This guy has the world in the palm of his hand. Photo: Instagram
“I would be world champ at every sport. I would take Richard Branson’s Island off him and make Adriana Lima my maid and Prince Harry and William my butlers. I would have the Victorian Secret models feed me breakfast, lunch and dinner whilst Halle Berry and Natalie Portman bathed me listening to Lana Del Rey sing to me all day in a thong. Yes, life would be grand.”
That was the answer back in 2014 when I asked Paul Fisher, then better known as The Fish, to complete the sentence, “If I ruled the world…”
It was of course, so far in the realms of fantasy to be both ludicrous and hilarious. Now it’s as aspirational as it is fantastical.
Less than a decade later, the world-renowned DJ has completed residencies in Las Vegas and Ibiza, played a float at Carnival in Brazil before 250,000 people, hosted his own South Beach pool party at the Delano Hotel during Miami Music Week, and nailed headline sets at Coachella. Add a side business, Hard Fizz – an alcoholic seltzer that has notched up more than $20 million in sales, a few Grammy nominations and yes, Fisher, life is grand indeed.
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Back in 2014 Fish, as he was known then, had made the transition from an unsuccessful Qualifying Series surfer into a funny surf internet dude. He was best known for his Fish Tales blog, and for turning up to CT events and ASP banquets interviewing surfers, including Kelly Slater, with a giant dildo-shaped microphone.
It looked then that track may have had a limited shelf life. Fisher had grown up surfing under the wings of Australia’s Cooly kids and counted Fanning, Parko, and Dingo Morrison as mentors and best mates. Those friendships allowed him access to surfing’s elite, which he used as a platform to unleash his outlandish persona, love of crudity and nudity and puerile sense of humour into a successful party guy persona. He clearly didn’t, or wouldn’t, give a fuck, which in an ever-sanitized corporate surf world was a rare treat.
Fisher had always had loads of pure surfing talent that were alloyed with bundles of charisma and humor. Even at a young age, his turbocharged personality could light up any room, anywhere, at any time. At times he could be draining, but he was addictive. However, pro surfing has had loads of those characters, many from the Gold Coast, a town that feeds on party-going extroverts before shitting them back into the Tweed River. Most usually ending up back on the Goldy, surfing behind the rock, working for a surf brand or on the tools recounting stories of the good ol’ days over schooners at the pub each evening.
The Fish Tales vlog had committed fans and plenty of potential, but Fish was playing to a small core audience of surfers. Monetizing the idea seemed difficult, and it might have just become a forgotten time capsule from an era when surfing was more raw, raucous and sexist.
Fisher, however, was also playing music, a hobby he’d had since he was a teenager. He was into house and techno though, not exactly the fodder of the average Pearl Jam-loving, beer-drinking Aussie pro surfer. “He played his first so-called DJ set in a house party at our flat,” Dean “Hazza” Harrington told The Inertia. “It was dog shit, and still is to be honest, but fuck me, look where it’s taken him!”
Fisher scored a few DJ sets at surf industry gigs and premieres and partnered with fellow QS surfer Leigh Sedley to form the duo Cut Snake. “I was getting paid to play parties and I was still going to these amazing spots. Bali, Hawaii, Europe… I’d play all these parties and it went from there,” he recently told The Sydney Morning Herald.
The pair moved to L.A. to further their music careers and had some early success, signing with a record label. Fisher at this stage had started dating Chloe Chapman, a surfer and model, and sister of Aussie pro Cooper Chapman. Around 2018 he started releasing music under his own name, and it was these tunes that blew up. Losing It was his first real hit, reaching number one on the Australian Club Tracks and the U.S. Dance Club Songs charts, and was nominated for Best Dance Recording at the Grammy Awards.
In June of 2018, Sedley said that Fisher’s recent music releases “went huge so fast that it was going to be too hard for him to juggle both projects. It made more sense for him to focus on himself.” Sedley has continued to be a successful DJ under the Cut Snake name, though nowhere near the global domination of his former partner and mate.
And if many thought Losing It, and Fisher, were a one-hit wonder, the intervening stratospheric rise of Fisher has proven otherwise. Last year he cracked the top half of DJ Magazine’s e top 100 DJs, his 48 ranking far superior to his best on the QS.
As his 1.6 million Instagram followers see, his life is chock full of private jets, sold-out arenas, penthouse apartments, the odd surf trip, and Fisher, well, being Fisher. His appeal, his shtick, and the heinous cackle haven’t really changed since the Fish Tales days. Sure the music is the hook, but Fisher’s unreconstructed personality and energy have played a huge role in his mainstream cut-through.
Meanwhile, his now-wife Chloe has carved out a career with a cult hit podcast called Darling Shine! that she co-hosts with best friend Ellidy Pullin. The pair talk through Fisher’s fertility journey as well as Pullin’s life after losing her partner, the Olympic snowboarder Alex “Chumpy” Pullin who died in a spearfishing accident just before the birth of their daughter.
The Fishers have carved out a jet-set lifestyle, achieved through sheer hard work, no small amount of talent, and force of personality. It is all a world away from surfing penis-shaped surfboards and shoving penis-shaped microphones in the faces of professional surfers.
Fisher isn’t exactly ruling the world, but he’s come closer to doing so than any other QS surfer. And it doesn’t look like his train is stopping any time soon.
