UKC

"I was hungover when I did Indian Face. It’s a long walk up there, so you sort of recover. You puke it out. When I finished the thing we all went to the Dolbardarn Disco – everybody would meet there.

There were all sorts of inappropriate liaisons and things. It was in a hotel and the music was kind of like quite daggy disco, kind of redneck disco, really. And everybody used to meet there, and it was Thursday.

And we all met down at the disco, it was a sort of triumph for Welsh climbing, it was like our reply to all this sport climbing. We hadn’t chipped it, we hadn’t bolted it, and it was quite hard. This was our way of doing it in Wales. 

And you sort of think, “Do people like climbing or not?” They seem to like pulling. I think they like pulling rather than making love."

Read more at: http://www.ukclimbing.com/news/

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

I think we now know who ate all the pies.

Bet he is still the shit though.

In reply to Will Hunt:

I bet he is but he appears to have taken interview master classes from John Prescott. It's either been typed up badly or he speaks a lot of gibberish.

In reply to biscuit:

I didn't think it was gibberish - a bit strange possibly, but articulate, and seemingly quite raw. Climbing have had a series of great in-depth interviews going for a while now, all of which have made fascinating reading. It's great that they can get so many amazing climbers - really some of the best ever - to open up in that way. I don't think you could get sportsmen in many other disciplines to do the same.

John

In reply to JGW:

Alot of it IS gibberish to the mere mortal (including me!) - I'm sure it makes sense to Johnny though. The fact that he just "thinks so differently" to most other climbers is probably one of the things that made him so exceptional.

And not forgetting

JOHNNY LIVE ON ROCKTALK 6.30pm: 14 Jun 2001
Which was organised by Jude Calvert-Toulmin

"When you can't hang on a hold but only just, it's possible to hang on the hold by using the process of jugification. If you swing your centre of gravity at the right time the hold can be made momentarily good enough. Really fast Crouching Tiger type movement can render any piece of rock into a contextual hold if rotational energy is used. Check-out the martial art of Bagua.

There are also tales of Tai-Chi masters who are able to make themselves very light. At times when I have been fully immersed I have been able to be much stronger than I am physically. I believe desire and familiarity with the crags's rhythms can untap super-normal performance. This is why I climb. To find out what I really am."

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=2488

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: Ahh linking to other sources the very acme of journalism.

Your Pulitzer prize can only be so far away....



so far and yet so far.

In reply to Anonymous:

Power of the internet........or had you not noticed hyperlinks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink

Glad to have you onboard

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: No you're not, if you were you would invite me to return.

In reply to Anonymous: do you see your self like the queen requiring a formal invite, a 21 gun salute, and a corgi delivered to your door before you can sign in

In reply to johnj: What! No tiara?

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<FLOUNCE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In reply to Anonymous:

Sorry. Not my department.

But please submit your application.

In reply to biscuit:

Haha! Have you never come across Johnny Dawes before!? He is a pint-sized bundle of manic energy, and words just fall out of him in a stream of conciousness. It's not easyt to listen to or understand, but there is a lot of meaning in there.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

I would like to see the expression on Alan's face if he does.

In reply to Monk:

And watching him move is very like watching crouching tiger...

In reply to Monk:
He did a mumbling incoherent presentation a few years back for the NMC, resplendant with table gymnastics, upside down crap slides, Ayrton Sennna video tapes and body geometry philosophy. At the end, there was the "Any questions" bit. One of the local hotshots (Mr C Cragg's term) asked "Do you expect to get paid after a load of sh|te like that?" "I'll come back fo free" he said, and he nearly did.

Second time around, the "body geometry philosophy" kind of stuff was exactly the same, but the slides were the right way up and he wasn't stoned. And he was bloody good, in his own way. He gave me a lift back to Morpeth, and carried on in the same vain without repetition, hesitation or deviation.

The guy is a one off, superb.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:
"Really fast Crouching Tiger type movement can render any piece of rock into a contextual hold if rotational energy is used... "

and only if the actor's body weight is held by a metal wire which is later air brushed out, thus inventing the House of Flying Daggers `flying technique', like Santa Claus. Quite right though johnny, great film(s).


OK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baguazhang


Yeah, instantaneously, just like a projectile. These tales are bollocks. To see what the human body is capable of see Parkour, Tony Jaa, and even Jackie Chan.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

Is it me or has age and weight-gain rendered the great man a tad more comprehensible? Or has he been ruthlessly edited into shape?

Is that his first full-length interview in a US magazine? It's odd in a way that they didn't take more notice of him back in his heyday in the mid-80s. I suppose routes like Indian Face are more in the mainstream now, in a US context, whereas back then the attention was all on the first hard sport routes at Smith Rock etc

In reply to 1234None:
It is fun to read and does seem to mean quite a lot although like poetry it is hard to say exactly what.

I like it because it is so different but compliments rather prosaic books about training. I think there is an element in what he talks about of why we all go climbing.

In reply to tobyfk:


A decade or so ago, he was the token hard core climber at the Mountaineering Literature Festival, then held at Bretton Hall. He was lined up to do a schoolboy type exam in the form of an assigned essay. I was cringing and I'm sure many others were. It just seemed an embarrassing gimmick (albeit a bold one). Off went Johnny like some demented schoolboy leering at his nubile invigilator. And an hour or two later, back he came with a confused wad of scribbles.

F*ck me, it was brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. Searingly raw, nothing held back. None of the insulation that we wind around ourselves to keep the horrors at bay. Yes, of course it needed rewriting and editing. But it was brilliant.

Like many others, I struggle to understand much of what he's trying to say. And I certainly didn't understand everything that he said that day. But any honest person in the room would have had to admit that they were in the presence of genius. It may have been flawed, sporadic, even bloody irritating at times. But it was genius.

I accept that none of this answers your question, Toby. Has the genius deepened, matured, even mellowed? Or has it faded... or simply vanished? I don't know - but I'm more than willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt.

Mick

In reply to Mick Ward: I saw him speak in Pembroke 5 or 6 years ago and it seems by all accounts that I had a most atypical Dawes experience. It was a pretty straightforward account of his travails on the Indian Face, rounded off with a bit of fun balancing a couple of stones on top of each other. Nothing remotely incomprehensible.

Interestingly both he and Jerry Moffat who was also lecturing ganged up on Redhead, claiming that he did a lot more pre practising of his routes than he pretended.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: Rich and I met Johnny in Llanberis the weekend of the Gogarth Festival whilst we were doing our round of Hard Rock.

We had a very lucid account of how it would be possible to reduce our Hard Rock time of 5 weeks down to around 24 hours by speed soloing all the routes and having use of a helicopter as transport!!!!

Regardless of what he was saying, he did manage to hold everyone's attention. A great character and an amazing asset to British climbing.

In reply to Mark Stevenson: Me and my then climbing partner met him at a crag in 1984 or therabouts. He was soloing stuff (and falling off - he bounces as well). We didn't know him from Adam (being from the South west & all). He was very talkative & massively enthusiastic about just about anything.

At the end of the day we were both speechless "who the f**k was that". We were in absolute awe. Recognised him from the mags later on. I've never been so completely gobsmacked by a climber before or since.

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com: Out of intrest Which was the "E8-" by Nick Dixon which he refers to?

Joe

In reply to joe_alexander:

Assume Johnny was talking about Doug.......

http://www.rockfax.com/databases/r.php?i=5781

In reply to seagull: Cheers

In reply to Mick Ryan - UKClimbing.com:

Does anyone remember his Glass of Water essay in OTE in the ninetys it takes 10 reads to get it.But the theme which runs through Jonny is a state of mind (Watch stone monkey)
Climbing is not a sport like squash it is a vocation that affects more than the activity of moving over rock.

In reply to Mick Ward: He once explained to me how the whole of life, of entire existence, could be described using four shapes (I think it was four). He drew a series of sketches to illustrate it and bugger me! It clicked and suddenly I could see what he was getting at!

The morning after, it had all evaporated and all I had was a torn beer mat with some funny-looking heiroglyphs scribbled on it. BUT his shape theory WORKED, even if only for those fleeting hours in a bar on West Street! Now, if only I could find that bit of paper...

In reply to BrianT:

I don't doubt it. He seems to live so far outside the normal structures that enclose us and give us such illusory notions of security.

'But I guess that those heroes must always live their lives
where you and I have only been.' (Leonard Cohen)

I'm certain he had (and still has?) massive talent. There's a parsimonious part of me that hates waste - especially wasted talent. So I hope he harnesses it, uses it - for us, for him.

Mick

P.S. I've a mate who used to be Johnny's business manager. Not sure how much business was done but Tony said it was a real rollercoaster ride. He was never bored!

In reply to BrianT: I once had a similar experience in a bar in Llanberis - once met, never forgotten and definitely, a national treasure. I had a non-climber friend with me, who'd never heard of him and he was literally 'gobsmacked'. Incidentally, I heard that he's writing an autobiography, but having problems due to the fact that he can't remember a lot. The story is that he's having to ask climbing partners etc. to fill in the gaps. Anyway, I'd prebook a copy now 'cos if he does manage to get his story together it'll be a clasic of its kind. Rock on Johnny!

In reply to Mick Ward: Jude found the bit of paper with the heiroglyphs on! I'd need him to explain it all over again though, unless I stare at it really really hard perhaps. Maybe some mushrooms would help...