Eddie Vedder on Kelly Slater

Kel­ly Slater…A lot has been said. Kel­ly this. Kel­ly that. Surf films, mag­a­zines. Life-size posters in every surf shop. Eleven-time world champ, the ulti­mate GOAT. Thir­ty-plus years of being the most vis­i­ble icon in the his­to­ry of the sacred sport. And with all that… the press and admi­ra­tion, the impact and inspi­ra­tion, the titles and trophies…he is still underrated.

To quan­ti­fy his influ­ence, it’s been said that he is the Michael Jor­dan of surf­ing. No offense to M. J., but look­ing at Slater’s lev­el of dom­i­nance through­out his career, it’s unpar­al­leled. Michael Jor­dan is actu­al­ly the Kel­ly Slater of basketball.

Here’s the thing — Kel­ly is different…bit of a freak. I’m not speak­ing deroga­to­ri­ly. Every­one who knows him has thought it, said it, been mar­veled by it. And just when you may think for a sec­ond that he is actu­al­ly pret­ty nor­mal, he will astound you with some act of freakishness.

It’s just the way he is. He’s a freak. Super­f­reak. A freak of nature… And, even more poignant, a freak with nature. Nine­ty sec­onds left in the heat, he’s down by sev­en or more points. There has been a lull, not a wave in sight. Thir­ty sec­onds left and sud­den­ly a bit of cor­duroy shows itself upon the hori­zon. Ten sec­onds left, a peak begins to form, and just before the horn blows, K. takes off on a late take-off wave that came from absolute­ly nowhere.

And just when you think you’re wit­ness­ing a mir­a­cle, this wall jacks up and clos­es out on him, and way too deep, he dis­ap­pears… And as you’re watch­ing the seem­ing­ly unrid­den wave work towards shore, bounc­ing fif­teen-foot white­wash towards the sky and think­ing about what could have been…he comes shoot­ing out of the bar­rel with the speed of a human can­non­ball. The roar on the beach erupts out of shock and dis­may, minds hav­ing just been blown like the spit out of the dog­gy-door behind him. Luck, coin­ci­dence, wave-whisperer?

The fact that this dra­ma has played out on more than a few occa­sions, you’d have to give some cred­it to some inter­nal knowl­edge, a con­nec­tion with the ocean and even a cer­tain break. Or some insane kar­ma. Or…that he’s a freak. A cou­ple sto­ries… His com­pet­i­tive nature. There was a time when Kel­ly would make an annu­al vis­it to this secret spot I used to hide out in, a lit­tle-known cor­ner of the plan­et. If you were feel­ing reclu­sive, this place was an iso­lat­ed dream. A per­fect spot to surf, write, play, drink, go deep in con­ver­sa­tion, or do noth­ing at all. Dur­ing one of my stays in this beach­side shack, I would take breaks from the writ­ing and throw some darts. I got pret­ty good.

At some point in Kelly’s vis­it, I asked if he was up for a game. It became appar­ent rather quick­ly that this dart­board thing was per­haps the one thing he had no tal­ent for. I was drilling the board quite pro­fi­cient­ly and get­ting some big num­bers, and he was send­ing more darts into the sid­ing than the cork. I start­ed feel­ing kind of ter­ri­ble. Here’s my friend, trav­eled to get here, and now I’m pret­ty much crush­ing him… So I back off a bit, and he gets a few in. At least it’s not embar­rass­ing. We get to his last turn, and he’s got three more darts…and I’m up by eleven. The guy who just start­ed hit­ting the board is gonna have to hit three bullseyes to win. Not real­ly pos­si­ble. Ain’t happening.

But odd­ly the first one goes in. It was def­i­nite­ly a sur­prise— high­ly unlike­ly. And obvi­ous­ly lucky. But then the sec­ond throw. Anoth­er bulls. WTF? How does that hap­pen? I’m, like, too stunned to say any­thing smart-ass as he aims his final dart into a tiny piece of crowd­ed real estate and, of course, shock­ing­ly threads the nee­dle, lands three bulls, twelve points, takes the game. I think his under­stat­ed quote, deliv­ered with wide eyes and ever so slight a smile, was, ​“Wow, crazy.” Um, yeah…crazy. He’s a freak.

Read Eddie’s full intro­duc­tion in Kel­ly Slater: A Life of Waves, avail­able now.

Buy your copy of Huck 81 here.

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