Greg Noll lived life big – beefy in stature enough to be dubbed “Da Bull” – charging building-sized waves few others would dare and becoming an early board-building innovator who helped shape the surf industry into what it is today.
Noll, who was raised on South Bay beaches and whose influence reached worldwide, died on Monday, June 28. He was 84.
“It’s a major loss for the surfing industry. He was such a dynamic character,” said Dennis Jarvis, owner of Spyder Surfboards. “He was such a legend.”
The news of Noll’s passing was shared by his son, Jed, on social media, noting that Noll died of natural causes and inviting friends and family to celebrate his life by sharing stories and photos.
Noll was part of the inaugural group honored at the Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame when it was created in 2003. He was also inducted into the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in 1996 and the Surfers’ Hall of Fame in 2006. He was featured in the 2004 surf documentary “Riding Giants.”
Noll was born in San Diego in 1937, moving to Manhattan Beach with his mother at age 6 after his parents split. He’d spend days at the beach, surfing by age 10 and earning money cutting bait for fisherman at the Manhattan Beach Pier, according to a past article in the Daily Breeze.
While not in class at Mira Costa High School, he’d hang with the Manhattan Beach Surf Club and the likes of surfing pioneer Dale Velzy in a small clubhouse under the pier, learning the trade of shaping boards from Velzy.
Jarvis remembers hearing stories from Noll and others through the years about his travels to Hawaii in pursuit of big waves. Noll was a natural storyteller, animated and sometimes brash, but always able to weave an entertaining story.
Noll’s escapades on the North Shore in the late ’50s and ’60s are well known in the surf world, how he was among the first to ride bombing Waimea Bay in 1957, paddling out in his trademark black-and-white-striped shorts.
He also was one of the few people surfing massive Makaha and Pipeline in those early years – once telling Jarvis of waves in one session that were so big and the wind so strong, that the chop itself was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
“Everyone was afraid to do it,” Jarvis said of the big Hawaiian surf. “He was kind of a vanguard in that sense.
“When it got big, he had the weight to put behind him, to power through those sections and do things other people had not,” Jarvis said.
Noll’s Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame induction describes one of his feats: “At age 32, Noll dropped into a massive 35-footer at Makaha in 1969, jumping off his board as the earth-shattering lip touched down behind him. It was the largest wave ridden at the time and remained so for more than 20 years.”
He and others from the mainland would go and sleep under trees, awaiting the next big swell to hit the island.
“He was one of the first guys to connect with the Hawaiian culture. We owe a lot to him,” Jarvis said.
Peter “PT” Townend, surfing’s first world champion, swapped stories with Noll last year during the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame awards.
Townend talked about one of the more iconic sessions at Waimea Bay, where only four or five guys paddled out that day, Noll the motivator.
“He was the first of those guys who just charged giant waves. He was just a hellman,” Townend said, using the surfing slang for a daredevil.
In 1956, Noll was invited to Australia during the Melbourne Summer Olympics to do a surf exhibition with local lifeguards.
Noll paddled out riding the shorter, lighter balsa boards he had been using at Malibu – designs the Australians had never seen before.
“His influence is so greater than people realize,” Townend, originally from Australia, said. “That just changed everything in Australia. That was the first time Australians had seen boards like that – all the shapers started changing their designs.”
After returning from Melborne, Nell worked as a Manhattan Beach lifeguard, shaping in his garage after work.
In the South Bay, Noll would become one of the early mass-production builders who helped ship boards around the world, part of an innovative group that included Dewey Weber, Hap Jacobs and Velzy.
“Surfing had been around a long time,” Jarvis said. “But what they were able to do in little Hermosa Beach and the South Bay area, when someone asks about the history of surfing, if it wasn’t for the South Bay and this group of people, you wouldn’t have this broad spectrum of production surfboards.”
Noll built a large surfboard factory and storefront in Hermosa Beach in 1965 – it closed in 1971. He had small stores in Manhattan Beach, then Hermosa Beach and later in San Clemente.
Jarvis called Noll the “Gutenberg of surfboards,” revolutionizing surfboard production the way Gutenberg did with the printing press.
“They made it so the guys in Florida could get a surfboard. They were doing tens of thousands of boards, shipping them everywhere,” Jarvis said.
News of Noll’s passing spread on social media Monday, with many posting tributes to the icon from across the country.
“Greg was a giant in the global surfing world and a hero to many here on the East Coast,” said Cecil Lear on hearing the news of Noll’s passing, as posted on the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame Facebook page.
The post noted Noll had many distributors along the East Coast in the ’60s and starting the East Coast Hall of Fame was Noll’s idea.
“My heart goes out to his lovely wife, Laura, son Jed, and the entire family. I’m going to miss my good friend immensely,” Lear’s post said.
Townend said the Greg Noll surfboard franchise was one of the biggest and dominated in America’s first surfboard boom.
“He had a lot of influence in so many ways,” Townend said.
Noll, in his later years, moved to Northern California, fishing and harvesting his own walnut trees to make surfboards considered collectors items that garnered upward $15,000.
“They were beautiful pieces of art,” Jarvis said.
Townend just finished a 176-page book on the 25 years of inductions for the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach, recently looking back at Noll’s accomplishments.
“He was truly an icon of surf culture, not just the industry – the culture,” Townend said.
For Noll, it seemed to be all about the journey. In an interview with the Daily Breeze about a decade ago, he called it a “neat thing” to look back and say he had a good life.
“I owe it all back to the ocean,” Noll said.
