Ron Fawcett....Young Pretender

The following interview, entitled 'Ron Fawcett: A brief interview with the superstar of British Rock' first appeared sometime in the mid 70's in the Geoff Birtles edited Crags magazine. Unfortunately, Crags didn't bother with such minor details as dates or-in this instance,authorship- so all I can tell you is that it appeared in issue three and I'm guessing the interviewer was Geoff Birtles himself?

Ron Fawcett is a 21-year-old student teacher—six foot two, eyes of blue and rapidly being recognised as the most out­standing British rock-climber since Joe Brown. Born and bred at Embsay in Yorkshire, a few minutes' walk away from the gritstone of Crookrise, he began climb­ing in the good tradition of finding his own way to the crag at the age of fifteen. By the time he was 16 his name was becoming known, and as teenage flash-in-the ­pans go, he has been busy dazzling others for the last five years.

 

His climbing partner, Chris Gibb, says that Ron's likings are sex, women and Pernod. Doesn't drink beer, likes apple crumble with custard and loves girlie mags. Likes heavy rock music, doesn't change his socks and is as tight as—very thrifty. Hardly ever eats and is the second ugliest climber in the U.K.; also hates people talking when he is climbing, and is an erotic sun-worshipper. You might well wonder what all the fuss is about—but if you know anything at all about difficult climbs, his record speaks for itself. He can put into one month what it takes most ten years to achieve, and manages it all with amazing grace.

How long did it take before you started leading extremes?  

After about a month of climbing at VS, HVS standard, I went on to the harder routes at Malham, which are good HVS and XS by Lakeland and Wales standards, After about four or five months I was leading things in the Lakes like The Ghost, Triermain Eliminate and so on.

 
This was at the age of 15?

Right.

 
You had no tuition, then?

No, no, I just climbed with a group of friends.

 

Were there any early influences?

Well, I met Al Evans early on. He was climbing in the Lakes a lot at that time and he directed me on to the hard climbs of the day.

 

When did you first start doing new routes?

The first decent one would have been Mulatto Wall at Malham when I was 17.

 

So what have you been mess­ing about at for the last four years?

Well, in that time I met and climbed with Pete Livesey. I came across him just climbing around Yorkshire when he was doing climbs like Face Route, Rebel and Jenny Wren. So I began climbing with him and did routes in the Lakes with him like Cruel Sister and Risus on Pavey Ark, both second ascents. He was obviously by far the most outstand­ing climber in Yorkshire. He and John Sheard were doing all the hard routes.

 

What did you learn from Livesey, who didn't come good until his late twenties?

Obviously Pete set out to make a name for himself, and in the first year he climbed hard, he did it. Hie trained on walls—Bradford, Roth-. well, Leeds. And where he worked then, at Scunthorpe, they 'had a climbing wall and he trained on this regularly, systematically using. weights, carrying weights, traverses. I think that was the first time this was ever done to such an extent. The techniques he developed in­doors he then applied to the crag.

 

So you learned the importance of training.

Right. He had been a top class runner and had applied the principles of his athletic training to climbing.

 

When you were 15 you were a very skinny youth. Now you have got one or two muscles which don't come from no­where. Are you using a training programme?

I saw Livesey improve his tech­nique through training.

 

You are avoiding the question. Just how do you train?

In winter I climb on gym walls and try to vary the visits as it can get 'boring. But it gets to be a big social event. It is really good in some ways; better than going on the crag in winter. You don't get cold, you can have a brew in the cafe. Also, I go running in the winter.

Some of the Yorkshire lads run before starting to climb. Why is this?

I just need to warm up and get my blood circulating. Any athlete warms up first—why not for climbing?

I feel certain that some of the best climbers around are exer­cising like mad behind locked doors. So come on, cough up and let us know what you do. Press-ups. How many?

One or two.

This is like robbing the Crown Jewels!

Well, 200 straight off before I get tired. But then again, top gymnasts could probably go on to 1,000.

Do you think training is essential today to climb at a competitive, standard?

I think it must be. It is getting now that people do a lot of boulder problems, repetition climbing, just for training.

 

Are we a long way behind athletes for fitness?

Yes, I certainly think we must be.

 

Will training seriously push standards forward? Might we see a grade 7 before you are thirty?

Yes, even five years ago people would have thought a route like Cave Route at Gordale would have been impossible free. Now it's gone, and there are routes comparable in Derbyshire. So there you are proof.

 

Stamina seems to be the factor common to the best climbers of today. Is this the kind of strength you are seeking?

Yes, take Livesey again. He's very fit overall. The fitter you are, the safer you are going to feel and keep overall control, mentally as well. So you know you can climb down or push yourself further. If you are unfit you lose control, start shaking and lose your mental grip.

 

Moving on to equipment, we now have such sophisticated protection as to make falling off an acceptable strategy, whereas 20 years ago this was in most cases out of the question. How does this in­fluence your standard?

Some days I go on the crag knowing 'I will probably fall off and I don't care. It is part of the game to me.

 

Does the equipment and the attitude it produces allow you to climb to your limit?

Virtually, yes.

 

Well, it sounds a stupid attitude really.

I think it's good.

 

The word is that you have to be pretty ugly to climb good. 

Obviously! Livesey is the ugliest climber in Britain and would do Madame Tussaud's a treat. The uglier you are the better you climb.

 

What about all these high minded ethics that are flying about?

I think a lot of it is a load of rubbish: purely because the people who preach it don't practice it. Just who doesn't yo-yo? If you have to lower down off a runner to rest—just who does take all their runners out 'before trying again. You tell me. But I do feel that if a route goes free then I either climb it that way or go down.

 

Well what about, say, Great Wall on Cloggy, which is one of the best climbs in Britain, and within the scope of many with, say, one or two aid points? How do you justify depriving all these climbers of their pleasure?

Personally I would do it only free. But for others, if they want to use aid—use it. It's not doing me any harm. Cenotaph Corner is a better example.

 

How do you use the modern equipment to its best advantage         

This is a personal thing. I always wear EB footwear and if not in shorts I wear 'Helly-Hansen polar  trousers and jacket, which is warm,hard wearing and allows total flexibility. I also use a harness and rack my wires on my right, smallest first,getting bigger to the back. I carry my chalk bag in the middle and my  hexentrics and slings on my left, same again, smallest first.If the climb is hard I might carry one wire on eack krab. You get it off to a fine art. which is necessary on a steep climb. the main thing is your system works.

Which Climbers do you rate?

Apart from my dad, Jerry Peel Ive seen climb a lot. He's very cool.

 

Jerry is a classic example of a power climber.

Yes, but he's very good on technical stuff as well. You would have to see him to see how good he is. And there's Tom Proctor as well. On his home ground he's very good — very strong. John Allen has always impressed me, and of course Livesey. I think he is the best rock-climber in the world. Definitely!

 

Why Livesey?

Results. Look at the top 20 routes in this country and he has either put them up or done them.

 

What is all this about erotic pebbles in the chalk bag?

A necessity. You must 'have pebbles—two big round ones.

 

What about chalk? As you well know there is much criticism about its use. Do you feel you have made an inferior ascent of a climb when you use chalk on a climb done previously without?

No, not really. As long as I did i­f free I'd be happy. I buy it by the kilo.

What about the environmental problem? Fair enough on lime­stone, it is not visible from a distance, but on gritstone it is a real eyesore. How do you settle your conscience on this issue?

I admit it is unsightly but makes the climb easier, which is what it's all about.

 

So for you chalk is a selfish thing?

Yes, perhaps it is. It's one of thos things. We all use artificial aids ­EBs, ropes, runners. Fair enough they don't leave a mark, but they a degrade the climbing to some­ extent.

Do you think chalk is here to stay? Or will it go out of style as with pegs?

I think it is here to stay. Chalk makes free climbing easier.

 

So how do we solve the environmental problem?

Maybe coloured chalk.

 

Where have you climbed outside Britain?

Yosemite, Saussois, the Vercors and the Berchtesgader.

 

Where for you is the rock climber's Utopia?

Yosemite, without any doubt.

 

What did you do over there?

Mainly the shorter, harder routes, and the Nose on El Cap in 18 hours climbing time 

 
Who is the kingpin over there?

Hard to say really. I wasn't there it in the main seasons and consequently only met a small group. But of those I saw I should think John Long, Dale 'Bard, Ron Cork these were really outstanding. I did the Nose with Long.

 

How does, say, Long rate with British climbers?

I should think over here he would rank with the best.

 

Why have you not climbed in the Alps yet?

Quite simply, I don't like the cold. That's the main reason.

 

Is it true that you are an erotic sun-worshipper?

Definitely, love it.

 

Do you enjoy competitive climbing?

Yes, who doesn't, whatever his standard ?

What about organised competition climbing?

I don't know. This Russian business seems a -bit far-fetched, speed climbing and all that. A lot of it seems away from the point of our way of climbing. We are already forging ahead at top-level free climbing and leading, whereas the Russians are top-roping.

 

Do you think we would have the high standards of to-day if it wasn't for our own style of impromptu competition?

No! Take Derbyshire as an example. 'For a few years a handful of you local lads had it virtually to themselves. Today there is a strong team getting to Derbyshire all the time and things have hotted up. Routes are getting harder and no doubt this is due to the competition.

 

Are we going to see a breakthrough to 6b soon?

It's not so much a sudden jump as a gradual progression really. But I feel it is not far away.

 

 So here you are, a 21-year-old star, and you've never been a plumber or a margarine sales­man—amazing. Do you really bath in rubber gloves to keep your hands from going soft?

You can't publish that.

It's all right, the tape's switched off.

Crags 4: Apparently Chris Bonington's head appeared,top centre, just as Geoff Birtles was taking the shot.However,GB refused to have CB in the picture and tippexed it out. Ahh...the good old days before photo editing suites!

First published in Crags 3 (Date Unknown?)

 

The Boulder: a philosophy for bouldering...review.

I was less than half way through Francis Sanzaro’s  The Boulder-a philosophy for bouldering when it struck me. I just haven’t got a clue what this guy is on about? It appeared that the author was attempting to define the physical act of bouldering within a socio-cultural and quasi spiritual framework but to be honest, it was really passing over my head. Mind you, I’m no intellectual but I know a man who is. Enter Harold Drasdo; someone for whom the mantle of climbing intellectual fits perfectly. Here is someone whom could recite Homer’s The Odyssey-backwards-in 14^th century Icelandic. Furthermore, he co edited The Mountain Spirit. An anthology of mountain related essays from Steiner to Beckett. If anyone could decipher Sanzaro’s work he could. Sadly, after receiving the book back from him the other day with a message that he didn’t like it, understand it and furthermore, had no intention of writing anything so unworthy of a critique,  I was back to square one. 

For the record, Francis Sanzaro is described as ‘a climber and a philosopher who believes that a sustained engagement with the fundamental concepts of bouldering is necessary for the sport and essential for the boulderer to master the craft’... Ahh..right so! I can appreciate that the actual physical act of climbing is open to a variety of interpretations that include scientific, cultural and spiritual elements. The thing is, I don’t accept that bouldering whatever the standard is imbued with otherworldly elements. The British Victorian and Edwardian early bouldering pioneers took on early problems in the same spirit as they engaged in a variety of activities. Because it was fun and because it was good practice. The lone hillwalker who strays from the path because he is attracted by an interesting little wall or boulder,does so to spice up the day. He/She might only be taking on a 20’ V Diff crack. It has no significance other than as an interesting diversion.

At the opposite end of the scale, I actually don’t believe someone like Dave Macleod tackles a top end bouldering problem as anything more than a sporting challenge. At a personal level, to succeed is to bring about a sense of achievement and satisfaction. Perhaps underlying a successful demolition of a long standing problem are more base motives; laying down the gauntlet to perceived rivals; impressing commercial sponsors; receiving the adulation of admiring fans etc. I don’t think Dave would see his activities through Rose coloured, star shaped hippy dippy sunglasses somehow.

If I just randomly open the book and find a passage to give you an idea of the the author’s style how about..’ Following Freuds' concept of how we come to naturalise external authority into conscious morality, one could take the naturalisation of a sequence a process of internalisation-though it takes time, the sequence that at first feels awkward and alien is eventually internalised etc’ Or how about.....’Opening a boulder problem is an intervention; it is the anthropomorphism of textured surfaces; it is the personification of pure space with the minimal amount of features’.

And so on and so on. My late Father had a saying..Bullshit baffles brains’. If you haven’t seen Peter Sellers last film ‘Being There’ then I can tell you that apart from it being a brilliant film it also is a perfect example of the BBB theory. In the film Chance the Gardener becomes Chancy Gardener, a simple soul whose everyday horticultural sayings are taken as profound economic metaphors. I’m not accusing Francis Sanzaro of being a climbing Chancy Gardener, rather the reverse. Someone who takes a simple activity and wraps it in profound meaning, complex language and obtuse metaphor .

After saying that, perhaps my failing to understand this book is down cultural factors or perhaps its academic tone suggests the author seeks to engage with a small but enlightened readership?   After all, Mr Sanzaro is a university lecturer teaching philosophy and religion in Maine which suggests the average UKC reader will be equally nonplussed!  If it’s any consolation for the author and publisher it is the fact that reviews are highly subjective so hopefully, there will be reviewers out there who actually understand what the author is trying to put across. Perhaps it may be praised as a classic of the genre? For myself, well...it was like being on a mountain when the clouds come down. You occasionally see something you recognize before it disappears into the murk. 

The Boulder: A philosophy for bouldering is available from Stone Country Press

John Appleby: 2013 

 

Continuity of Being

Following the recent publication of David Craig's eulogic essay on the land art movement, Perfectly mobile-Perfectly Still , artist and climber John Redhead was prompted to dust off and re-work an article which addressed the land art movement and in particular,one of it's more successful and mainstream artists, David Kemp.He offers it here as something of a riposte to David Craig's unashamedly romantic overview of the movement.

‘The land artists don't look beyond, to gods or demons; they deal with the trees, the rocks, the waters as they are…’ David Craig

An artist’s job is ‘looking beyond’, because they do not have the arrogance of presuming what the trees, the rocks and the waters are… nobody knows, ‘as they are’…

‘Meaning is but little to these men; all they care for is line, shape, agreement of contours… I have no patience with lunatics…’ Freud.

David Kemp is one of only two local artists gathered in for a collaborative visual arts project under the parasol of St. Ives International – A Quality of Light. A combined effort of heavy, grant pulling professionals, comprising the St. Ives Tate, Newlyn Art Gallery and the International Institute of Visual Arts. A ‘quality of light’ is an adage pertaining to the Penwith Peninsula. It is in this most southerly geographical region that light ‘talks’ its language of intense, ‘magical’ clarity that clothes the rocky coastline so distinctively. It is a familiar language and age-old with the countless artists who have ‘decorated’ its shores for over a hundred years. Big skies and big seas and big Art weigh heavy with expectation of appreciation. I am initially open to it after my body is ragged by days of bouldering at Clodgy Point with a young Barnaby Carver. But the light is already burning my senses; I cannot swim and feel tired by so many artists swanning around in this colourful, arty hell, seemingly sentenced by art history, romance and some ‘oceanic’ sense of the aesthetic.

Armed only with the sparse information gathered together on the free guide, a pair of shades and a means of escape, I head out from the burnt-out fleshpots of St. Ives and its serried Visa and Mastercard contents. Behind the wheel I ponder the guide’s spurious contents - ‘Welcome to the first St. Ives International - prompted by the distinctive quality of light of West Cornwall - artists from Croatia and the Philippines...’ I cannot imagine how such an international field could possibly relate their ‘art’ to light-fantastic West Cornwall.

So, a little confused, reading between the lines, I dodge and weave along the narrows of Zennor, and with speed, an enthusiastic promise of change – David Kemp, anthropologist and archaeologist extraordinaire, uncovers the remains of a fictional Late Iron Age solar cult...!

The van skirmishes past the ghostly, charred remains of Trendrine Hill, with stones scattered like sacked tombs, their secrets stilled like a shell-shocked army paralysed with fright. Arsenic-traps and tunnels lay deep-hushed in oxide-dreams while the bluebells and bracken push through the black earth like Pompeii horror to proclaim their right to an assured fertility. Since Roman times this earth was gripped in the sweaty grasp of labour. And I ponder Ra zooming across the sky in his tin-solar-machine and a horned Isis, rubbered-up at the sink, headdress of a solar-disk; a defiled land, a silted-up yoni and a broken phallus and the superstitions and doctrines and religions that suppress mankind... and Botallack, at last! At last!

And the Count House. The drive is the first test of appreciation and ‘will to art’. It is a veritable obstacle course and for me, the first inkling of a joke by a man brought up amongst broken heaps and ruins. Sleeping ‘feds’ disguised as rocks, ruts and chasms would test the skills of a Sherman tank driver. This is no car park for the average art tourist! Is this a clever device to reconstruct the trail to see the pre-art shamanic figures in Horseshoe Canyon, Utah? Practically, I wonder how many broken exhaust pipes lay dismembered within David Kemp’s workshop? I thanked the clearance under my van that no bits from my German monster will be ‘reclaimed’ for a future ‘Mad Max’ mobile! A flippant comment, yes, puerile and obvious maybe, but yes, as I thankfully park my intact machine, and my initial observation – Mad Max terrain! Yo, lets be daft!

David Kemp has produced a museum within a museum to house the reworked, recreated relics ‘unearthed’ from the abandoned tin mines that litter the landscape of the area. One is presented by a start-line anthropological journey – a spiritual legacy, ritual, mythocentric time. ‘Art of Darkness’ presents the archaeological remains of a fictional, Late Iron Age solar cult, which harnessed the energy of the sun and dominated the culture of Western Europe.

This is an environment, a site-specific array of Sky Gods, sun cults, shrines and artefacts of a lost culture, finely crafted by a man with a keen eye on the tribal and a keen tongue on the trivial. David Kemp is a joker. And of course his work is a balancing act to the remains of industrialisation that surrounds him. I appreciate he is not a reveller in beauty. I will recognise him in the pub because he will be wearing a woolly jumper with ‘myth mirth’ emblazoned across the chest and Kokopelli’s phallus tattooed on his forehead! But this is an excellent story from such a hasty discovery, that of a disavowed society anthropomorphised into a more accessible primitive root system. This journey of fragments and of gems is not ours, but of the African, the Aztec and the Aboriginal. The discovery of a lost antecedent is not ours but a whimsical wish, a madcap and clever reverie of myth and symbol. Funny and aesthetic, it is sculptural, pagan wallpaper! Hurrah, ice creams and a range of souvenirs. The idiot in me loves it – I think I am supposed to be bemused – my game-face knows there is something wrong. I think too much!

Symbolism is a fashion of the great Art establishments, pooling in their resources, and capturing all the funds for the great 'cult' land-artists to spit and spew? I guess that this show denies the energy of the sigil and the processes of awakening latent atavisms? Dare I joke about ancient memory? Who knows what entities are awakened here and is Kemp’s inspiration an atavistic-upheaval of ecstasy, anguish and obsession? Okay, so I am not a believer in making art interesting or accessible and I find novelty difficult. But lighten up, come on, Kemp’s okay, he is not possessed, he works in a workshop not a studio, he doesn’t ‘do’ art, he is an artisan, he’s one of the boys! The joke and the magick are on us! But…

The tourists with bored, trailing children will love it – but of course they also love candyfloss and ice creams. Can this be a sanctuary for the ancient art of storytelling? Maybe, but what story? The story of greed and avarice and profit for the few who honeycombed Cornwall’s underworld and left it propped ‘senseless’ in an industrial nightmare? The cost to the natural world could not have been greater and I think this brain-dead malaise continues its corporate oppression in Art. Art has taken over the industrial nightmare by honeycombing our souls. It is proportionate to this view that a tin mine could eventually become a museum! A National Trust funded, permanent reminder of some of the worst aspects of man’s endeavour - a graveyard of a landscape – flowered by ‘Free Cornwall’, and ‘English out’ graffiti. ‘The whole is other than the sum of its parts’, and this show is the fun part, and the one I am uneasy with. The museum theme works for the oddball rationale of this show, but let’s be careful. A museum is of history, learning what you can along the way, speaking of a past and a way that has gone. Image making should not be confused with such a business. 

The images in this exhibition have no ancestral ritual usage. Only a clever aesthetic attribute is being represented and too analogous to popular B movie culture for me. Surely when Art is at its most potent…it recreates…and one has to dig a bit deeper to be nourished? I don’t mind the Mona Lisa or Guernica being mocked as precious, they are just the other side of the business coin. They can rot in their own way and good luck to them. They have done their bit. My problem is that this kind of art de-values, dilutes and negates a real-time legacy of a collected soul, that is not bathed in aesthetics or purpose or humour or business…it encourages impotency in this knowledge and language which, with effort and will, is there for all to feel and discover and move through into realms and purpose unknown. You may see this ‘unknown’ as trinkets everyday and not know it. If you want to feel the difference, go to Horseshoe Canyon. It is an insult to say land art follows the tradition of Aboriginal intent, because their rituals and form are beyond the processes of nature. Imagination here is stillborn and irrelevant! It is here that romantic poets lose battle, badly.

Kemp has his place assured in the best of Land-Art. Can one say that the industrial heritage he so wishes to cleverly transcend, is, in its turn merely helping to destroy the soul of mankind in other ways? By encouraging an aesthetic and a superficial perception of beauty, which are easy fashionable goals and goods, can a true grasping of the ‘whole’, of beyond, be incoming? Is Land-Art down to earth? I believe it to be the opposite. I find it in the land of teddy bears and dolls to which a child is attached and can become addicted to. Land artists love down to earth statements proclaiming impermanence and artworks that are unpretentious… so what! I have lost so many works that have rotted to earth, not in the sake of art, but by being a careless and bad keeper! Sure, it does not belong with the highly treasured business of art in the galleries but nevertheless has its place in the pack of cards called ‘to art’. It may illustrate a chapter in Kemp’s book of creation, but is it a verse of the great psalm chanted by the Cosmos? But hey, what the hell, all is valid, lets have a laugh, it’s a great show! My heart and soul beats to a different game.

So, I guess, artists should not comment on art!

 The poet and the artist.

An abridged version of this review featured in the St Ives Echo, June 1997

John Redhead: 1997/2013