To be honest, I didn’t really want to be there, but you can’t say no to a heartfelt request from the biggest-hearted of all Big Kahunas, the greatest surf cinematographer of his generation, and in recent times when Jack McCoy said, “Jump!” all I could ask was, “How high?”
So I was at Nambour for the last picture show on Saturday 24 May, even though my instinct was to stay away.
Jack and I had been helping each other out in different ways for 50 years or more, probably since he pulled up on his bike at my losmen in Kuta Beach in 1975, interrupting my banana and tea breakfast by hollering, “Man, have I got a scoop for you!”
I was the new editor of Tracks, and Jack and Dick Hoole, his partner in Propeller Productions, were our Bali correspondents. The scoop was that Jack had secured an exclusive interview with the legendary Miki Dora, the black knight of Malibu. Several of us who frequented dry-season Bali in those halcyon days knew that Dora was in town – I’d spied him lurking in the lineup at Kuta Reef just a couple of days before – but Dora talk? Yeah, nah.
However, after only a year and a bit of our acquaintance I already knew the persuasive power of Big Jack, so I grabbed my tape recorder and jumped on the back of his bike, bound for the Legian Beach Hotel.
But Dora flat out refused to do an on-record interview or be photographed, so we lounged around while he held court from his bed for more than an hour, all off the record, of course, but very entertaining. Then I got Jack to drop me at the cane juice bar in Kuta where I wrote down everything I could recall of the conversation. We published “A Conversation with Miki Dora” in Tracks a couple of months later and Dora didn’t speak to me for 20 years.
Roll on half a century and Jack calls to tell me he’s getting back on the road with a remastered Blue Horizon (one of his true gems) starting in the west and then heading east before finishing here, in my backyard. Could I help out with intros and the Q & A? Well of course I could, but I’m a little freaked out and I’ll tell you why.
Last year Jack started his Occumentary tour in Noosa and he looked drained from the start. Doing a cross-country, four-wall tour is no picnic for anyone but when you are in your late 70s and, regardless of remissions, you are terminally ill, this could only end in tears, you’d think, especially after a hard month on the road.
As the tour rolled on I could tell from social media posts that this 20-year-old epic surf flick featuring two of the most exciting surfers I’ve been privileged to watch was winning new hearts and minds, almost entirely due to the enigmatic personality and enduring showmanship of Jack McCoy. But in the group shots and selfies Jack looked like crap.
We were in touch every couple of days. I told him, don’t wear yourself out before you get here. It was a ridiculous warning. The damage had been done, even though it wasn’t just The Jack Show. Son-in-law Luke was magnificent in seeing every problem before it was visible, and the surf tribe, led by David Rastovich on most dates, provided a foil for Jack and added lustre to the cluster.
And now we’re on countdown to final stop Nambour. Jack has called a tech check an hour before showtime, but of course he’s not there, so I grab a wine from the bar and watch him get wheeled in, looking even worse than the Insta pix. I feel like crying but I pull myself together and our support crew convenes inside Cinema 1. In addition to Jack and Luke, it’s me and Derek Hynd on the mics and Tom and Margie Wegener running the merch.
While Jack gets settled, Luke tells me and Derek: “If he needs to catch his breath or has a coughing fit, just fill the space, he’ll interrupt when he can speak again.” Jack and I have a moment, a heart-to-heart hug, then he pulls a bottle of Shiraz out of his pack and we slurp a toast to good times. He presents me with a shot of Rasta in the Ments, signed “For me mate Phil”, then rummages again and produces an original Duke Kahanamoku calling card, reproduced on cardboard. He rasps, “Don’t write about this, it’s just between you and me.” But under the circumstances I’m sure he’ll forgive me.
It takes three of us to get Jack up the six steps to the stage and into a chair, where he slumps while shaking his mic impatiently. Showtime.
Against all odds, it’s a wonderful show. The flick hasn’t aged, even if its maker has, and Jack’s extraordinary ability to render the corniest old showbiz tricks new and exciting still works a treat, while Derek’s understated profundity, punctuated by whip-smart humour, adds another dimension.
In the Q & A Noosa’s favourite 10-year-old surf grom, Hunter Williams, asks a question which is actually a heartfelt vote of thanks to Jack for his eternal aloha spirit and for making a surfing life so real and exciting.
Jack may have tears in his eyes as he responds:“I don’t do this for money, you know, but what you’ve just said is worth more to me than a room full of gold bars.” There’s not a dry eye in the house.
I got a call from Jack the next day and couldn’t take it. I made it my mission to get back to him the next day, but when I woke and was checking socials, a new post began: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that we share the passing …”
Just like that. Drove home to Scott’s Head, put his head down on the pillow at his beloved farm and lights out. Wish I’d returned that call, but I think I know what he would have said: “Alohaaa, and thanks for coming.” And Jack’s legacy is such that he’ll never really be gone.
Love you, brother.
This tribute appeared in slightly different form at tracksmag.com.au
