"What the heck were you thinking, dude? I would fall to my death." Maynard James Keenan has thoughts on Tool soundtracking that terrifying climb up one of the tallest buildings on Earth

Alex Honnold atop the Taipei 101 tower in 2026, and Maynard James Keenan onstage with Tool in 2017

(Image credit: I-HWA CHENG / AFP via Getty Images | Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)

Last month, American rock climber Alex Honnold made global headlines with his Netflix-screened free solo climb up the 11th-tallest building in the world, the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan.

In a subsequent interview given after he reached the summit of the 101-storey building on January 25, the 40-year-old athlete revealed that he had “mostly” listened to Tool while on his ascent, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by the band's frontman Maynard James Keenan, it transpires.

"Not everybody and their mother texted me every three seconds telling me about it or anything," Keenan joked on January 28 during an interview with ABC Audio.

Keenan admits that when he first heard of Honnold's free ascent up the skyscraper his immediate thought was, "Jesus, what balls!"

"What the heck were you thinking, dude?" Keenan added. "It's impressive! It's extremely impressive, but, I mean, I wouldn't make it past the first floor. I would fall to my death."

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. Asked if he would support Honnold on a future climb, Tool's frontman joked, "I'll be the guy down below eating french fries making fun of him."

Keenan's side project Puscifer released a new album Normal Isn’t last week (February 6).

The singer admitted that he feels that the group have been "marginalised" compared to the attention paid to his other bands, Tool and A Perfect Circle. But he insists that this has only strengthened his commitment to the project.

“I’ve always been on the side of the underdog, that’s just kind of how I’m wired," he told Kyle Meredith With… "The marginalised underdog is always going to get my vote."

Kyle Meredith with... Maynard James Keenan - YouTube

Watch On

Artists

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.