Matt Branson, a well-tattooed pro surfer and speed metal enthusiast from Western Australia, was 26 years old and four years retired from the world tour when he did this interview with Derek Rielly. "Looking For Matt Branson" was published in the November 1995 issue of Australia's Surfing Life. Branson, at this point, had come to terms with his homosexuality, but didn't come out publicly until 2007.

What have you been doing the past few years?

Laying pretty low, mostly—working, playing drums in a band, just cruising, mate.

I'm working on Garden Island [Sydney], on the naval base. I work in a big kitchen and we supply, like, three canteens. Just doing heaps of food and shit. It's good work, I like it. I get up at 4:30 and I've gotta be there by 6:00. I lost my licence so I gotta get the bus in, which is fucked.

Ahhh, drunk driving. The judge was a bit bloody harsh on me, mate. I've been seeing in the paper, guys who were caught drunk driving, just like me, same amount of alcohol in 'em, like mid-range, and these guys are getting three month without a license and a $400 fine. Then this prick of a judges pulls my license for a 

Yeah. I think it [the heavy sentence] was because I didn't have a lawyer with me. Anyway, I get my license back in another month.

 I've got a mate who does 'em now. He lives down in Geelong. Just this mad, great artist. He's going to be one of the best in Australia, I reckon.

Yeah, well he actually fixed up one on my back which was looking shithouse; one I got in Hawaii from a backyard guy and it didn't work out too well. So he fixed it up and now it looks a treat. And he's also given me—a mate of mine is in a band called Biohazard—so I got the Biohazard logo on my arm. Looks fuckin excellent.

How much have you spent on tats over the years?

I've often thought about that. Couple grand, easy.

Got sick of traveling. And, you know, I didn't really do as well as I'd hoped. I wasn't getting anywhere in contests. [Note: Branson in fact left pro surfing because he was tired of hiding his sexuality. "No way in the world did I have the strength to be a gay man on tour anymore," he said in 2007.]

For the first six months or so, yeah. Fuck yeah. It's really hard to get back into 

 traveling. It's like, if you're in the same spot for more than a week it gets a bit bizarre. But now there's no way I could go back on it. Even if I was good enough. Now I'm settled. But I'm glad to have done it when I did, I reckon.

Yeah, I had a ball man. No regrets. It was fuckin great.

Yeah. Enough. Enough to keep me happy. Yeah, fuckin oath. There's been a couple of good swells down here lately.

 We just had a fuckin excellent jam then.

Mind Crack. It's pretty heavy shit; pretty messy, punk kind of shit. Not too organized. All originals. We can't play anyone else's songs. We're not that good.

"Attack," "Dead," "At War With Myself," "Unknown End," the list goes on, mate. The lyrics are really positive. No Satan bullshit. Just songs about what's going on in the world.

Nah. I get flashes now and again about doing 'em. But I see all the young guys out there now and I reckon it'd be a nightmare going against them. They're all too good now. Anything under three-foot these days and I'd just get walloped.

So did they ever catch the guy who stabbed you? [Note: in 1991, Branson was stabbed in the neck and stomach while in the bathroom of a King's Cross nightclub.]

Yeah, they caught him. It this big-time, heavy criminal. This other guy, who was supposed to give evidence to the police on my behalf, he got sent to jail for something else, and ended up withdrawing the evidence 'cause he didn't want to get fucked up in jail, cause the guy who did me is such a heavy. After that, they didn't have enough evidence so the case got dropped. Which is pretty fucked. I mean, they know who did it, the guy actually confessed to a couple of his crew, but there's nothing they can do. It won't stand up in court.

How do you feel about the whole thing now?

I'm just starting to deal with it, really. All these years later. Because I'm getting some compensation I had to go and see a psychiatrist and all that bullshit. That's what you need to do to get your money. But that ended up being a really good thing for me. She said that the worst thing I'd been doing the last couple of years was suppressing it, pretending the whole thing didn't happen. (Long pause) It's the sort of memory that doesn't leave you too quickly.

Actually, a funny thing happened the other day that was pretty rad. I was in this parking lot in this shopping center and this young girl came up with her mum and they sorta said, 'Are you Matt Branson?' And I thought, 

 That was rad! But nah, people have pretty much forgotten about me. It's been a long time since I was out there. Which is fine by me. I'm happy living a normal life.

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