Writer: Chris Ahrens | Photography: PK
In the same way that some scrawny kid who is slapped down repeatedly for his milk money may grow up to turn his musical rage against society, Jack Johnson draws from the well of fond family, ocean-oriented memories to create cool waves of sound. Maybe that’s why Jack’s music seems so familiar to surfers internationally, and why it has become a sort of unofficial soundtrack for the lives of us who live in the water. His rhythms influence the way that we surf, think and raise our children. All for the better.
    First there was Jeff Johnson, waterman, North Shore local. Then there was a family of excellent surfers, among them a boy named Jack who was well on his way to becoming a Pipeline legend by his early teens. Next came a fall on the way up, a brutal wipeout after the boy’s favorite surf spot betrayed him during his debut performance at the Pipe Masters, leaving him with a hundred-plus stitches and time on his hands. Turning the lens outward, new standards were set in the then artistically challenged surf film business. Now, Jack Johnson is a rising musical star, his melodies and lyrics rippling out beyond the coast. You don’t have to surf to appreciate his music, but if you do it just might take you deeper into some of those down the line Rincon walls and Pipeline death drops.
    It’s a sunny day at La Jolla Shores and Jack makes his way from the car of his longtime friend, Peter King (PK), toward tiny surf. On the lawn, Jack picks up a discarded beer bottle. With no trashcan nearby, he retains the dead Bud as a carload of young college women drive by for a second look, honking, waving and screaming “Jack, Jack.” He politely waves back, and then puts the beer bottle into the trunk of PK’s vehicle, lamenting “I’m standing here with a beer in my hand.”
    The incident says a lot about the conscience that drives the man. Unlike many of his hedonistic peers, he is aware of the power that music has over people, and he, apparently, doesn’t want to give them the wrong impression. Still, he spends less time grooming his image than any musician I’ve ever seen. No head fake, hand jive, plastic smile. As far as I can see, it’s all him. PK confirms the observation, saying, “People sometimes hope to get you to like them by acting humble, but Jack is exactly the way he seems.”
    Exactly the way he seems— that’s good, because he seems to posses the components for a good interview—talent, intelligence, good heartedness, will power and humility. As with most truly humble people, however, Johnson does not see himself that way. He certainly must realize that he is good-hearted. Here he is, just three hours from packing 13,000 fans into a UCSD stadium for his concert, taking time with a magazine that he first heard of two days ago. He has a lot to say, and he says it in a manner that makes you feel that you’re in the backyard with your cousin, reading fairytales with a flashlight. It’s easy to picture him strumming on a wooden porch while somebody fires up the grill and his wife Kim chases her in-law’s children over the wet grass, trying to avoid the surfboards scattered everywhere.
    As a musician, Jack Johnson is a guitar playing everyman, a pensive, quiet Springsteen, if Bruce were one of the North Shore’s top tuberiders. Believers take note: You can learn something about godliness from Jack.

Risen Magazine: Are you recognized more than is comfortable these days?
Jack Johnson: (Laughing) I was in France with The Surfers (the now defunct band consisting of Peter king, Kelly Slater and Rob Machado). I was at the airport with Kelly when all these little girls started screaming “Kelly, PK, over here.” I realized that they thought that I was Peter, and I started signing autographs as him.
Peter King: I had the same thing happen where people were asking me for autographs, thinking that I was Jack. We do kind of look alike, you know? When Jack walked in I told them, ‘He’s my brother, my roadie.’ They looked at Jack and said, ‘That’s so cool, you get to roadie for Jack.’ They still thought that I was him. (Laughter)

At this point, Jack excuses himself for a brief surf session in the one to two foot waves that lap near shore. On the beach, he goes completely unnoticed. He could be any university senior on a break from his studies, or, even more likely, a carpenter out to wash the week’s sawdust from his soul. Unless it’s Halloween, it’s nearly impossible to visualize him with a mink coat or leopard trunks, like the ones that PK’s wearing.
    PK grabs Risen staff photographer Susan Hatchet’s camera valued at a few thousand dollars, and walks into the water after Jack, who, even in these conditions, does maneuvers that Chris Isaak only dreams of—no-paddle takeoffs, fin-firsts, noserides. While less than spectacular, he, nonetheless, cuts some nice lines on the borrowed 9’4” Bessell, showing an understanding of longboarding while not quite having a mastery of it. PK is riding his own surfboard like a skimboard, running it into the shorebreak and spinning 360s in the micro waves. An uninformed observer might make the same schoolgirl mistake that was made in France. Introverts are usually not musical stars.

PK: Jack doesn’t speak much, and when he does it’s usually in the form of a good song. He doesn’t say anything extra, and his surfing reflects that—clean lines, in the tube, radical, understated and creative. That comes through with pretty much everything, except for fashion. (Laughter)

RM: Did your injury at Pipe help to get you into music?
JJ: I think so. Before that I was surfing every day, and just playing guitar here and there. I really needed something else to keep my mind off of being out of the water for two months. I’d sit on the front porch watching all my friends surf Pipeline. I had a hundred stitches on my forehead and was missing my front teeth. I had three layers of stitches on my lip and one on my gums. I was pretty messed up. When I went back into the water, surfing after two months, I had been focusing on music like I had once been on surfing, and I was more inspired after that. The more you learn the more you want to learn.

RM: Did the rhythm of Pipeline itself have anything to do with the development of your music?
JJ: Not so much the rhythm of Pipeline, but waves in general. Music is a little more mathematical, where surfing is more about flowing with the rhythm of the wave. When you want to get speed on a wave you hav