Magic Man song by Pico for Searching for Tom Curren

Written by Derek Hynd

Pico was 16 when his Dad booted him out of the house with a handshake. He was still at school. I took him in. About eight of us took him in split between two households on the South Newport headland. All of us surfed in our local club. Pico stuck to his studies pretty well.

Those few years were epic in many ways. Party houses. Pico was a team rider for Hot Buttered and offered enough talent to gain peer respect in the Pro Junior ranks. The only thing lacking was probably a magic board...most surfers, after all, go through their surfing lives still hunting one down. I lost track of him for four or five years after finishing high school until a knock on the door at another place at North Avalon.

He'd taken up piano and Played me a tape; barely a demo. It wasn't much - but he had a voice from the depths - as in diaphragm depths. His voice coach, brutal in demands, was Jeff St John, along with Doug Parkinson holder of the great Australian rock voice(see youtube Teach Me To Fly and Dear Prudence). I didn't see Pico for another age until blow me down with a feather, he turned up on the nation's main live Saturday night show singing a tune with mate Kingy, future father of Kyuss King. Managed by Ian Molly Meldrum, they were destined to hit the heights in Kylie's U.K. pop star afterbirth until running amock all across London and right through the record company. Molly flew to London to drag them home and into oblivion.

Cutting to the chase, a few more summers went by and I was working for Rip Curl. I had a role or two including getting The Search campaign into swing. Enter Pico. His first go at original sound tracking was titled The Search. The version on film is not the better one...the B version ended up being used. Still, voice, composition, production.

By the time Searching for Tom Curren came around, Sonny Miller was his biggest fan. He'd penned a lot of songs for Sonny. The way Pico could piece together a tune based on segment vision or just a Title was something else. When recording Magic Man at Jacobson's in Sydney, an American woman was in the building. Turns out she'd done a fair bit of industry work with the likes of Pearl Jam. Of Pico, she rated his voice alongside Eddie Vedder - which ultimately paid homage to Jeff St John whose voice was rock and roll bedrock. Pico found himself in the Hollywood Hills a month later staying at a fabled muso house, same one that Jim Morrision used to crash at.

All he had to do was sign on the dotted line in the same type of situation Jack Johnson would face five years hence. Instead though, he literally entered the revolving door of one of the world's great labels for the big meeting, thought of JM's flare out, kept revolving until back on the street a few seconds later, hopped a cab to LAX, was back home 24 hours later. To this day, particularly in South Africa in a situation like the Sugar Man phenomenon, I get asked about Pico and whether he'll ever tour. It's been 25 years. I still listen to his music.