Taj Burrow remembers his favourite Andy Irons video part

Words by Elliot Struck

November 2, 2010 was the day that the world lost one of its greatest ever surfers, Andy Irons. The man was an ineffable cocktail of kindness and fury, looseness and focus, power and finesse. He brought the thunder to surfing like few ever could. We still miss him.

But we remember him, too. And we remember his greatness. A life lived so colourfully has left us with many things to fondly recall. And for many, the most accessible and palpable of those recollections are his string of video parts. To mark the day Andy departed, we asked Taj Burrow to remember his favourite-ever Andy Irons video part. We’re pretty sure he isn’t alone in saying Andy’s section from Taylor Steele’s Momentum: Under The Influence was one of the finest imprints ever left on a VHS tape…

(watch Andy’s part below)

Stab: What makes this part so great?
Taj: It’s equally as awesome now as it was in 2001. It’s just sick, I think the song really suits Andy’s approach to waves, just raw, aggressive, just manhandling big waves and big turns. I just love it, it’s a really sick section. It’s right about the time that Andy and I were super competitive. And that was competitive not only in surfing contests, but also in video parts. I remember when this thing came out, it just dropped me. I was like, “fuck, this guy is just too gnarly.” It really shook me up, I remember it clearly. I got the same feeling again watching it just then. And especially the bit at the end, where he’s pumping through Kanduis lefts, no hands, he looks so good in the tube. I was freaked out by it at the time.

Any waves in particular that impressed on you? It was mainly that Kanduis stuff, but he’s getting barreled and doing huge wraps at HT’s, there’s a few waves at Pipe, and even a couple of drainpipes at Burleigh Heads, right when the song ramps up. It’s mostly just how big and powerful his turns are. There’s a couple of backside turns in there where he just bangs it so hard. It’s just that kind of surfing that can’t really ever date, because if you’re going to hit a wave that hard… it can’t be be hit any harder, so it becomes timeless. It’s such raw surfing, it never gets old.

Talk about his backside turns more. I don’t know if he really hangs them out, but he just hits it so hard. There’s a couple of different ways to do a backside finner, and there’s definitely a cheater way, which a lot of guys do these days where it’s almost like a flicky chop hop out of the lip, you just kick your fins out and spin into reverse. But Andy wouldn’t ever dare do one of those. His backside turns were more just so angry and powerful, pushing his board through the lip so hard that his fins would just come out. It’s not like he was avoiding the lip and kicking the tail out.

Instead of “remember that video part?”, now we say, “remember that clip?” I was speaking to a few guys about this recently. You don’t get the same video focus that you used to because we’re so flooded with two-minute clips, instead of that VHS you watch from start to finish. But that makes Andy’s Momentum section even more special. Everyone took notice of that movie and Andy was The Man at the time, so it’s one of those sections that you just remember. The surfing, the song… it’s just not something you forget easily.

Watch the full movie, plus hundreds more (including old favs like this) over at Garage Entertainment.