Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 4, 2013 - 08:29am PT
"E9 6c is out there in the streets, every single night!"
John Redhead
Awesome, classic, beautiful.
I love what the intro people say about E9 6c! How hard is that anyway?
Check out the primitive practice wall and the one handed and no hands stuff!
Redhead is an enigmatic & odd climber & has been for three decades. Sick sick sick routes - even all those years ago ( you've heard of The Bells, The Bells ? Not for pussies ) .
But his not climbing antics & escapades including The Brotherhood of the Bell - certainly I'm not gonna be the one to spill what I know about it. Gross. Weird. No.
His book "One for the Crow" with lotsa wild & weird drawings was called by some climbers as genius and by others "One for the Bin".
I met him in Llanberis in '00 at a friend's place and watched as he let his son jump on the roof of his car until it was well stove in. He seemed pleased that I'd heard of him ( he recognized that, by my non-English English that I was from the colonies ) ..........but he gave off such an oompa-loompa vibe that I made sure that was my one and only meeting with the chap.
You guys act like you've never done psychedelics before...
:)
I think he's trying to keep one foot in reality and one foot in... whatever world he's discovered. Could be a bad ass world, but he isn't articulating it well enough...
For John Redhead, who remains one of the UK's most enigmatic climbers, The 2012 KMF will not be a gathering where he will be seen or heard. And not surprisingly, given that an appearance he made at Kendal in the late 1990s has become almost the stuff of legend. Many of the earnest, muscular climbers who had come to hear of his exploits on rock ended up fighting for the exits like the steerage section on the Titanic, while those who remained witnessed a battle between hecklers and Redhead's volume control. When I asked him about 'the Kendal Gig' he explained:
Oh yes, the 'Kendal Gig'! What is it about the outdoor sector and creativity? Is sport an enemy of art? I guess the punters wanted to hear the big names talk about moves and numbers instead of ideas and possibilities. My show was based on the rites and considerations of the 'hunt', like being in a state of grace where all parties are involved.
I treated the subject very much like the sacred ground before a climb. This is not Pepsi-Max culture, and not something most climbers would want to pay money to hear. But that's what they got, as I turned up the volume to counteract the yells of abuse. Kendal is the epitome of the redneck mainstream climber festival. I gave the same show at Bangor University and stayed for hours afterwards having meaningful dialogue and discussion on the poetry and issues involved.
The Leaping Boy: Johnny Dawes half man, half monkey and half sane. The strange times and scary climbs of Britain's metaphysical rock-master. (Climbing Nov-Dec 1996. By Ed Douglas.)
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