Alex Honnold, the American rock climber who made global headlines with his free solo ascent up the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan on live TV last weekend, says that he listened to a lot of Tool as he made his way up the 11th-tallest building in the world.
On Sunday (January 25), Honnold, 40, climbed the 508m (1,667ft) skyscraper completely by himself with no safety equipment, in what was the highest free solo climb of an urban structure in history. He took one hour and 31 minutes to complete the ascent, which was broadcast live with a 10-second delay via streaming juggernaut Netflix.
In an interview with Variety that took place just an hour after Honnold made it to the top of the 101-storey building, he revealed that he “mostly” listened to Los Angeles’ progressive metal pioneers on the 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.”
Honnold adds that music helps him with pacing on his climbs, as he can use song lengths to measure 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.’”
Despite the communication issues that led to the music cutting out, Honnold says he was “unstressed” during the climb.
“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.”
A climber since he was five years old, Honnold became famous in 2017, when he completed his unassisted climb of the 880m-high (2,887ft) rock formation El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. The New York Times called it “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever”, and Honnold was profiled in the Academy Award-winning documentary Free Solo the following year.
Honnold hasn’t spoken about what he plans to do after the Taipei climb, but he will more than likely continue to host his podcast Climbing Gold With Alex Honnold. Tool are yet to comment on their role in the climber’s latest feat.
Honnold isn’t the only famous athlete known to like the band. Major League Baseball Hall Of Famer Mike Piazza, who was a catcher in the MLB from 1992 to 2007, is an avid fan of prog rock and metal, with his favourite artists including Tool, Rush and Iron Maiden.
