Jack Johnson on fame, fidelity and not being ‘too good looking’: the ‘Banana Pancakes’ singer and surfer still sees music as just a hobby, but he’s happy to be along for the ride – interview

Feb 28 , 2024

American singer/songwriter Jack Johnson, king of barbecue rock, still prefers surfing to making music. Photos: Handout

Hailing from Oahu, Hawaii, Jack Johnson surfed from a young age and scored a Quiksilver sponsorship at a 14 – but then the son of professional surfer Jeff Johnson got into an unfortunate accident

Now on his Meet the Moonlight world tour, the ‘barbecue rock’ singer confessed ‘all my love songs were written about my wife’, Kim Johnson, who he first bonded with over Pixies and Radiohead

Jack Johnson is a rubbish rock star. For one, he’s too blooming happy, with not a whiff of the tortured artist about him. Nor an ounce of ego, either – dismiss his feel-good, acoustic pop ditties as soft rock, barbecue ballads, whatever, and he just doesn’t care. There’s zero drama too: he tours with his wife and kids – not his fifth wife, not some centrefold model, but the woman he’s been with since he was 18. No hell-raising, heartbreak or tabloid romances to be found at his door.

“I don’t mean this to sound overly humble, but I always felt like I got into a club I wasn’t really supposed to be in,” he tells Style of his apparent aversion to fame. “Still to this day, like – when is somebody gonna kick me out? Tell me I’m not allowed to be here?”

It feels like a cliché to report that the Hawaiian heartthrob is talking to us fresh from the beach, that he was a few minutes late to our Zoom date because he was busy washing the sunscreen off his face following his regular afternoon ride on the waves. (He’s speaking to us ahead of his concert in Hong Kong on March 5 as part of his Meet the Moonlight world tour.) Indeed, jockish Johnson’s biggest crime against rock stardom may be that he always preferred surfing and still dismisses music merely as a “hobby” – even if it’s become an eight-album, quarter-century career.

American singer/songwriter Jack Johnson: “I love music, but music is what I do if the waves are flat.”

“The question I’m asked most is, if I was on an island and I could only have a surfboard or guitar, which one would it be?” he muses. The answer, obviously, is both, right? “I mean, if you’re forcing me to choose – surfboard for sure,” he capitulates. “I love music, but music is what I do if the waves are flat. You can ask all my friends – if the waves are really good, I’m not picking up my guitar at all.”

It’s in the blood, too. He’s the son of professional surfer Jeff Johnson (alliteration also apparently runs in the family). Born and bred on Hawaii’s Oahu coast, Johnson Jr began surfing at age four, scored a sponsorship from Quiksilver at 14, and was competing professionally when, at age 17, an accident left him with a few less teeth and more than 100 stitches.

“Hmm, let me look at myself!” announces the 48-year-old, leaning to examine his image on the screen. “It sounds conceited to say you wouldn’t change a thing, but I have a really Zen approach to it. I have a lot of scars on my face, I’ve gotten stitches a lot of times, but now they’re stories that I wouldn’t take away.

“You know – I think if I was too good looking, I wouldn’t have had the career I’ve had, that’s the thing. There’s like a fine line. If you’re too good looking, then the fellows don’t like it. You know they don’t trust you.”

American singer/songwriter Jack Johnson: “I write pretty goofy songs”

While the history books will always remember Johnson as the youngest-ever competitor in Oahu’s Pipeline Masters – scars or not – his music fans might hold conflicted feelings about Johnson’s career-ending accident. But he’s adamant there’s no universe in which he would have ended up following in daddy’s footsteps: “No, no, never! I’m a pretty good surfer in Hawaii. I’m decent, and I could be in those kinds of contests. I could surf pretty big waves pretty well, but I was never gonna make the pro tour. Anything like that was never in my cards.”

Instead, Johnson moved to California to study film. He later wound up directing and starring in surf movies Thicker Than Water (2000) and The September Sessions (2002); he also recorded the soundtracks. In between, he released his low-key debut album Brushfire Fairytales (2001), which, as he tells it, gathered a dozen of the first 20-odd songs he ever wrote. The remainder wound up on 2003 follow-up On and On. Both records sold over a million copies in the US alone.