two groms out there at a pretty young age. Except, like I say, one of the groms was pubeless, the other one had a deep voice and a beard.

So after that first time, you were out there a lot?

Yeah, because of the El Nino. It’s funny you bring that up, I was just thinking about it. That first year I could go surf Waimea almost every single day, fucking all the time, and that’s what made me a good big-wave surfer. Just being that age, and being able to paddle out to Waimea every day and have it be 15-foot. It’s the same thing that makes anybody a good surfer, just a lot of practice. There are seasons that go by and you maybe get one or two Waimea swells. That year we had so many, one after the other. I got so much practice at such a young age.

You were out there with Bradshaw, Ace Cool and Roger Erikson. What sort of influences did those guys have

They were all larger than life, I was just a little kid and they were men already, they all had at least a decade on me, so I always looked up at them as the elder statesmen—who I had no problem surfing better than (laughs).

Roger was crazy. Roger always had a screw loose. (Pauses to think.) Fuck, he had a set of nuts on him, you know. Roger had just huge balls. At some point I had the kind of balls Roger had, but it was different. Not a great surfer, but you never really knew what he was going to do. Foo and Bradshaw could ride a big wave well, but Roger would just turn around and go for it when nobody else would. But the gnarliest guy of that era was Darrick Doerner. Darrick was next level. He could surf and he had balls of steel. I don’t want Darrick to ever be the forgotten guy of that era.

And absolutely doing it for no money I imagine?

Growing up in Australia, you would occasionally hear of this guy Darrick Doerner now and then, if you were lucky, see a photo of him. What was he like to surf with, and be around?

He’s mysterious to me even today (laughs). I mean if he calls it’s like, "Oh, here we go, here’s Double-D." A great human being, but an odd human being too, like a lot of big wave surfers are. Roger was too. Roger had some weird Vietnam thing, he was in the war, he had some weird trips going. For me, with Darrick, it was always great to see him, but always a little uncomfortable too, if that makes any sense.

Ace Cool was different. Ace wasn’t a very good surfer; he couldn’t surf, really. He could talk, though. There’s a big difference between catching a wave and talking about catching a wave. you know? Ace never caught the kind of waves Roger and Darrick did. But he was eager to please and had a big heart. Ace was a great guy. (Note: Ace Cool had disappeared while surfing Waimea a month before this interview, and was presumed dead. His body was never found.)

Did any of those older guys pass on hints and tips on how to surf Waimea?

No. None of them were really into giving people tips. I was riding way smaller boards than all of them, and they'd laugh at that. But, I mean, we all got along. It was a fucking family you know? Twenty-foot Waimea, and it was only a few of us out, just that family. There were no cameras a lot of those days, it was just for the love of the wave, which turned in to a love of each other, because you’re all having this adventure together.

If must seem ridiculously crowded to you now.

Yeah, but not really. Not on the big days. You want to surf big Waimea? Get your ass out there buddy, you might die trying, but you'll have all the space you need. The idea of it being too crowded on the big days is a hoax.

Was it a conscious decision to step away or did your recent health stuff lead to it?

(Long pause followed by long exhale) It was never a conscious decision, and I would probably still be out there today if I didn’t fucking have cancer. Last year it didn’t really get really big or to the point where I felt like paddling out. The year before, when I did surf it, it was fun to paddle out and catch a wave or two. I remember it was getting dark when I got out there, and—I don't know, it wasn’t a big deal. That being said, if I was perfectly healthy I wouldn’t have surfed it on either of the big days we just had recently. Fuck that, when it’s closeout Waimea, it’s just dangerous and scary. The younger me wanted to, but not anymore.

When you wanted to surf those closeout days, do you recall what it felt like to see those fuckers coming from miles away?

Yup, yup. I remember feeling light-footed, just sitting inside the bowl, watching the set come in, going, "Okay, here we go, baby!" Just all la-di-dah, and feeling cozy. There was a time when I was happy and cozy sitting inside there. I definitely had that, definitely. Fearless and happy. But Waimea takes it out of you, slowly but surely, over the years. I had a couple of near-drownings, a couple times I had to swim around the Bay.

It was more dangerous back then, in some ways.

I never had a jet ski come pluck me out and bring me back in. I never had an inflatable vest. So yeah, it's a whole different deal now. (Pause) Actually, maybe not that different. On the closeout days, those guys are still sitting out there by themselves, and it's still radical and heavy. But they're lucky to have those backups, the vest and the jet ski.

Every heavy hitter I've talked to, like Shane Dorian, and Ross Williams, and Slater, they all point to you as their biggest influence when it comes to big waves. How do you see your legacy

(Another long pause) Certain guys were better than me before and after. But I was one of the best guys, if not the best guy, during the late eighties and early nineties. I’ll take that. I’ll yell it out loud. I know I was the best guy, and I have no fucking problem with that. Then Shane Dorian came around, and suddenly Noah Johnson was charging a little bit harder than me. But if my little sidenote in history is, "He was the best guy in the late eighties and early nineties," well, hey, I love it. I’m fucking stoked. It was no more or no less than that.

But to know the influence you had on Shane Dorian and Kelly—that must be a bonus, hey?

Oh yeah, yeah. I love them giving me props. They saw my attitude and maybe learned a little bit from me. But they had it in their hearts. You can’t teach somebody big-wave riding. Shane Dorian, people like that, you don’t really teach them a thing. It's nice that they include me in the conversation, but those guys all would have been good with or without me.

I don’t know how much you want to talk about what’s going on health-wise, but fuck man, when do you find out, how did that all go down?

Ahh, I had a sore belly and ignored it for months and finally went in to check it. I should have gone in months ago. There's a massive tumor in my liver, there’s a massive tumor in my leg and there’s a bunch of spot tumors in my leg there’s a bunch of tumors in my lungs, there’s a bunch in my bone marrow, there’s just fucking cancer everywhere.

Leland Dao, the doctor who does a lot of work for the world tour, he knew it first. I finally broke down and went in to see him because I was bent over in a pain. Leeland felt my stomach, looked at me, and it knew it wasn't good. The next morning I went up to Wahiawa and got a cat scan. They wouldn't show me the results, cause it has to go to the doctor first, they were freaking out, I could just tell. So I drove back to see Leland, and he just kind of looked at me and said, "There’s a bunch of tumors, but the one in your liver is really, really big and it doesn’t look good. He went on for a while, and I remember looking at him and saying, "So Leland, you’re telling me I'm going to die." And he said, ‘There’s always radiation," but the way he said it was so fucking wrong. I knew right there I was in deep shit.

The public support for you has been incredible.

It's overwhelming. At the end of the day, I'm thinking, "Wow, it’s amazing people love me that much," because I definitely wasn’t an angel. I mean, I wasn’t a bad human being, but I wasn’t an angel, so the support I'm getting is overwhelming. Some of the things people have written about me—fuck yeah, it’s touching.

I’m getting mixed signals from my doctor here in Hawaii. He’s saying, "Maybe we should go to the Mainland and try this and try that," but the fucking truth is, I’m not going to go to the Mainland for treatment. I’ve seen everyone do it, from Rell Sunn to Buttons to Kalani Foster. They all went to the Mainland, and they all come back as sick as ever. People say, "Do everything you can, fight to the end," and all that shit, but fuck it, you know? Fucking chemo, man. I did it already. I went from being an okay-looking human being to a fucking ghost, not because of cancer but because of the chemo, and if I do more chemo, I’ll just turn into even more of a ghost. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens.

[Photos: Don King, Jeremiah Klein, Buzzy Kerbox]

Brock Little (2015)

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