MMI: I read in a previous interview of yours that you weren’t exposed to muscle magazines as a kid. What was it that inspired you to take up weight training, and
was building a great physique a goal of yours in the beginning?
DD: Who remembers? Doesn’t every kid want muscles? Although today most will settle for an iPhone and a Big Gulp. I was barely 10 when muscles and strength caught my eye – the qualities were visible in men on the street in those days – and I thought they looked neat. That’s all it took. I had no desire to be a champion; I just wanted tough shoulders and arms.
MMI: What was it like being married and having a daughter at just nineteen years old? Did it force you to grow up and mature faster than other guys your age?
DD: I don’t think there was anybody dopier or dumber than me at 19. I grew up slow in the ‘50s in the little pig-farming town of Secaucus under the long shadow of the Empire State Building. A family before I was 20 and not yet weaned from my Harley Chopper was a sudden and befuddled acceleration of growing up. The three of us received a lot of support. The Harley ran out of gas. I got a second job.
MMI: I find it fascinating that even though you and your first wife were just 19 and 15 years old when you married, your marriage lasted twenty years. How did you two make it work?
DD: I’ll take no credit for developing a strong marriage. Penny, my first wife, our daughter, Jamie, and I moved from Jersey to California when Jamie was not yet one year old. Hello Santa Monica. The year was 1963. We fought like three bears to survive. There was enough good in Penny and Jamie to exceed the bad in me, a selfish musclehead, and we made it to the safety of 20, 35 and 40 years, respectively. Wins, losses, crowns, bruises. We still love each other.
MMI: Did you find it ironic that the man who represented the ideal California bodybuilder was born and raised in New Jersey?
DD: Who, me?
I mentioned I was dumb and slow to grow. Well, not exactly. Unaware, or “duh,” more accurately defines the first half of my life’s state of mind. I just didn’t get it. I was too busy running, chasing, dodging, scrapping and scraping.
I was both “here and now” and under a rock and a hard place. Dave Draper was always the guy training at 6AM and watching his diet and trying to make a buck without working for The Man. I would work like an animal, but not for The Man. That I was a West Coast beach boy to a world of bodybuilding fans eluded me.
Jersey hung around my neck like a sweaty tank top, and I never mounted a California surfboard. Here’s some possible irony: The only time I went to the beach was in the twilight to remove timber with a saw from beneath an obsolete pier a stone’s throw from Muscle Beach. From those beautifully aged beams I built powerful furniture for the marketplace.
Surf’s up, hang ten, surfin’ safari... What’s that stuff? And, Dave who?
MMI: Once you moved out west, did you ever consider living on the East coast again?
DD: George Eifferman picked me up at LAX in his ’55 Buick Special. They – George and the muscle car -- looked like they came off the same Detroit assembly line. It was the spring of ’63. He dropped me off at Zucky’s Deli on the corner of 5th and Wilshire in Santa Monica where we shared Kosher dill pickles and hot pastrami sandwiches. There were clean streets and palm trees, blue skies and warm breezes, the lush Pacific palisades and a sense of hope. George was an old friend before we finished our first cup of coffee and I remembered New Jersey no more.
Momma bear and baby bear followed me west a month later.
MMI: Your competitive career was relatively brief, lasting just seven years. Why did you stop competing, and do you ever wish you had continued for a few more years?
DD: Did I mention scrapping and scraping and dodging? Training for competition in those days was transitioning from a whim and fancy to a dedicated pursuit. You could participate for fun on lower levels, but it took means and resources when the prize was big and bigger. I endured the first years – Mr. America and Mr. Universe – because I was encouraged by my newly acquired musclehead peers and it seemed like the thing to do. I was this side of 25 and the surf was up, as they say down on the pipeline, and “Why not?” had not entered my mind.
Then the scene changed “like over night, man,” and blue sky turned grey and lost its silver lining. I learned not all that is promised is real and not all that is pursued is worthy. Give me muscles and a heart of gold, not lumps for sale and Man Tan and choreography and glaring and the theme of 2001. Give me muscle, real muscle, and give me a gym at six AM.
A good fit in a tank top and jeans while sitting on a park bench contemplating the sunset beats a Mister Oly crown amid oily bodies on stage in Brooklyn or Ohio anytime, I thought. Maybe I’m lazy or a coward or unaware or negative or a realist or a poor loser or just fund-less and poor.
I wonder sometimes what I could have done had I not tripped over my two left feet: changed the world, become president, built a sky rise out of pier wood, celebrated my 45th wedding anniversary.
Fact is, everything is exactly as it should be, as it is meant to be, thank God.
MMI: If there had been more money in the sport then, with six-figure endorsement contracts for supplements and magazines as well as cash prizes for the big shows, would you have kept competing?
DD: Who knows? Money has a way of screaming in one’s ear. There were allurements and promises dangled before my nose once, but they were extracted quickly when I extended my outstretched hand. I like the solidness of the iron in the hand, not the flimsy promises of rascals promoting it. Reminds me of politics, power and greed, and nothing of broad shoulders, strong backs and well-executed workouts.
MMI: The original Gold’s Gym has taken on a mythical status to those of us that weren’t fortunate enough to be there in the early to mid 1970s. Having been an integral part of that atmosphere, do you ever feel sorry for the rest of us who can only dream of having been there with you?
DD: Forewarning: Draper’s a prejudiced musclehead.
Not really. You care enough to imagine and wonder. You’re tough, you’ll make it. Imagination often can be better than the real thing, though you would not have been disappointed by the atmosphere and the qualities and the learning shared by the bodies in Joe Gold’s Gym, and the Muscle Beach Dungeon, its predecessor. Collectively, the experiences were priceless, real, awesome, inspiring and emotional: the Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David, the Holy Writ, the Kilimanjaro. They were the truth.
To those who don’t know the history of the iron, from where and whence muscle was first forged, or who don’t care, I say, it is too bad. It’s like baseball without knowing something about Mickey Mantle or Joe DiMaggio or Willie Mays. They’ll live, but the spirit is missing.
You’ll find shadows and whispers of the old days in the fading light of old neighborhood gyms.
MMI: Do you have any funny stories from training at Gold’s, or from a competition around that time?
DD: Not as many in the gym as there were on the streets. My favorite was walking from a pro competition in Manhattan late at night with Boyer Coe, Ralph Kroger and a NYC cop and gym owner, Tony Schettino. We were comfortably wired on the evening events, amiable and hungry and en route to a favorite restaurant. A man stood with his date, both fashionably dressed, and stared at a small Honda pressed bumper to bumper between parked cars. No small catastrophe at midnight in the city.
We checked out the scene, nodded knowingly and maneuvered about the captured vehicle, each finding purchase at the appropriate fender. In what was akin to three precisely-timed deadlifts, we hoisted and shifted the car to the middle of the street. It all took place in less than a minute. Hi, goodbye. Like steam rising from subway vents, we were gone.
MMI: You got to meet the King, Elvis Presley. How did that come about, and what were your impressions of him?
DD: I was part of the six-man documentary film crew who toured with Elvis in ’72 – 20 cities, 20 concerts in 21 days, from Albuquerque to Boston. What a rigorous treat. It happens fast, you’re staggeringly busy and you don’t sit around and chat. Elvis and his entourage and band were absolutely great. I saw him arrive in his limo before the evening concert, burst on stage, perform madly and disappear into the night. “Elvis has left the building.” I was everywhere he was to be and everywhere he had just been. When we met a few times – on his jet, at a small gospel rally -- he was there, but he wasn’t. I guess you could say the same for me. I think we would have hit it off if we had another 30 seconds.
MMI: Did you enjoy acting? Why didn’t you pursue it more than you did?
(MONKEES< BEV HILLBILLIES< HOST GLADIATOR DAVE on CHANNEL 9)
DD: I enjoyed it, but again, funding a career in acting while building horseshoe triceps and supporting a family was beyond reach. I fell into a few fun, dramatically powerful (joke) and educating roles, but muscles were not yet broadly appealing. Lose weight, they said, and I said no.
MMI: Did you ever socialize with the Hollywood set? Were they very different from the bodybuilders you trained alongside?
DD: Everyone was different from the bodybuilders I trained alongside. Zabo, Zane, Arnold, Katz, Franco, Eiferman, Steve Merjanian, Artie Zeller. This was a zoo. I did take acting classes in Hollywood for a year and the folks, my age, were quite sane. It was valuable instruction and an enjoyable experience. Larry Scott was a member of the small class. Good stuff.
MMI: Today’s bodybuilders, at least a lot of them, smugly think back on the guys from your era and think they are so much more advanced. But in truth, do you think that the industry has tried to make training and nutrition a lot more complicated than it really is?
DD: Train hard, eat right, be consistent, be positive and grow. You, by your own experience and attention and perseverance, become your own teacher, coach and cheerleader. You and the weights, man. Push that iron. That was yesterday or, perhaps, the day before.
Today everything muscle has been amplified. There are more – a lot more participants and spectators, more – a lot more -- drugs, more hype, more self-proclaimed experts with scientific knowledge, more novel training philosophies and methodologies to fill the pages of mags and books, more career niches created to exploit the lifters and more exaggerated equipment and bizarre nutritional products to “build big muscles fast.”
Some people actually believe all this stuff, depend on it. Stand back, we’re going to burst. A lot of people are confused. Oops! I sound cynical.
MMI: Do you follow the sport today? Are there any physiques that you feel still represent the classical ideals and proportions?
DD: Excuse me. I train as hard as I can and I love it, and I’m not being smug, nor am I apologizing, but I just don’t know who is who from where or when. I knew what was going on when there was a handful of bodybuilders in the ‘60s and two hands full in the ‘70s, but lost my way when they started piling up in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Laree and I owned a pair of gyms in central California through the ‘90s to 2005 and knew Lee and heard of Ronnie and Jay, but the rest, though magnificent and admirable, are nameless mounds of flesh and oil to me. I’m busy with my own little biceps and a torn rotator cuff.
Now I sound jealous.
MMI: If you had been born in 1972 instead of 1942, do you think you still would have become a bodybuilder?
DD: I don’t think so. The appeal of muscles in the 1950s when I started was real. Thirty years later and I’m growing up in the ‘80s. Hmmm... Not as alluring to my temperament: too common and diluted and bombastic and crowded and showy. To continue the fantasy, I would have trained for rugged muscle, conditioning and health and lived happily ever after.
MMI: Do you ever imagine what you would look like with today’s equipment, supplements, and the wide array of pharmaceuticals that today’s men use?
DD: Never occurred to me.
MMI: Did you and the others from the ‘60s and early ‘70s ever imagine the drugs would get so out of hand in bodybuilding?
DD: I was certain drugs would play a significant role in the growing world of bodybuilding, but I neither expected the bodybuilding world to grow so large in number and industry-magnitude, nor the individuals to grow to such cartoonish proportions as we see today.
Got a second? I see three stages of development -- three separate bodybuilding cultures:
The pre-‘50s and original Muscle Beach era, when bodybuilding was fresh and refreshing. The genuine physical-fitness culture.
Then the muscle scene was captured by the magazine media in the ‘60s and bolted like a barbed stallion. The crowds amassed around the world, lats spread, coconut deltoids grew. The pro bodybuilding culture.
By 2000 muscles that were once a sketched representation of an artist’s wild imagination were now being displayed in lineups at pro bodybuilding contest across the nations. “They” had arrived. The extreme muscular development culture.
Subcultures, in reality. Don’t know where we’re going -- rather, where they’re going.
MMI: Does it bother you to hear about the deaths and major health problems in fairly young men over recent years in our sport?
DD: Sure it does. The sacrifice to become a major player in any pro sport is huge. But the compromises are being made on the streets and in high schools. This is particularly sad and disappointing. A shame. Easy come, easy go. No real growth... the opposite, in fact.
MMI: Something that really comes across in all your writing is your passion for training. Even today, it sounds like you enjoy your time with the iron just as much as you did forty years ago. How can you explain this lifelong passion and how you have kept it burning so strong?
DD: When I got my little mound of weights at 10, the first thing I thought was big arms. There’s more, I learned. There are chest and shoulders, arms and back.
Why, lifting weights is a sport, a diversion, a hobby and it’s good for you and nobody bothers you. I soon noticed that little mound of weights had a mountain to offer. Lifting the iron physically enables the participant, strengthening his or her muscles and bones, improving function and ability, energy and endurance, resistance and speed. Lift right and you feel good and look good.
It doesn’t stop there. Lifting sensibly requires, and, thus, builds character qualities to be applied to the rest of your life: discipline, patience, perseverance, devotion. I’m rich, we’re rich. The list goes on – resistance exercise improves mental acuity, enhances the entire system, de-stresses, controls obesity and diabetes...
And there’s a bond between the iron-minded mob that cannot be outweighed (puny pun).
Nobody said it was easy. Ironically, that’s another appeal of the weight room. It’s tough. And you quickly learn that which the iron provides surely fades unless you continue the good deed. In that you’ve come to like the good things of life, now you’re hooked. And unlike other aggressive or active sports – football, basketball, baseball, hockey – you can keep the iron moving the rest of your life.
Love it, hate, need it, want it – the iron has a way of getting under your skin and into your blood. And when it doesn’t hurt, it feels great. Come to think of it, it feels great even when it does hurt.
Oh, the fact that Laree and I have developed a faithful band of iron-hoisting internet bombers at davedraper.com
over the past decade is no small encouragement to my spirit of training. We dare not let each other down.
Finally, there’s nothing like the feeling when the workout is done. I hope the answer is in there somewhere.
MMI: When did you first begin writing for the magazines, and how did your writing career develop as the years went by?
DD: I squeezed out an article or two for IronMan, Muscle and Fitness and Muscle Mag, long after I left the competitive scene. But I began writing regularly for our local newspaper when I opened a gym in Santa Cruz. We needed advertising copy and I wrote a short weekly column on exercise. That morphed into an email newsletter that goes out weekly for our webpage, davedraper.com
, now nine years old.
Since the advent of the webpage in ’99, I’ve written three books devoted to strength and health, Brother Iron Sister Steel, Your Body Revival and Iron on My Mind.
MMI: You still work out regularly. How is your training different now from when you were in your twenties and thirties?
DD: It has remained the same -- volume in sets and reps, supersets and the basic exercises, cables and some machines, power when achievable -- only modified to suit the day and age.
My training boomed in my forties as we settled into gym ownership. Five days a week suited me, two hours a workout, heavy squatting and deadlifting a part of the regimen.
I carried on vigorously through my 50s, cutting back to four days a week as I ventured into my 60s. Three days a week suits me fine today, a spin on the Spin bike in between. I’m 66 on the outside, 13-going-on-17 on the inside.
MMI: Most bodybuilders dream of owning their own gym. As a man that has been there and done that, what were the best and worst parts of running a gym?
DD: Building a gym is the best part. Owning and operating a gym is the worst part. This is what usually transpires when one daring and committed soul opens a cool gym in a decent neighborhood: A jerk with money opens one across the street and you slave or go out of business.
Was that not the typical case, owning a cool gym can be a blast.
MMI: A lot of us these days have had our troubles with drugs and/or alcohol. I know you went through your issues years ago and got through them. Do you think bodybuilders are particularly susceptible to addiction, as it could be argued that bodybuilding in itself is a form of addiction?
DD: You could be right. Muscleheads – a term of endearment – are some of the best nut jobs I’ve ever met. And we do have issues, no doubt about it. Thank God for the iron or we’d be a real mess.
Draper’s in Isolation B, medicated and in restraints. They took his dumbbells away. Cruel and unusual punishment.
I’m one of those characters who has been clean and sober for 25 years. No wine, no beer or any of that other stuff.
MMI: All in all, are you satisfied with how prevalent the concepts of weight training and good nutrition have become in America today as opposed to forty or fifty years ago, or do you think we still have a long way to go?
DD: Muscles and exercise and good nutrition are everywhere. Health and fitness are in the news every hour and at the magazine rack as you check out your groceries. Health and fitness have become big business.
However, we need a whole lot more people buying into it, that is, making it a lifestyle. And the promise of a healthy and long life begins at youth. We need a lot more health and fitness education and exercise in schools and proper nutrition in the cafeterias and a ban on killer junk food in the hallways. Educate and encourage now, and the next generation might have it right.
The more we are responsible to our physical strength and health, the more we are responsible to one another. And so grows our morals and spiritual might.
Drink your milk, be nice to your mom.
