A rock climber who went viral for climbing up the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan last weekend, revealed that he listened to a lot of music from Tool during his ascent up the building.
Alex Honnold, the rock climber, 40, climbed the 508m skyscraper, the 11th tallest building in the world with no safety equipment, in what was the highest free solo climb of an urban structure in history. The excursion took one hour and 31 minutes, and was broadcasted on Netflix.
Speaking to Variety, Honnold claimed that he had "honestly" listened to Tool on his way up.
“It was mostly Tool,” he said. “It’s a random playlist that I made, that I shared with production. I made it months ago while I was driving. I’ve been training to it a bunch. Basically, rock music that I’ve liked my whole life".
Elsewhere, Alex Honnold explained that music helps him with moving while he is on his climbs, as he uses songs to track his progress.
“So it gives you a sense of if you’re going fast or slow,” he says. “But in this case, it all kept cutting out anyway, and I couldn’t really hear and I was kind of like, ‘Whatever. I’m just doing my thing".
Honnold went on to add that he remained "unstressed" during this climb, despite encountering several communication issues which led to his music being cut.
“It doesn’t bother me in terms of climbing, because obviously, I can just climb in my own little bubble,” he explains. “I was only worried about it in terms of the broadcast. I have no idea what the timing is, if I’m supposed to be doing something, if someone’s telling me to go faster or slower. I was like, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but I’ll just climb. It was fine. It’s to be expected with communications. It’s kind of magical that it even did work at all".
Back in 2022, the band addressed their "no phones" policy ahead of their 3Arena show that year. More on this from Nova here.
