40 years later, muso, surfer and surf movie maker Andrew Kidman was pressed to make a film paying tribute to Morning of the Earth. Kidman bucked against it like a bastard at first. “I was definitely reluctant to do it,” he laughs. “I just couldn’t see the point.” It took a call from Falzon to swing him around. Falzon encouraged him to have a crack and just see what unfolded. As it turned out, Kidman had some pretty firm views on what’d make it a valid undertaking, but if Warners didn’t fancy what he had on offer, he was prepared to walk away. Happily though, there was a meeting of the minds and Spirit of Akasha was born. “It’s a modern homage to Morning of the Earth,” Kidman explains.
All of Kidman’s work links back in someway to the sea – he’s had that connection with it for ever. “I grew up immersed in it – as a little kid I was always in the sea,” Kidman reflects. “I always loved it and my kids have that now. It’s a wonder world I guess.”
Kidman needs the sea. “Any time that you get to go down the coast and ride waves, whether you’re doing it by yourself, or with your friends, kids or wife, it’s such a separation from all of the other things we have to do in our lives to get by,” he observes. “It’s that one thing you do and all of the troubles of the world are basically gone. I can see why people call it an addiction, because it probably is – you’re always wanting to go back to it. I can’t see my life without it. I spend a lot of time in New York and I still have to go and spend time on the coast there. I don’t feel right unless I’m out there – even if it’s just standing on the beach.”
Kidman’s first introduction to Morning of the Earth was via the soundtrack. When he was young, he and his bro used to park their boards at a doctor’s house. One day, when they stopped in for a cuppa after a surf, said doc played the soundtrack for them on vinyl. “It was the early ’80s and at the tail end of punk,” Kidman reflects. “But this soundtrack was a whole other thing – it had classical elements and was just really beautiful.”
Kidman describes watching the flick the first time as “mind blowing”, but he didn’t get to see if for quite a while – it was in the olden days (way pre-DVD) and he had to wait for a couple of years until it came out on video. In between its initial release and when it surfaced on VHS, Morning of the Earth had all but disappeared (other than for the soundtrack and the movie being indelibly printed in the minds of those lucky enough to see it the first time around).
It’s not surprising that Kidman ended up in surf movie making: he earned his stripes at Tracks, a surfing mag, and met Falzon and a bunch of the crew making surf movies around the same time. “I was hanging around the whole culture of creating stuff – whether it was photography, films, writing, magazines – I was immersed in it and found it incredibly interesting. So, when I finished at the magazine and a friend and I went off and made a film, it just seemed like such a natural, easy thing to do. I never even questioned whether we could do it – we just did.”
As you’d expect, Spirit of Akasha features some modern legends (Stephanie Gilmore, Beau Young, Mick Fanning, Kelly Slater and Tom Curren, amongst others) and has a mind blowing soundtrack (Dirty Three, Grouplove, Xavier Rudd, Brian Wilson, Angus Stone, Bonnie Prince Billy and then some). “As the film developed, as different musicians, surfers and photographers got involved, I realised that everyone was making an homage to this thing they loved – that’s what the film became. Since Alby made that film 40 years ago, all of these sprouts of inspiration have gone off in all of these different people and now they’re able to give back to it in this project.”
Mick Turner, Dirty Three’s electric and bass guitarist, was one such artist. Turner remembers very clearly his first encounter with Morning of the Earth. “I saw it back in the day. I was a young teenager and I had the album on cassette – I still know it backwards. I used to play it a lot.”
Suffice to say, Turner was happily roped in. He’d known Kidman for donkey’s years. “He asked Dirty Three if we’d contribute some music, which we did, and he also asked if we’d be interested in doing a cover version of one of the songs off the original Morning of the Earth soundtrack. I tried to get the others into it, but they were really busy and not familiar with it, whereas I knew it really well.”
Turner’s another one who has an enduring relationship with the sea. “I grew up next to the bay, which meant that there was no surf unless it was really stormy, but I’ve always been drawn to large bodies of salt water,” he laughs. “I surfed a lot when I was teenager, but then I started playing in bands and I was suddenly rehearsing on the weekends instead of going surfing. So, I didn’t do it for a while, but I’ve taken it up a bit again lately. I love going out on the water. There are a lot of good things about it – it’s like the old days – there are no phones.”
BY MEG CRAWFORD
