“What the heck were you thinking, dude?”: As Alex Honnold reveals just how much Tool he listened to during his free climb of the Taipei 101 skyscraper, the band’s frontman Maynard James Keenan speaks for all of us

Given that he managed to scale Taiwan’s Taipei 101 - one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world - without ropes, a safety net or a parachute, we’re guessing that free climber Alex Honnold’s kit bag for the Netflix-broadcast feat was pretty small.

One thing he did have, though, was a set of earbuds, enabling him to communicate with his team and listen to music. So, what do you vibe to when you’re attempting something like this? In Honnold’s case, the answer was ‘a lot of heavy rock and metal’, with a particular focus on Tool.

Honnold has now released a Spotify playlist of the songs he listened to during his record-breaking climb, and there are no less than eight Tool songs on there. These include Forty Six & 2 and Schism, two of the band’s most popular tunes; other bands to feature include Linkin Park, The Used, The Offspring and Nothing More.

Speaking after the event, Honnold confirmed to Variety that his effort was very much Tool-powered, and said that the playlist was made up of “rock music that I’ve liked my whole life.” He also pointed out a practical benefit of being so familiar with the songs he was listening to: it helped him with his pacing.

“I just know how long the songs are. So it gives you a sense of if you’re going fast or slow,” he explained, though the fact that he kept experiencing audio interruptions during his climb meant that this didn’t help him as much as it might.

Alex Honnold BEST MOMENTS Free Soloing Taipei 101 | #SkyscraperLIVE | Netflix - YouTube

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Reacting to the news that his band had been involved in the climb, albeit tangentially, Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan joked to ABC Audio (via Stereogum): “Not everybody and their mother texted me every three seconds telling me about it or anything.”

He also gave Honnold some feedback on the climb itself, speaking for us all when he said: “What the heck were you thinking, dude? 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.”