A surfing odyssey with Terry Nails

By Nick McGregor

If you’ve ever perused the Surf Station’s longboard section, you’ve probably met Terry Nails. Tattooed, diminutive, and looking more like a crusty punk-rock veteran than a waverider, Nails stands out among the mostly young (and mostly blonde) set working the surf shop register. But dig a little deeper into TN’s past and you’ll find this legend’s life coincides with several historical high watermarks: San Francisco circa 1967, skateboarding’s forgotten downhill slalom days, the groundbreaking Dogtown and Z-Boys surf/skate era of the early 1980s. Terry’s also manned the bass for musicians as varied as Ozzy Osbourne, The Pointer Sisters, and Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols – and he rides a customized 1945 Harley Davidson to his Monday night gig hosting “The Big Surf Show” on Flagler Radio. Pull up a seat, kiddies, because Drift sat down with Terry Nails to receive the best kind of American history lesson: honest, unassuming, and straight from the gut of rock ‘n’ roll, skateboarding, and surfing.

Drift: How and when did you start surfing?

Terry Nails: I lived in Las Vegas as a kid, and I used to get an allowance and buy hot rod magazines, because the guy that lived down the street from us owned a drag strip. Then in the early ‘60s, I saw the first or second issue of Surfer Magazine, and I bought it and got hooked. I had been skateboarding already, sort of – actually I had a scooter where the handle fell off, and I kept riding it.

D: What year are we talking here? This is around the beginning of skateboarding, right?

TN: Yeah, this was probably 1959. I started surfing in 1962; my dad was a professional jazz musician with the Four Freshmen, and he toured around California a lot. We went with him one time to Disneyland, and while we were down at Newport in Orange County, I tried to surf The Wedge [laughs].

D: On a 10-foot longboard?

TN: On a 10-foot Gordie longboard, exactly. I almost died, but I remember at one point having this horrendous wipeout, hitting a girl, and coming up with my foot tangled in the top of her bathing suit. It was really bizarre, but that was it: I was into surfing.

D: Where else did you surf growing up?

TN: Newport, San Diego, Windansea, or wherever we could get to. Then I ended up in Northern California in 1967. I did more skating than surfing there, though, because the water was so cold. But in San Francisco at the time, I was one of the only runaway kids living in the Haight-Ashbury who still surfed.

D: Did you start playing music there?

TN: I started when I was 10, I guess. I wanted to be a drummer, but then I realized it took far too much energy, so I started playing guitar. My brother and I got this Dan-Electro Silvertone with the amp in the case, and it just kind of took off from there. My little brother was actually in a band – he was the lead singer when he was like 10 or 11 years old – and when Cream came through town in probably 1966 or 1967 my little brother’s band opened for them. I thought that was pretty interesting.

D: How did you end up falling in with Janis Joplin and Big Brother And The Holding Company?

TN: I did equipment for ‘em, but I was just a kid. In 1967 I was 15 years old, so I sort of volunteered. I worked for Grateful Dead some and Big Brother mostly, because I lived across the street from James Gurley, one of Big Brother’s guitar players.

[FOR THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW, PICK UP THIS MONTH’S ISSUE OF DRIFT]