This is Adam ‘Vaughan’ Blakey
Adam Vaughan Blakey Editor of Surfing World, began his journey into the publishing world with a poem he wrote as a 14 year old. The poem was published in Tracks and he was consequently beaten by kids in his senior year for doing so. It’s taken less than that to sullen the aspirations of many writers. But for Blakey, self-declared ‘muse of lunacy’ for denim brand Ksubi Jeans, it was the beating every crab gets if it wants out of the bucket.
Blakey, Vaughan Dead, Adam, Cyanide Phinx – depending on who you are or what publication you are reading, has had a hand in pretty much everything you’ve read regarding surfing and youth lifestyle since the 90′s. Vaughan now lives in Narrabeen, father to the happiest children you’re likely to meet and probably one of the nicest guys you’re likely to meet.
This is Adam ‘Vaughan’ Blakey
Interviewed: (Our Intern) Remi Chauvin
SPOOK: Vaughan. Do you mind if I call you Vaughan?
A‘V’B: Yeah no worries mate.
SPOOK: Wonderful. So, you’re the editor over at Surfing World?
A‘V’B: Yeah.
SPOOK: How does that go for you?
A‘V’B: Oh I love it! Pretty much best job in the world. Sit here all day looking at surf photos and coming up with good spins and fresh stories. Its awesome. I basically look at surf shots, then try to make 10 minutes worth of serious living. At the end of the day, its just really good fun. We’ve got a good team in there at the moment and everything is going really well.
SPOOK: I actually wrote something for SW last week.
A‘V’B: Did you?!?
SPOOK: Yeah, that lazy bastard Mike Jennings got me to interview Owen Wright, because he was busy twiddling his thumbs. Did you read it?
A‘V’B: Oh yeah! It was a good little interview, sick one.
SPOOK: Thanks. Tell me, what was the first article you wrote for a surfing mag?
A‘V’B: The first thing I ever wrote for a surf mag was a letter to the editor when I was 14. It was actually a poem (laughs). Me and a mate were sitting around and we were drawing company logos in our scrap books because we were just fanatic little kids, crazy for anything to do with surfing. We both wrote letters and mine got published, and at the end where the editor comments on your letter, he said that I should consider a career in surf magazines. But I didn’t remember that until I did work experience 4 years later and it rolled on from there.
SPOOK: Can you remember the poem you wrote?
A‘V’B: It was for Tracks magazine and I think it went something like “when I sit on the dunny and I’m bored to the max, I go through the mags and I pick up a tracks.” You could tell it was written by a 14 year old, but it was definitely a thrill seeing it published. I actually got bashed cause these kids in year nine saw it published and thought I was a wanker when they read it.
SPOOK: Jealous bastards. Was that that? Did it make you want to be a part of the surf print industry fo’ lyfe?
A‘V’B: Well, it wasn’t until I did work experience that I really understood that working at a surf mag was sick fun. I went to tracks for two weeks in 1992. The office was in Kings Cross, and at that time they were building the floats for Mardi Gras out the back. It was also around the time that all that Underbelly shit was around that’s on telly these days.
SPOOK: That must have been pretty eye-opening for a young kid from the country?
A‘V’B: Oh man, I got off the train on my first day there and the first thing I saw was a giant transvestite with a full beard just high as fuck on heroin and I was just like “ohh fuck, what is this place?!?” And another time, on the day after Mardi Gras I was walking to the office through literally head-high rivers of bubbles floating down the street because someone filled one of the fountains in the Cross with bubble-bath. After that, any time I was misbehaving, they’d threaten to send me down to the Mardi Gras floats as punishment. It was pretty weird shit for a country kid!
SPOOK: I reckon. Had you left school at this stage?
A‘V’B: Nah, I was still in year 10, but I was losing interest in school very rapidly and all I wanted to do was surf. Once I got back from work experience, I wagged school for about two weeks, but I quickly thought that I’d better get a job in the surf industry otherwise I would just turn into another bum up in Brunswick Heads for the rest of my life…
SPOOK: So what happened next?
A‘V’B: A year later they called me up and said I should apply for a job as Office Junior because they knew I was frothing for it. So after I went through the interview process and everything, I left school in the first week of year 12 and started working at Tracks.
SPOOK: Did you end up being the Editor there?
A‘V’B: No, I was there for two and a half years, just being a grommet, and then the editor at Waves Magazine left and they threw the job at me. So I think I was 19 and editing one of the biggest surf mags in the country. I don’t know what my writing was like at the time, but it was probably equivalent to that of most 12 year-olds, (laughs), but that didn’t worry me too much. I think I just had some outrageous self-confidence and knew I loved surfing enough to pull it off.
SPOOK: What advice would you give to a kid who is thinking of leaving school to pursue something like a career in the surf industry?
A‘V’B: One of the best bits of advice came from my rather fruity career’s advisor when I went on work experience. He said something to me which still rings true; he told us to not to use work experience as two weeks off school, but to try to do something that you would have thought was beyond you. That’s great advice for going on work experience because once you’ve got a foot in the door, you can really stay in people’s faces. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend leaving school unless you had a career opportunity already available, I mean I left because I had a job offer, but if you really have a passion for something and you know how to chase that passion, then you should use any chance you have to just hassle the shit out of people in that field and be as enthusiastic as possible, even when they give you the shitty jobs. It’s all about that first foot in the door.
SPOOK: So would that be your advice to anyone looking for a job in the media world?
A‘V’B: For sure man, I always take work experience kids and half of them are invisible, you wouldn’t even know they’re there. I always think ‘far out man, you’ve got a real chance here to make a memorable impression’ and when jobs do come up, the memorable kids are the ones you think of. I’ve said that to every work experience kid and very few of them take it on and really try to make themselves stand out.
SPOOK: While you were working at Waves, you hired Sam McIntosh from Stab Magazine.
A‘V’B: While I was working at Waves and I’d had a couple of assistant editors, who were career-minded, but not as stoked on surfing as I was, and that was frustrating. They were ambitious, which was cool, but they didn’t have that genuine love for surfing and it just felt like they were using the mag as a stepping stone and I think the mag suffered as a result of it. As soon as I spoke to McIntosh on the phone, I knew he was the guy; he was crazy for it. His love of surfing was so strong that it was more important than his writing ability at the time, because I knew if I got him, he’d be so psyched to learn as much as he can, which he did – big time.
SPOOK: He did, and then he started and now heads Stab Magazine…
A‘V’B: Yeah, he’s the publisher. I think he actually employs an editor, so he’s even above and beyond the making of the mag; he manages the business.
SPOOK: The bigwig you could say…
A‘V’B: Yeah definitely. And he would have his own ideas on where he wants to take his mag, but as far as where his career has gone since those early days, you’d have to say he’s been very successful.
SPOOK: And you were also in contact with the Monster Children guys around the same time?
A‘V’B: Sam and I had been working for about a year at Waves and the mag was going really well, but good design at that time was really hard to find. There wasn’t really a graphic design element happening because the really good designers from the early 90’s had moved away from surfing, but we heard that Campbell Milligan was doing stuff at Surfing Life, but wanted to move to Sydney, so we kind of poached him from Surfing Life. He worked on Waves for a year, and right about he started, we got Chris Searl to put together the first video that came with the magazine, Seven Days Seven Slaves. So that’s how they met and became good friends through similar interests with their art, which of course led to the birth of Monster Children. So yeah, there was a pretty great cluster of creative people hanging around at that time.
SPOOK: Yeah, it seems like there was something in the water in those days! Surfing World, Stab and Monster Children are all beacons of light in this darkening world of print.
A‘V’B: Yeah for sure. Around the time that Campbell started there was a bit of a shift with Waves and how we were thinking of designing things, and that was fostered by a good little gang of people in that little space. We were all young and had a bit of experience with mags and it really allowed everyone to make these really creative and quality projects together.
SPOOK: Are you still in contact with them?
A‘V’B: Yep, I still write for Monster Children, and it’s kind of incestuous between everyone still. Everyone works for everyone and we still do favors for each other when we can. So yeah, we’re all pretty good friends still.
SPOOK: Have you guys got grand plans to save magazines from the iPad and other digital demons?
A‘V’B: (laughs) Uumm, its funny man, I’ve been in publishing now for 17 years and I dunno if it’s a good or a bad thing, but I just love magazines. I don’t really look at the iPad and think ‘oh, here’s this thing that’s going to wipe us out’ or anything like that. I just think that it’s a whole new medium that at one time or another probably will become the main deal, but no, I don’t see it as the death of magazines. I think magazines are always going to be there, because there’s something cool about letting them sit around and being able to read them in your own time. I also like how they’re tangible and are evidence of a time, you know? Like with the iPad, you’ll never really be able to just pick it up three years later and go ‘fuck, that was a really cool time’ or ‘that was an important story to me back then’ or anything like that, so there’s a romantic sentimentality that you get. Like when I pick up an old tracks magazine from when I was a kid, I can really feel where I was at that time. So I think they’re still two completely different things and hopefully the new digital mediums can actually strengthen magazines and let them become meaningful and something to cherish.
SPOOK: It’s so much better than holding some fragile piece of glass.
A‘V’B: Exactly! And you can bend them and read them in the bath and you can rip the fucking things up! That’s what I love about them.
SPOOK: And stick shit up on your walls…
A‘V’B: That was a really important thing for me growing up. Half the reason I still love looking at surf photos all day is because my whole room was covered in magazines. As a kid, you can invest so much time and imagination in looking at something on your wall and you’ll never do that on an iPad. You’ll never sit there and let your mind wander while staring at a screen.
SPOOK: Exactly, I agree. Well I have one final question Vaughan, and this is a guest question from my Editor.
A‘V’B: haha, shoot!
SPOOK: Cyanide Sphinx destine for a come back?
A‘V’B: (laughs) mate it was so weird hey! After we made Doped Youth, I could go to the other side of the world and get called Cyanide Sphinx. Someone would yell it out on Newport Beach in California; it was weird how much that little movie took off. I don’t know if old Cyanide is going to make a return, but that little group of friends who put it together will definitely work on something again, and I reckon it will be pretty special.
SPOOK: Orright Vaughan, I’ll let you go. Thanks very much.
A‘V’B: No worries brother, take care.
