SWELLNET ARTICLE ON THE BALLAD OF CLAYTON LOOBY PLUS OUR OWN CLAY STORY

A newspaper ad published by Clay saved by a commenter on Swellnet.

Stu from Swellnet has written a great article about Dog Trumpets latest single ‘The Ballad Of Clayton Looby’.

Already there has been an outpour of love and great memories people have of Clayton.

A commenter from Swellnet tells his Clay story ‘At the urging of his Dad, Clay Looby turned up at our house with his home-made single fin swallow tail he had shaped and sold it for the token amount of $30. It was a pointy Green weapon with a hand drawn cactus decal, I felt I had arrived as a surfer believing the board would carry some of the almost mystical powers of the free-living Clay’.

In the spirit of telling stories we thought it was only fitting to share our own Clayton Looby story.

Dog Trumpet did not know but we here at The Surf Film Archive owe a great debt to Clay. Many years ago, while Clayton was still alive, he was in the vault at Spectrum Films in Sydney. Some rusted and dusty cans of film caught his eye. Those cans happened to hold some of the lost Bob Evans reels, plus the offcuts from Albe Falzon's 'Morning Of The Earth'.

The Bob Evans reels were gladly scanned by us here at the Archive and the MOTE reels were reunited with Albe, who released them as a short film titled ‘RE-MOTE The Lost Reels’, which toured with Morning Of The Earth’s recent 50th anniversary tour.

Some may say the only reason we have the Bob Evans films we have is because Clay saved them from the tip, whether he took them for the purpose of preservation or something far less holy we do not know.

Clay represented the free spirited surfer who was not without controversy, love him or hate him but there is no doubt Australian surf culture was richer for having the rogues like him around.

Read the article here.