At just 30 years old, Jordan Tappis has probably done more than you’ll do in your entire life. He’s traveled the furthest stretches of the globe, hung out backstage with rock stars of the most legendary status, put out a slew of successful records, and produced a feature film. I don’t know what one might presume about a man with such a list of accomplishments, but it’s easy for me to say that Jordan Tappis largely defies expectation.
Born into humble beginnings in the lower-middle class suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, Jordan learned early from two young parents and an older sister, Jessie, the importance of a strong family bond. “We’ve got a funny family,” he says. “We were like four best friends… My mom gave me to my sister when she got home from the hospital and said, “here you go honey, he’s yours.””
It was this early understanding of the indispensable nature of close relationships that Jordan would come to acknowledge as his most valuable asset in an ensuing successful, multi-faceted career. From riding the best waves in the world as a pro surfer to starting and running the record label, Record Collection (The Walkmen, MURS, John Frusciante), to producing Wreckage of My Past (Ozzy Osbourne documentary due out 2010), Jordan credits those closest to him, like best-friend/photographer Mike Piscitelli, sister Jessie, and surf coach Mike Lamm for their fruition. And although hard work, sharp tact, and a life-long thirst for knowledge are clearly at play when one thinks of Jordan’s accomplishments, he’d be too modest to admit it, even if he knew it to be true.
THE INTERVIEW
You started surfing at a pretty young age, correct?
Yes. I was 8, and at the time there was a beach bus that went from Calabassas to Malibu, but I found surfing through Mike Lamm who owned a surf shop called Slam. My parents took me there one day to fit me for a wetsuit, and I met him and he was about the coolest guy alive. As an ex-pro surfer, he exposed me to surfing, and actually became my surf coach throughout my entire pro career.
But I really kind of took to surfing a year after that. Brandon (lead singer of Incubus) and Darren Boyd were three years older than I was, but we went to the same school, and I was really close with their brother, Jason. One time Jason and I went down to the beach and Brandon and Darren pushed me into waves on a little surfboard. And that was the day — I remember it so clearly — I got hooked completely.
Did it take long to get into it competitively?
Yea, years. I surfed from when I was 8 till I was 10, then got really connected at 11 and 12 and started competing in the WSA (Western Surfing Assoc.) at 12 and 13. Our district stretched from Santa Monica to the Ventura County Line.
Was it ever a goal of yours to be the best?
Yes! Between 14 and 21 that was my only goal. I have a fairly competitive spirit, and I always have. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to beat you, but whatever it was that I wanted to do, I wanted to be great at it. It’s a personality trait I’m not even most proud of, but you can only do so many things in life, so I figure you might as well try to be great at them. With surfing, it was an opportunity to be great and work really hard, and it focused my life. Most kids would go to school, wondering what the girls were doing that night and wanting to go to a party — I didn’t even care. I was completely uninterested — I went to school just because I had to. I was a surfer.
Jordan, 20, Malibu.
So you didn’t like school. Did you like learning?
Growing up, my mom was a tireless advocate of formal education, but my surf career didn’t allow me to spend an enormous amount of time in school, so I was forced to find alternative ways to educate myself. I always sort of had an itchy curiosity, though; if I was surfing in another country, I would want to know everything I could about the taxi driver taking me from the airport to the hotel. I wanted to know about his family and how old his kids were and where he originally came from. And books and novels and all that stuff is just an extension of that curiosity. The surfing community doesn’t have a lot of that.
I get the sense that there came a time when you decided you needed to get a little more out of life.
By about 20, I knew I was never going to be the best surfer in the world. I just knew there was something inside Kelly [Slater] and the best guys that I didn’t necessarily have. I could have gotten a lot better, but I never could’ve risen to that level. And at the same time, I’d always had this thing going on inside of me that loved reading and loved music and movies and I always had this thirst for knowledge that took me outside of the the surfing community. That sort of got bigger and bigger and it was sort of spiraling out of control by the time I hit my 20s.
Did you feel like surfing was holding you back in some ways?
Surfing professionally, yea, sure. But, at the same time my friends were studying the Spanish Revolution, I was in Spain hanging out with descendants of the revolution, so I kind of skirted around the conventional knowledge that people learn and got it through actual, firsthand experience. But I felt like I missed out on some things. I definitely did.
So when did you decide to stop surfing competitively?
I was in Biarritz, France at a surf contest, and I had just gotten done with the European leg of the tour. I did really bad, and my head wasn’t in it. I was reading a book, and I just went ‘fuck, I think I’m done with this. I think I’ve gotten all that I need to get out of competitive surfing.’ After competing for almost 10 years straight, I decided that that my time as a pro was over. I called my sponsors, told them about my decision and a few days later I flew home to LA.
What do you think surfing provided you with regard to the next phases of your life?
Everything. I attribute all of the things I’ve been able to do to surfing. As things moved forward and I started my own business and did more traveling and all that stuff, it was always the friends that I met through surfing that enabled me to get to different points in my life.
So, Record Collection (RC) came next. As someone who was never formally educated in the field, how did you manage to start and run a record label?
Well music was always number two in my life, barring family and friends, of course. I was the kid in the airport terminal, walking from one place to another listening to Tom Waits on my headphones at like 14 years old, imagining about how cool it would be to drive that old ’55 as the sun came up.
As my professional surfing career was winding down, my sister Jessie was working at a record label, and she and I talked everyday, no matter where I was. I was always so interested in what she was doing — I didn’t even really like the bands she was working with, but I was really interested in her business. Incubus was also getting huge at the time, so my best friends were doing really well, my sister was in the music industry, and I was phasing out of surfing.
The idea of starting my own label seemed like a natural next step for me, and my initial idea was to make and put out 7“s until I had enough money to put out an actual record. So when I got home and resettled into my new life, I bought some books on the music industry and started educating myself. There was one book in particular that helped me understand the fundamentals. Its called All You Need To Know About The Music Business, and I probably read that book a dozen times over a 3 year period.
What did you initially want record collection to be?
I just wanted to put out records, honest to God. I had to have a vision because I was eventually forced to write a business plan, but my only vision was to find bands that I really, really liked, make music, and release it to the world. That was my only goal.
Jordan Tappis
At just 30 years old, Jordan Tappis has probably done more than you’ll do in your entire life. He’s traveled the furthest stretches of the globe, hung out backstage with rock stars of the most legendary status, put out a slew of successful records, and produced a feature film. I don’t know what one might presume about a man with such a list of accomplishments, but it’s easy for me to say that Jordan Tappis largely defies expectation.
Born into humble beginnings in the lower-middle class suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, Jordan learned early from two young parents and an older sister, Jessie, the importance of a strong family bond. “We’ve got a funny family,” he says. “We were like four best friends… My mom gave me to my sister when she got home from the hospital and said, “here you go honey, he’s yours.””
It was this early understanding of the indispensable nature of close relationships that Jordan would come to acknowledge as his most valuable asset in an ensuing successful, multi-faceted career. From riding the best waves in the world as a pro surfer to starting and running the record label, Record Collection (The Walkmen, MURS, John Frusciante), to producing Wreckage of My Past (Ozzy Osbourne documentary due out 2010), Jordan credits those closest to him, like best-friend/photographer Mike Piscitelli, sister Jessie, and surf coach Mike Lamm for their fruition. And although hard work, sharp tact, and a life-long thirst for knowledge are clearly at play when one thinks of Jordan’s accomplishments, he’d be too modest to admit it, even if he knew it to be true.
THE INTERVIEW
You started surfing at a pretty young age, correct?
Yes. I was 8, and at the time there was a beach bus that went from Calabassas to Malibu, but I found surfing through Mike Lamm who owned a surf shop called Slam. My parents took me there one day to fit me for a wetsuit, and I met him and he was about the coolest guy alive. As an ex-pro surfer, he exposed me to surfing, and actually became my surf coach throughout my entire pro career.
But I really kind of took to surfing a year after that. Brandon (lead singer of Incubus) and Darren Boyd were three years older than I was, but we went to the same school, and I was really close with their brother, Jason. One time Jason and I went down to the beach and Brandon and Darren pushed me into waves on a little surfboard. And that was the day — I remember it so clearly — I got hooked completely.
Did it take long to get into it competitively?
Yea, years. I surfed from when I was 8 till I was 10, then got really connected at 11 and 12 and started competing in the WSA (Western Surfing Assoc.) at 12 and 13. Our district stretched from Santa Monica to the Ventura County Line.
Was it ever a goal of yours to be the best?
Yes! Between 14 and 21 that was my only goal. I have a fairly competitive spirit, and I always have. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to beat you, but whatever it was that I wanted to do, I wanted to be great at it. It’s a personality trait I’m not even most proud of, but you can only do so many things in life, so I figure you might as well try to be great at them. With surfing, it was an opportunity to be great and work really hard, and it focused my life. Most kids would go to school, wondering what the girls were doing that night and wanting to go to a party — I didn’t even care. I was completely uninterested — I went to school just because I had to. I was a surfer.
Jordan, 20, Malibu.
So you didn’t like school. Did you like learning?
Growing up, my mom was a tireless advocate of formal education, but my surf career didn’t allow me to spend an enormous amount of time in school, so I was forced to find alternative ways to educate myself. I always sort of had an itchy curiosity, though; if I was surfing in another country, I would want to know everything I could about the taxi driver taking me from the airport to the hotel. I wanted to know about his family and how old his kids were and where he originally came from. And books and novels and all that stuff is just an extension of that curiosity. The surfing community doesn’t have a lot of that.
I get the sense that there came a time when you decided you needed to get a little more out of life.
By about 20, I knew I was never going to be the best surfer in the world. I just knew there was something inside Kelly [Slater] and the best guys that I didn’t necessarily have. I could have gotten a lot better, but I never could’ve risen to that level. And at the same time, I’d always had this thing going on inside of me that loved reading and loved music and movies and I always had this thirst for knowledge that took me outside of the the surfing community. That sort of got bigger and bigger and it was sort of spiraling out of control by the time I hit my 20s.
Did you feel like surfing was holding you back in some ways?
Surfing professionally, yea, sure. But, at the same time my friends were studying the Spanish Revolution, I was in Spain hanging out with descendants of the revolution, so I kind of skirted around the conventional knowledge that people learn and got it through actual, firsthand experience. But I felt like I missed out on some things. I definitely did.
So when did you decide to stop surfing competitively?
I was in Biarritz, France at a surf contest, and I had just gotten done with the European leg of the tour. I did really bad, and my head wasn’t in it. I was reading a book, and I just went ‘fuck, I think I’m done with this. I think I’ve gotten all that I need to get out of competitive surfing.’ After competing for almost 10 years straight, I decided that that my time as a pro was over. I called my sponsors, told them about my decision and a few days later I flew home to LA.
What do you think surfing provided you with regard to the next phases of your life?
Everything. I attribute all of the things I’ve been able to do to surfing. As things moved forward and I started my own business and did more traveling and all that stuff, it was always the friends that I met through surfing that enabled me to get to different points in my life.
So, Record Collection (RC) came next. As someone who was never formally educated in the field, how did you manage to start and run a record label?
Well music was always number two in my life, barring family and friends, of course. I was the kid in the airport terminal, walking from one place to another listening to Tom Waits on my headphones at like 14 years old, imagining about how cool it would be to drive that old ’55 as the sun came up.
As my professional surfing career was winding down, my sister Jessie was working at a record label, and she and I talked everyday, no matter where I was. I was always so interested in what she was doing — I didn’t even really like the bands she was working with, but I was really interested in her business. Incubus was also getting huge at the time, so my best friends were doing really well, my sister was in the music industry, and I was phasing out of surfing.
The idea of starting my own label seemed like a natural next step for me, and my initial idea was to make and put out 7“s until I had enough money to put out an actual record. So when I got home and resettled into my new life, I bought some books on the music industry and started educating myself. There was one book in particular that helped me understand the fundamentals. Its called All You Need To Know About The Music Business, and I probably read that book a dozen times over a 3 year period.
What did you initially want record collection to be?
I just wanted to put out records, honest to God. I had to have a vision because I was eventually forced to write a business plan, but my only vision was to find bands that I really, really liked, make music, and release it to the world. That was my only goal.
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