AUGUST 2012
“ I ALWAYS PLAY LIKE I COULD DIE OUT THERE “
Yelawolf / Hot Chip / Pyro Pete / Sigur Rós / Felix Baumgartner / Sixto Rodriguez / Björk / Christian Bale
A BEYOND THE ORDINARY MAGAZINE
TRAVIS BARKER
THE WORLD’S HARDEST-WORKING DRUMMER SUMMER FESTIVALS
Beyoncé’s insider tip
OLIVER STONE
tackles Mexican drug wars
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THE WORLD OF RED BULL
August 38
TRAVIS BARKER Four years ago the Blink-182 drummer was in critical condition. He’s spent the time since blurring musical genres and reuniting his band. He talks about family, touring, and a Muppet.
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: LAUREN DUKOFF. PHOTOGRAPHY: LAUREN DUKOFF, GETTY IMAGES, DENIS ROUVRE/CORBIS OUTLINE, LUKE AIKINS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
TRAVIS, INK
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BEATS AND STRINGS Backed by an orchestra, soul bard Aloe Blacc married classical and hip-hop in a special live streaming project. We check out how it went.
“I HAVE A RIGHT TO BE MAD” Outspoken Hollywood director Oliver Stone may be hungover, but he’s as composed as ever when he speaks to The Red Bulletin.
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“Rock stars and strippers work the same hours.”
Does a tattoo tell a thousand words as well? Then what you’re looking at on the front cover is James Joyce’s Ulysses meets the Hunger Games trilogy. The ink, Travis Barker tells writer Steve Appleford, is a chronicle of memories, not all of them good (p. 38). On death’s door after a plane crash in 2008, the Blink-182 drummer has emerged as one of the most prolific, genre-bending musicians around. And as a tireless performer on the festival circuit, he’s the perfect candidate to grace our festival issue. Well, him, and “world’s best roadie” Jef Hickey, who gave us a rider for his photo shoot demanding his font be two points larger than the rest of the magazine (p. 20). Here you go, Jef. Here you go, readers. Enjoy. —Your editorial team
Jef Hickey
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RED BULL STRATOS Can Felix Baumgartner really go supersonic as he free falls from the edge of space? The answer lies in some complex calculations.
THE WORLD OF RED BULL
August CHRISTIAN BALE With the new Batman movie set to take over the world’s cinemas, the secret identity of its star is revealed: The clowns, the frowns, the ups and downs.
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FLAMENCO IN THE SKY Red Bull X-Fighters in California: Four days of tricks, crazy tattoos, broken bones, and a few tips for mom.
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GHETTO BIENNALE When Haitian artists weren’t allowed to leave their country, the art world came to Haiti.
22 SMALL BANG THEORY
The starter’s pistol ain’t what it used to be. An electronic flash and boom now gets them started in track and field.
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46 I was not lost, just “ in Detroit. „ Rodriguez
08 Photo Gallery 14 News 20 Jef Hickey: Rock’s most-wanted road warrior 24 Red Bull Paper Wings 46 The musician who came back from dead 56 Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
PHOTOGRAPHY: PICTUREDSK.COM, JÜRGEN SKARWAN, GETTY IMAGES, GIAN PAUL LOZZA, BENJAMIN LOWY
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TRAINING TIPS: NEED FOR SPEED Moto2 riding star Marc Márquez reveals how his impressive speed isn’t down to brawn or the throttle.
pepejeans.com
THE WORLD OF RED BULL
August THE LIST From funk queen Janelle Monáe performing at a Narnia-style festival in Norway to a whole load of bulls rampaging through the Spanish streets, we bring you the month’s best events worldwide.
26 LUCKY NUMBERS: MYSTERY FIGURES
2012 is clearly playing a few number games, what with three Friday-the-13ths and the world definitely scheduled to end yet again. Here are those, and other, devilish digits decoded.
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84 MONTREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL
Every summer for the past 46 years, Claude Nobs has invited top musicians to perform by Lake Geneva. The festival director reveals his top eight Montreux sights with a special place in pop history.
more
Body & Mind 86
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Whether it’s KISS, The Rolling Stones, or Mötley Crüe, if they want to blow things up, Pyro Pete is their man. He reveals how mayhem gets made.
Ink these in your diary.
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SUMMER FESTIVAL GUIDE
Musicians live and breathe music—and they know what’s good. Here, the pros reveal their top shows to catch. Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek, above, is a favorite of Kings of Leon’s Jared Followill.
90 NIGHTLIFE
SAVE THE DATE
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KAINRATH
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MIND’S EYE
Our cartoonist
Columnist Jeff Wise muses on the importance of music.
A glamorous club, an exotic cocktail, a midnight snack, the best in music and much more—we’ve got everything you need to get you through the night.
PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (2), CORBIS. ILLUSTRATION: JULIA STALLER
GET THE GEAR
KOLOHE ANDINO Ph ot o: Jas on Ke n w or t h y
PUSHEAD X NIKE LEGACY TC BOARDSHORT + HYDRA VOID Wat e r -s h e d d i ng l i g ht we i g ht co mf o r t
NIKESURFING.COM
MAT TE R H O R N , SW IT Z E R L AN D
ROPE AND GLORY
At the top of Europe’s 11th-highest mountain, it’s 14,692 feet above sea level. Summitting the Matterhorn is still one of alpinism’s great challenges, but there are few new firsts left to chalk up. Swiss mountaineer Stephan Siegrist recently managed one, on a rope as thin as the air up there. After a pal’s suggestion—and what are friends for?—the two men climbed to the top, on a perfect windless day, where Siegrist steadily walked a slackline. www.stephan-siegrist.ch Photography: Thomas Senf
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PE’AH I , MAU I , HAWAI I
WAVE-FORMED
Here’s one for the nature/nurture debate. Is every 19-year-old kid from Maui capable of windsurfing “Jaws,” the break off the Hawaiian island’s north coast that can produce 50-foot waves? Or is Kai Lenny a special case, a genetic miracle, the only one of his peers who grew up in the shadow of Jaws with the innate ability to come to grips with it? Lenny sees his conquest of the blue in black and white: “I could either sit around and play in the sand, or learn to surf.” Kai caramba! www.hawaiianwaterman.com Photography: David Holmqvist
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SURREY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
FLIPPING GREAT
Two years in the making, mountain-bike documentary Strength in Numbers gets to the heart of the sport and its ever-increasing number of devotees. Among the featured bikers is 16-year-old Canadian Anthony Messere, who has been in the saddle competitively half his life. From the hills of Utah to the slopes of Nepal, and other countries between, the film captures the thrill and spectacle of mountain biking like no other. Watch it now on DVD and Blu-ray, or via iTunes. www.anthillfilms.com; www.redbull.com/bike Photography: Sterling Lorence
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Bullevard Sports and culture on the quick
High Riders
Giant jellyfish at the Stereosonic Festival.
Rock stars’ demands never fail to amaze gig promoters: Be it backstage cornstarch or two dozen red roses, a custom toilet seat or a bag of Gummi Bears for post-gig comedown. But who wants what?
1
2 LL Cool J
Madonna
Flights of fancy 3
4
Marilyn Manson
Trent Reznor
Designs In Air creates crowd-pleasing visual candy featured at music festivals worldwide.
Like tentacles they wrap around stages; giant jellyfish hanging inside marquees. Since 1994, Luke Egan and Pete Hamilton have been making glorious light-filled sculptures under the banner Designs In Air. They’re conceived on computers in 3D, then sewn together in Manchester, England, from fireproof nylon. The balloons travel all summer to festivals including Fuji Rock and Burning Man. www.designsinair.com
PICTURES OF THE MONTH
a
c
b
d Answers: 1b, 2c, 3d, 4a
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EVERY SHOT ON TARGET
Taken a picture with a Red Bull flavor? Email it to us: phototicker@redbulletin.com Every month we print a selection, and our favorite pic is awarded a limited-edition Sigg bottle. Tough, functional and well-suited to sports, it features The Red Bulletin logo.
Alexandria, Egypt B-Boy Lil G is head over heels to perform at the Roman theater. Mohab Magdy
Pack it in Essentials for summer festivals
Dry Shampoo Mud in your hair? No showers on site? Give your head a spray of this stuff and your mane will be clean in minutes. Red Bull Youth America’s Cup sets sail.
PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (5), CORBIS (2), SHUTTERSTOCK (5), DESIGNS IN AIR, GILLES MARTIN-RAGET/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, CHRIS POLACK/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
America’s Cup: The next generation The greatest catamarans, the best sailors, the biggest boat race in the world: What ambitious yachtsman hasn’t dreamed of one day taking part in the America’s Cup? That dream is a little closer for the young and talented, thanks to the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup, which gives 19- to 23-year-olds their first chance of stepping up to the sailing big time. “It’s turning tradition upside down,” says Jimmy Spithill, 2010 America’s Cup winner. “And that’s great. Finally young people have a realistic chance of getting ahead as well.” The newcomers’ regatta kicks off in 2013 in San Francisco, in the middle of the action for the 34th America’s Cup. Anyone in the age bracket can apply, and 10 teams will take part. The chosen few will go forward to race the AC 45 catamaran (America’s Cup World Series class) for free. Applications will be available at: www.americascup.com
Trevor Baylis Eco Flashlight Part LED flashlight, part FM radio and part mobile phone charger, this shuns batteries in favor of wind-up power.
BEATS & STRINGS Backed by an orchestra, Aloe Blacc marries classical and hip-hop. Building bridges to bring different worlds together: That was the idea behind the Red Bull Beat Suite concert project in Melbourne, Australia. In mid-May, the Australian Youth Orchestra shared the stage with a handful of beat wizards and U.S. soul bard Aloe Blacc. Millions of music fans around the world watched the spectacle via livestream on YouTube, with conductor Tamil Rogen giving the songs a classical sheen. Have you ever played in an orchestra? Yes, trumpet at school. I thought with three buttons it must be the easiest instrument. I learned to read music, which I’m
happy about now. Do you prefer to sing accompanied by a band or an orchestra? The dynamic is different. With a band you have to sing louder. With strings the voice has less competition. Was it unusual for you to perform in front of an audience in a seated concert hall? Yes. But by the time we got to a bossa nova version of my song “I Need a Dollar,” the whole audience was out of their seats. The best use of strings in a pop song? I love the early Jackson 5 recordings, where you hear at least 20 instruments in a song. Highlights from the concert at: beatsuite.redbull.com.au
Pink Boots Festival footwear should be utilitarian, but it doesn’t need to be military green. These stylish mud waders are pretty in pink.
Aloe Blacc on the mic at the Red Bull Beat Suite concert.
redbull.com/culture
WE HAVE A WINNER!
Guadalajara, Mexico Entrants in Red Bull Manny Mania prove skating on two wheels is a balancing act. Miguel López
Kiev, Ukraine
Mismatch: Horsepower meets the Red Bull Racing RB7 Formula One car. Sergey Illin
Jelgava, Latvia
The Red Bull tour bus (with the band Makonstumeji on board) on the road. Kristaps Kains
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B U L L E VA R D
What Were You Thinking? Sally Fitzgibbons won the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach in Victoria, Australia, for the second consecutive year. Wizard of Oz: sallyfitzgibbons.com
Ethan Hunt’s got nothing on this.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ CGI When you’re the first people to BASE jump off the Willis Tower— formerly known as the Sears Tower—in Chicago, you really ought to get some kind of award for it. So props to Red Bull Air Force members Mike Swanson, Jon DeVore, Andy Farrington, and their colleagues JT Holmes and Julian Boulle, who won in the Best Specialty Stunt category at the Taurus World Stunt Awards for their wingsuited flying leap in Transformers 3. “We worked hard with the Chicago FAA, and they helped us set a precedent in our sport,” DeVore says. More than meets the eye: transformersmovie.com
“In this moment I am so excited that I think my head is going to fall off. There was a wave ridden in the last minute [by Steph Gilmore], so I was waiting and listening to see if she got the score, and when they called out that I was the winner I was truly beside myself. To go back to back at Bells is something I could have only dreamed of—seeing some of my heroes and legends of the sport do it was always an inspiration. It was an amazing moment and gives me goosebumps every time I think of it.”
If You Dare: Amateur MX
PHOTOGRAPHY: REX FEATURES, RED BULL DIRTY DOZEN, DDPIMAGES
You have a bike. You have a helmet. You have a taste for dirt. This summer at the Portland International Raceway, amateur motocross riders—in divisions ranging from 250cc junior to expert-level women—can compete for points over 12 races for the Red Bull Dirty Dozen title. The winner in each division will receive coaching to get them ready for the Red Bull Jams Motocross Performance Camp in Spring 2013. Gear up: thursdaynightmotocross.com
Muddy buddies.
Sofia Ramping up the action at Bulgarian street luge contest Red Bull Lagernica. Predrag Vuckovic 16
Spielberg In Austria, driving tips for ski-jump ace Thomas Morgenstern from David Coulthard. Samo Vidic
Panama City A wheelie good kiss for Aaron
Colton before a demo of his expert freestyle biking. Faisal Tisnes
WATCH ALL YEAR LONG RED BULL WAKE OPEN
NIKE US OPEN OF SURFING
SAT. JULY 14, 1:00PM - 3:00PM ET
SAT. SEPT 15, 1:30PM - 3:30PM ET REDBULLSIGNATURESERIES.COM
b u l l e va r d
where’s your head at?
Christian bale
With the new Batman movie set to take over the world’s cinemas, the secret identity of its star is revealed: The clowns, the frowns, the ups and downs.
Th e Le ad in g-Ma n
Little Man , Big Top
Di et
To play a man ravaged by insomnia in The Machinist (2004), Bal e lost 62 lbs. to weigh 119. He then had six months to muscle up for Batman Beg ins and swelled to 190. With weight gained and lost for other parts, too, one critic called it Bale’s “trademark.” Proving his bodily functions still work despite the yo-yoing body mass, Bale, in tradem ark fashion, said he’d like to empty his bladder on said critic’s shoes.
Christian Charles Philip Bale was born in Haverfordwest, in southwest Wales, on Jan. 30, 1974. His father was, among many things, a pilot and an importer of skateboards, while his mother was a dancer and circus performer. Not many boys can say mommy rode an elephant for a living, just as not many can say, as Bale does, that their first kiss was with a Polish trapeze artist.
Hig hs And Low s
In The Begin ning Was The Nerd
July 2008 was not an emotional rollercoaster for Bale; it was an emotional high-G centrifuge. In that month, he unleashed a sweary chewing out to a crew member in Terminator Salvation (leaked online in 2009), was questioned by police after a family fall-out at the Dorchester Hotel in London (no charges) and watched The Dark Knight begin a billion-dollar box office march.
Christian was briefly enrolled at the same kids’ theater company as Kate Winslet, but his first paying acting gig came in a TV ad for fabric softener. At 10, he appeared on stage in London’s West End in The Nerd, earning £12 ($15) a night as the son of Rowan Atkinson’s title character. Two years later, in 1986, came his first role on camera, as a Russian prince, in the TV movie Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna.
Co mi ng Of Ag e
a 13-year-old: Not a bad first movie for Spielberg’s ven Ste , Sun Empire of the anese WWII Jap tale of a young boy in a eer was off car e’s Bal p. cam internment a but: ays alw and running, but there’s e a kid hav can you way a is re “I think the fine, ys sta it and acting when he’s young very so ng wro s goe all it is, t but the fac becoming a quickly,” Bale later said of nd it, really.” me om rec ’t don “I child star.
Role Call
Bale Bails Out
After Empire, Bale was conscious of his growing fame and his debt to Spielberg. So he fought against both, taking parts in films outside the mainstream and being “so concerned about being seen as a leech that I didn’t really contact [Spielberg] … I had to get away and prove myself.” But then, in 2000, after a dozen years and as many supporting parts, came his first, and amazing, lead turn, in American Psycho.
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“Hi, it’s Chris. Leave it!” Bale’s reputation for intensity emerged with American Psycho, with reports of 18-month-long preparations, and his telling other actors in the running for the part to back off. It’s half-true: Delays in production kept pushing Psycho’s start date, but the phone calls were 100 percent Bale. “Absolutely,” he told GQ. “I phoned a few people and let them know my commitment.” Among the callees was Ewan McGregor.
Bale balances out Batman with wide-ranging roles. In 2007, he was one of seven Bob Dylan–inspired characters, along with Heath “The Joker” Ledger, in I’m Not There. Last year came Chinese epic The Flowers of War and an Oscar for his turn as a crackhead in The Fighter. He’s now shooting two films with director Terrence Malick. “The interesting thing about a movie,” says Bale, “is the movie.” The Dark Knight Rises globally on July 20: www.thedarkknightrises.com
Words: paul wilson. illustration: Lie-ins and tigers
Bat ’s All , Folks
With The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man alongside The Dark Knight Rises, this cinematic summer is the most Lycra-ed of all time (until next year). The third in the new Batman trilogy could be the best of the lot: Trailers hint at the love of Catwoman and a braining from new villain Bane. What it will be for sure is Bale’s last Bat-role. “It’s like saying goodbye to an old friend,” he says.
Friday & Saturday, September 21 - 22 two stages • tHe MeaDow at PieDMont PaRK
pearl Jam • Foo Fighters
the avett brothers • Florence + the machine t.i. • Girl talk • Ludacris Joan Jett and the blackhearts • Civil twilight Van Hunt • O’brother • Lp PLUs MoRe gReat aCts to be annoUnCeD!
Charge By Phone: 800-745-3000. All dates, acts and ticket prices subject to change without notice. Ticket prices subject to applicable fees.
for more information and updates visit:
musicmidtown.com
U@musicmidtown #mm12 G/musicmidtown TM
b u l l e va r d
On the Roadie
Jef Hickey
He’s the man the bands want behind the scenes, who parties almost as hard as he works. The Red Bulletin caught up with rock’s most-wanted fixer.
Hit the road Hickey’s first tour was with Megadeth in 1985. He went on to work with Danzig, Motörhead, Mariah Carey, Slayer, Madonna, Billy Joel, and Slipknot. Roadie reckoning Believes that rock stars and strippers go well together because “they work the same hours.”
From left: Hickey has roadied for the likes of Megadeth, Danzig, Slayer, and Type-O Negative.
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A good roadie—and there are thousands of them—tunes guitars, wields lanyards, and always has a supply of batteries and clean socks. Jef Hickey is not a good roadie. He is, he’s the first to admit, a great roadie. Like a savvy butler or political aide, he knows there’s more to his job than lugging equipment and deciding which babes get backstage. He learned his best moves early on: When first handed a band’s tour schedule, he’d call major companies in all the cities on a band’s schedule, invite the top people to the show, and thus ensure that the band would be hooked up with the best swag. Sitting outside a cafe in downtown Los Angeles, Hickey sports the traditional roadie uniform: band T-shirt and tattoos (including his ex’s name crossed out, finger tats spelling out “I REFUSE” and, inked in Swedish on his belly, “hard drugs, loud guitars, and I love whores”). He recently returned home from touring the U.S. with Swedish metal band Crashdiet. The Scandinavians had a lot of fun crossing the desert: “They were so into cactuses. They had never seen one before.” Self-deprecating and charismatic, Hickey halts his storytelling long enough to tell a passing female that she has “nice tits.” The compliment falls naturally from his lips in a way that it must have many thousands of times before, dating back to when his career started in 1985. At the age of 17, he hopped on a bus with Megadeth in Providence, R.I., and went on to work with every band in hard rock—from Slayer and Motörhead to Korn and Danzig—as well as Madonna, Billy Joel, Mariah Carey, and Luther Vandross, who required Hickey to FedEx his toilet seat to every show location. Hickey says there are several things that make a good roadie. A good sense of humor and the ability to hang are
paramount. If you can’t party with the band, things are going to get awkward. This aspect of the job has never been a problem for him. “If things were getting out of control right now, I’d probably be naked and making love to that tree,” he says, motioning toward a jacaranda. That said, you also have to be able to get the job done, no matter how late you were up the night before. Hickey has never let play get in the way of work. One time he was arrested in Illinois (“for a minor incident,” he adds), and the day after being released he was on a tour bus with Type-O Negative. The festival circuit is a fixture in his professional life. He remembers running away from Sharon Osbourne at Ozzfest: She was mad, he says, because he was filming a movie called Crew Sluts without her permission. This is just one of many stories in the memoir he’s writing. He has tickets for this year’s Download festival in the U.K., and is looking forward to being on the other side of the stage for a change. That said, he has offered his services to a couple of bands on the bill. “I’m going to be there, so I may as well help out,” he says. No rest for the Hickey.
“ If things were getting out of control right now, I’d probably be naked and making love to a tree.”
Follow Hickey at www.facebook.com/ jef.hickey
WORDS: Caroline Ryder. photography: Chris McPherson, GETTY IMAGES (4)
Born Milford, Mass., May 14, 1968
SPIN Magazine’s Outside Issue on newsstands now! BEst Coast and WavvEs’ California lovE
thE outsidE issuE
fiona apple seun Kuti dubstep across america Plus: the Bath salts Epidemic
DEAR SUMMER Summer’s here, in handy print form. Pick up the July/August issue of SPIN with Best Coast and Wavves on the cover and bask in our glow. Get it now at: spin.com/buytheissue
B U L L E VA R D
GEAR EVOLUTION
Small Bang Theory The starter’s pistol ain’t what it used to be. Racers nowadays take off after an electronic flash and boom.
SHOOTING BLANKS
The barrel was never loaded with live ammo—a blank was enough to create the bang.
TRIGGER LAPPY
When the trigger was pulled, an electronic pulse was sent on its way through the pistol.
Thanks to a wire fixed to the end of the grip, the pulse from the trigger nudged the mechanical stopwatches into action.
7.5 MM REVOLVER, WAFFENFABRIK BERN
Produced by the Swiss arms manufacturer Waffenfabrik in the capital of Bern in 1929, this revolver wasn’t modified to time races until three years later. Omega used this pistol in Los Angeles during the summer of 1932. Before then timekeepers measured starts by the sound of the bang: As soon as the shot rang out, they’d hit their stopwatches. Revolvers with fitted microphones are still in use, but now the timing mechanism is electronic.
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TEXT:
1929
FIRING LINE
Guns don’t start races, bangs and flashes do.
LIGHT SPEED
Spectators will have to be wary of what they see and hear. A quick blast of light mimics the muzzle flash of old.
DIGITAL RECORDING Instead of producing a bang via blanks, the sound from the e-Gun is programmable to suit its surroundings.
OUT OF HARM’S WAY
WORDS: ROBERT SPERL. PHOTOGRAPHY: GIAN PAUL LOZZA, OMEGA (2)
With electronics instead of blanks and plastic replacing metal, starting pistols now resemble gas lighters more than weapons.
2012
OMEGA E-GUN STARTING PISTOL
Nothing’s changed from the starter’s point of view: He pulls the trigger and the clock at the other end of the connecting cable starts running. Thanks to the modern technology used, the new starting pistol is perhaps a touch more accurate than the old revolver, but its main advantage is the fact that it’s un-gunlike. International sport means a lot of travel, after all, and getting the old timing equipment through security checks would be a logistical nightmare for officials. www.omegawatches
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b u l l e va r d
Going far: Strong arms required in the Longest Distance category.
red bull paper wings final 2012
To foldly go
Elie Chemaly has tears in his eyes. His clothes are completely soaked with the champagne he just sprayed all over the place at the awards ceremony: a proper awards ceremony with winners’ national anthems and everything. As the new Longest Airtime world champion, Chemaly is the man of the moment. In the eight-competitor final, his plane flew for a full 10.68 seconds; no one else even came close. This success was the result of three months’ puzzling and experimentation for the 20-year-old from Lebanon. And now he’s standing, hands trembling, giving his first-ever interview as a champion. “I have no idea what to say. I think my country will be proud of me.” A couple of feet away, Poland’s Tomasz Chodryra, 26, and American Ryan Naccarato, 22, are talking technicalities. Their efforts in the Aerobatics category (in which any number of planes can be 24
used) left the judges no choice but to award both the maximum 50 points for their creative performances. Naccarato cracked a whip Wild West style as part of his choreography and had a cluster of small paper planes dancing in the air. “It’s amazing. It all went perfectly. But Tomasz had me jittering with his incredible show, too,” he reveals. Chodryra’s performance was inspired by magic. Using only a piece of cardboard, he managed to guide a paper plane through the air for several seconds and had it circle a miniature pylon. “Ryan and I made things interesting for the spectators,” he said. The fourth world champion crowned today is from the Czech Republic. In the Longest Distance final, Tomas Beck, 24, threw his paper plane 165.26 feet. “What counts is the plane and your technique,” he says. “Other than that, you need luck. One false move when
you launch the plane and it can come crashing to the ground or land outside the permitted area.” Will he take part in Red Bull Paper Wings next year? “Of course! These were two of the best days of my life,” he smiles, and heads off to the afterparty. www.redbullpaperwings.com
Champagne shower: The Aerobatics winners.
Words: manuel kurzmann. Photography: Sebastian Marko/Red Bull Content Pool
Paper planes are for classrooms, right? Wrong, if the aerobatic artistry and long-distance records in Salzburg’s Hangar-7 are anything to go by.
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© 2012 MLS™. All Rights Reserved. Schedule and players subject to change.
ET
B U L L E VA R D
LUCKY NUMBERS
MYSTERY FIGURES
2012 is playing number games, what with three Friday-the-13ths and the world definitely scheduled to end yet again. Here are those, and other, devilish digits decoded.
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Illuminatus
In 1202, the Italian mathematician Fibonacci published a math book that, among many things, looked at a way of calculating a growing rabbit population. His solution used a sequence of numbers in which each was the sum of the two preceding it: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, etc. But what he hadn’t realized was nature’s fondness for the pattern: It is found in flower-petal distribution, tree-branch sequencing, and the shells of some sea creatures. The further along the sequence you go, the closer the ratio between two adjacent numbers gets to 1.618, also known as the Golden Ratio.
Airlines don’t have seats between rows 12 and 14, Hilton and Marriott hotels often have no 13th floor, and on a quarter of British streets you’d be wasting your time looking for number 13. The world is gripped by triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the baker’s dozen, which is felt most starkly when the 13th of a month falls on a Friday. The number and day are said to be bad luck, and yet the dramatic Apollo 13 mission didn’t end in disaster, and in Holland, there are fewer accidents on Friday the 13th because people are extra careful. Nostradamus
2012
Fibonacci’s rabbit
The next date for the end of the world is December 21st of this year. Nostradamus expected “the great King of Terror to come from the sky” in 1999. Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther was predicting the end of the world in his own lifetime. Even some scientists have busied themselves with making doomsday predictions. An article published in the Nov. 4, 1960 edition of the journal Science suggested that population would become infinite, and thus overwhelm the planet, on Nov. 13, 2026— which, of course, will be a Friday.
Also known as the Sino-13, because in Chinese, the words for “four” and “death” are pronounced the same. So Asians tend to avoid the number, even in combination with other numbers. Thus 14 (“certain death”) and 24 (“quick death”) are avoided where possible, such as bus routes and public information. Alfa Romeo had to be inventive back in the 1990s: The Alfa 164 (“the route to death”) was rebranded for the Chinese market as the Alfa 168 (“the route to wealth”), which really does sound quite a lot better.
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Julius Caesar died from 23 stab wounds, the figures in the date the World Trade Center collapsed add up to 23 and, most shockingly, the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash., has 23 buildings. These and many other examples show the mystic power of half of 46. The general misapprehension of the ninth prime number is comparatively new; the world has the 1975 conspiracy theory novel The Illuminatus Trilogy to thank for yet another reason to be afraid of something.
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Alfa 164
The Apollo 13 crew
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Why is Google called Google? In 1940, in Mathematics and the Imagination, which he co-wrote, mathematician Edward Kasner explained that his 9-year-old nephew came up with the name “googol” to define the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. The Internet company was named 57 years later, following a misspelling of this massive digit, when the company founders wanted a name to reflect the potential vastness of their search engine.
WORDS: ARKADIUSZ PIĄTEK. PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (2), PICTUREDESK.COM, AUTO BILD, CORBIS
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THE EPIC FIRST DESCENT OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST RAPIDS TYLER BRADT
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COMING JULY 17 TH W W W.INGAPROJECT.COM
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Voodoo
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The Ghetto Biennale exhibits art where it’s made: on the streets and in the shanties of Port-au-Prince. Haitian sculptors and 40 overseas artists transform parts of the city into a flourishing festival site. Words: Florian Obkircher Photography: Benjamin Lowy
Art attracts experts from all over the world. Marla C. Berns (middle), director of the Fowler Museum at UCLA, says: “It’s fascinating how the situation in Haiti is reflected in the works. And how the idea of recycling has been extended to turn rubbish into art.”
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Cans, tires, bits of wood, computer circuit boards: The Grand Rue sculptors make art out of found objects. 29
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he heat is oppressive. It’s noisy, dusty, and stinks of diesel. Mopeds weave past brightly painted buses. Traders peddle cheap goods on the seafront. There are mechanics welding, tires being piled up, women balancing vats of water. It’s lunchtime on the Grand Rue, the heaving main thoroughfare in Port-au-Prince. At the southern end of the street, a 26-foot metallic colossus soars skyward from among semi-dilapidated houses. The body is made from the chassis of an old truck; the head was once an old oil tank. The statue comes from the studio of André Eugène, head of artists’ colony Atis Rezistans: The Sculptors of Grand Rue. “Rezistans” refers to their will to carry on, stick together, and not be beaten by the catastrophes that have befallen Haiti. Eugène and his colleagues work on sculptures made from car parts, bits of wood, dolls’ heads, and human skulls. It’s art from waste, imbued with voodoo symbolism. The sculptures stand tall in backyards, on rooftops, and inside of tin shelters, lending the area a morbid charm. Its allure has captivated the international art world, and Grand Rue sculptors regularly exhibit in London and Miami. Last year they were invited to the Venice Biennale. And once every two years they put on a huge show of their own: the Ghetto Biennale.
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During the Ghetto Biennale, this rabbit-warren shantytown in Haiti is transformed into an open-air museum where overseas artists work and exhibit alongside local sculptors.
Allison Rowe
is one of 40 artists to have been invited to the Ghetto Biennale. At the first festival in 2009, the Canadian unraveled a huge ball of wool at the coastal strip in Port-au-Prince to show how high the water level would rise as a result of global warming. In 2011, she collected donations, but not for the local population. Instead: What would Haitians give to the West?
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The Ghetto Biennale offers valuable selfconfidence. “When people come from all over the world to see our work,” one artist says, “that gives young people the motivation to follow the same path.” 32
Leah Gordon
, a photographer from London (middle) and local artist André Eugène (bottom) founded the Ghetto Biennale. The Frost Art Museum in Miami invited some of the Grand Rue sculptors to an exhibition in 2004, but they weren’t given entry visas to the U.S. This gave Eugène an idea: “If we can’t travel to the Biennale, we’ll get the art world to come to Haiti.”
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Leonce Love (above) is 15 years old. He has wanted to be an artist for as long as he can remember. Like many of his friends,
he learned his craft from AndrÊ Eugène. Every day after school he holes himself up in a cluttered concrete workshop and works with tools he has made himself. He is particularly proud of this piece (below): a voodoo priestess seeking enlightenment.
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Jean Hérard Celeur (below) is the father of the Grand Rue movement. He began collecting battered car tires
to recycle for use in his artwork in 1998. “My art always has a strong social angle,” the 46-year-old explains. For one of his pieces (above), he made a collage using high heels, sandals, and rubber boots—relief supplies from the West that are utterly useless in Haiti.
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“I used to want to be a soccer player,” says Eugène. “We were disappointed when our playing fields were turned into a car dump. But we discovered a new passion: making art out of the car parts.”
Art meets the everyday
(above), while voodoo priestesses ritually sacrifice a pig (right); the Fungus Collective fills holes in the walls of earthquake-damaged houses with colorful cubes and patches up destroyed facades with neon tape (far right).
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The first Ghetto Biennale was held in December 2009,
just three weeks before the huge earthquake. Many of the houses that collapsed are yet to be rebuilt, and most of their inhabitants are still living in nearby tent villages. But among the first to move back into their homes were the artists, a gesture to show that life goes on.
www.ghettobiennale.com
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Four s spent yearsHe’ the time ago,since the Travisblurring lines of Barkermusical was ingenres, reuniting criticalwith his popconditionpunk band Blink-182, in aand Georgiacovering his body in ever hospital.more ink. Action
The drummer on family, touring, and a Muppet’s genius. Words: Steve Appleford Photography: Lauren Dukoff
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A fan of ink all his life, Barker has gotten to the point where he falls asleep in the tattoo chair.
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ravis Barker has got a serious addiction, and anyone can see the markings all over his body— splashes of ink in the shapes of girls and car insignias and checkered flags. He has tattoos dedicated to all of his bands and to missing friends and family, to his kids and ex-wife, and new ones on his skull of the Virgin Mary and the words “One Life, One Chance.” Getting inked is something the Blink-182 drummer does to relax. He even does it while napping, during his few moments of downtime between surgeries or tours or side projects with DJs and rappers and hardcore punks, from Steve Aoki and Yelawolf to the high-octane Transplants (co-founded with Rancid’s Tim Armstrong). He’s mostly recovered from the 2008 plane crash that killed four people and left him and his close friend Adam Goldstein (DJ AM) in critical condition, and just days after getting his tonsils removed, he already looks ready for action as he sits in the control room of the Los Angeles studio he owns with Blink’s Mark Hoppus. The studio is a darkened, low-slung warren of rooms with drum kits here and there, framed tour posters waiting to be hung, and the kind of clutter one would expect from a place that’s well trafficked. Barker is here every day, right after dropping the kids off at school. After traveling to Europe by boat, Barker and Blink are currently headlining a slew of festivals on the old continent. But being the drummer in a hugely popular, platinum pop-punk band is not nearly enough these days. He’s a man of many genres and appetites, sponsoring extreme fighters and running his 13-year-old clothing company, Famous Stars and Straps. He is also finishing up a new Transplants album and a series of EPs mixing his live drums with EDM and hip-hop. A few days a week he trains hard in multiple fighting techniques. It keeps him fit and ready for trouble. “It’s important to know, man,” he tells The Red Bulletin. “Life’s crazy. You never know what you’re going to be served with.” 40
the red bulletin: Your band just wrapped a U.S. tour and is about to embark on a European tour for the summer festival season. Do you like playing festivals? travis barker: I really enjoyed our last trip to Europe. It was crazy playing for 200,000 people. It’s insane. You don’t have festivals like that in the States. Rock is alive and kicking ass in Europe. It’s bigger than ever. It’s like the ocean—you can see people for days. When we headlined in Leeds, it was crazy. You can’t prepare yourself for that. What is it like to face that many people? It’s like you’re getting ready for a fight. I lock myself in my room, warm myself up for an hour and go out there and do the damn thing. I always play like I could die out there and give it my all. And there’s only three of us up there—it’s an awesome feeling. Do you do anything different when it’s a gigantic crowd? There’s no way to rock harder because there’s 200,000 more people there. You just give it your 200 percent. I sometimes wonder what it was like to see a band like the Stones in the ’60s or ’70s, in a gigantic place but without even video screens. I love that. I wish it would stay like that. I wish there was no such thing as production, honestly. [Laughs.] It puts everyone on an even playing field. You just got to go out and rock. No 2Pac hologram. [Laughs.] It’s a trip what it’s coming to. Now all kinds of acts are announcing that they’re bringing dead people back
He shuts himself in the studio for hours on end: “You have to tell me not to come here.”
“It’s like you’re getting ready for a fight.”
with holograms to tour, including Michael Jackson. I don’t think that’s cool. You pay tribute once if you’re doing a benefit concert to someone, but it’s cold as ice. You’ve been back with Blink for three years. How are fans reacting to the band these days? This will be the big tour that supports the album in Europe. Mind you, I’m not flying, so it’s hard to say what the band could do or what its potential is, because I can’t really get everywhere. I’m contemplating getting knocked out and getting on a plane to Australia. I want to overcome that eventually. When I do, I think it’s going to be Australia. I trust Qantas. They never had a crash, never had a fatality—knock on wood. It’s something I want to overcome for me— and my kids are scared to death to fly. I want them to witness me overcome it.
There are other artists, like Lenny Kravitz, who don’t like to fly but make it work. I heard Lenny will do the big flight over there, and then he just won’t fly domestically. I would do the same thing in Australia. I’ve got to get over it, man. I could simply say I’m not going to fly for the rest of my life. I’m not going to. It’s something I honestly want to try to put behind me. So you travel across the Atlantic by ocean liner. Have you learned to embrace it? I had a good experience last time—the six-day cruise. On the way back, I took a 12-day cruise and we hit 37-foot waves and 170 mph wind. It was nasty. You’ve just got to tough it out. What do you do during those six days or 12 days? I work out. I brought a drum kit and I 41
ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES
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played every day. By the time I got to Europe, my chops were up and I felt better than I had in a long time. Who else is on board when you’re on a cruise? All old people. I’m like 100 years younger than everyone on there. That’s one good thing—if anything happens, I’m making my way to the lifeboat before anybody. Does anyone complain about the drummer practicing on the boat? Old people will travel around the boat and just roam. So I’d be practicing sometimes—I’d have my eyes closed, and when I opened up my eyes, there was about six old people just sitting there watching me. It was the trippiest thing ever. Your laptop has a sticker that says, “Drum machines have no soul.” Is that your motto? I kind of contradict that, because I love programming, too, but I’ll never program something that doesn’t have live drums on top of it. Live drums add a sense of feeling like something’s alive and moving. Having live drums on a Steve Aoki highenergy dubstep record is crazy. Was it an easy fit when you first started working with DJs? I never heard of a live drummer and DJ playing together ever. I came to AM [DJ Adam Goldstein, Barker’s fellow survivor in the plane crash, who died of a drug overdose in 2009] when Blink had broken up and said, “Let’s do something, man. Lets kick a new f***in’ door down.” We didn’t know what we were going to do. He brought his turntables, I brought my drum kit, and we just jammed. Are a DJ and a drummer supposed to jam? We did, and it was the most fun I’d had in forever. For a long time, there were walls between the genres. I love those lines being blurred. It has to be. That’s the future. You work with a lot of different people. Do they have anything in common? I like them all to be different. That’s what I find to be most refreshing. Making just one type of music, I think you’d get burnt, and you’d run out of ideas. We just finished a Transplants album. It’s a swift kick to the face. It’s more rooted in hardcore than any Transplants ever has been. I love making music like that. Going from that to something like last night—I was in the studio with [rapper] French Montana. It’s a whole other world. It’s just fun to have a true change of pace. Were you always like that? As soon as I got the opportunity. At the beginning of Blink, I got asked to be in a
After dizzying success in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Blink-182 members Barker, Tom DeLonge, and Mark Hoppus (above) went on hiatus for four years in 2005.
“Blink is still damn funny, crazy and wild.” Puffy video [“Bad Boy for Life”]. And the next week I went into the studio with will.i.am and played some beats—that was so fun, so cool to just go in there and play my drums in a different way. People were going to rap over it. Since then, you always seem to be working on something else when Blink isn’t in action. It used to be I’d come home from a tour and I might not play my drums for months at a time. I sort of hated it, and I felt like something was missing. Then once we bought this place, it changed everything—I got to do what I love fulltime. If anything, I have to remind myself, Trav, you don’t need to be at the studio all the time. Go home and chill out. Especially lately with some of the medical crap I’ve been dealing with. I had to put the brakes on. But you have to tell me not to come here. I want to make something or practice. You just had your tonsils out? About 12 weeks ago, I did an endoscopy, where they put the camera down your throat. They found that I had six ulcers, and I had a condition called Barrett’s esophagus, which is basically from really extreme acid reflux or if you excessively smoked, your esophagus lining becomes pre-cancerous. Right then and there, I
changed my whole life around. I had to stop eating and drinking certain things. And I had this lump in my throat around the same time. My tonsils were three to four times the size they should have been. So eight days ago they yanked my tonsils and my adenoids out. So this is unrelated to the other medical problems you’ve had from the crash? No. I didn’t know I was extremely acidic. I don’t know if a lot of people know about Barrett’s esophagus. It’s irreversible, which is what sucks. For me it was an awakening. I was already really healthy. I was already a vegan. I would mess up and smoke from time to time, but I’m happy to say I’m three months completely sober and I plan on staying that way the rest of my life. Did you have to stop drinking because of this? I was never a drinker. But, no, I can’t have any alcohol. If I had a cigarette or smoked something, it would be the stupidest thing I could do. I had to give up coffee, which is something I love. But, man, I’d rather be alive than drink some coffee. Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses basically got the same kind of warning: If you have another drink you will die. And he just stopped. Me too. I used to love smoking weed. Especially after my accident, I got off my 19 bipolar medicines and all the stuff they said I’d be on for the rest of my life, and I would smoke weed at night if I had anxiety. I always thought I’d be able to do that for the rest of my life, but when your health is on the line, you don’t f*** around. I love being a dad and I love playing music—I’m not trying to give up any of that. You also haven’t given up the tattoos. You’ve got some new ones … 43
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After surgeries, I wouldn’t be able to do much, so in my downtime I’m either in here building beats or I’m getting tattooed. That’s just the way that I am. If you keep me home for a year, I’m afraid to know what my body would look like. You’re long past the point where getting a tattoo is painful? I fall asleep. You didn’t hear a peep out of me when we finished my head. I’m addicted to tattoos. I love documenting different points in your life on your body, and I love the permanent aspect of it. We’re all going to be dead in the dirt one day. There’s way bigger things to worry about than tattoos. What was your first? My first was burnt off in my plane crash. It was on my leg—my nickname, “Bones.” When did you first start playing? I was 4. Animal on The Muppet Show started it all for me. I saw him and I was sold. I wanted to be a drummer. Then I saw Alex Van Halen, Tommy Lee, great jazz drummers like Buddy Rich. I saw Buddy Rich battle Animal—crazy stuff. I battled Animal two months ago. I was trippin’. When this is all said and done, in 10 or 15 years, I would love to play in a 44
The aftermath of the plane crash and other medical issues have changed Barker’s diet and lust for partying.
“When this is done, I’d love to just play jazz.” big-band jazz band and kick ass. I grew up playing jazz. I was in jazz band my whole life in high school and junior high. They didn’t have Rock Band 101 in school. I can read music, and I played jazz for six, seven years. I’d like to do that again. You were part of that first big wave of reality TV with Meet the Barkers in 2005. How do you feel about how it’s gone on since then? I’m glad I did it when I did, and I’m glad I got out when I did. There was no goofball scripting, telling me what to say. That was my life at the time. There were cameras 24/7. I couldn’t imagine being one of those people that do it for six seasons. That’s insane.
Did having cameras around affect your life at the time? It was cool for the amount of time it happened, but right as we were finishing up and we were about to start another season, they wanted us to fight more. They wanted us to not get along, and I was like, “Yo, it’s not going to work. This is my family. You ain’t going to make the family dysfunctional for television purposes.” Then I realized my life was just as fun without cameras. Can you imagine a Some Kind of Monster documentary on Blink? The Metallica one? It would probably be pretty entertaining, to be honest. I love Metallica—I’m sort of embarrassed for them, though. Every relationship needs its own things, but the band psychiatrist was a couple notches too much for me. And with Blink, I can honestly say, even in the worst, worst parts, Blink does not fight. You’re not going to catch me knocking Tom [DeLonge] out. You’re not going to catch Mark [Hoppus] and Tom yelling at each other. It does not happen. It’s actually so functional that it’s weird that it ever went south. Blink is pretty damn healthy, and it’s still pretty damn funny and crazy and wild. We see each other and we give each other hugs, and I have to stop Tom from grabbing my ass or doing something out of line. The Blink breakup is always described as this complete breakdown where you wouldn’t even talk to each other. Is that wrong? It felt like that because nothing was said. It was just over. I didn’t call Tom and go, “Man, we got to get the band back together.” Mark didn’t call me, going, “Man, we got to get the band back together.” They didn’t call each other. Everyone just went “cool.” When we talked years later, it was like, “What the f*** did we do that for? It was never even that big of a deal.” It wasn’t a big blowup. It’s a shame it happened, and so much time was wasted. It took your accident to remind everyone what mattered? It was so easy. It sucks that it was something as big as my plane crash to open everyone’s eyes, but once we were back in a room, it was all G. So even though it doesn’t yet feel like a full-time thing, it’s open-ended? It’s like when a relationship gets back together—you ease into it. It’s never been toxic. No bitter band members. I think everyone needs some time to get really close and connect again, and to make a record in the same room. That’s key. www.blink182.com; www.redbull.com/TravisBarker
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dead
man walking In Detroit, Rodriguez is a soft-spoken construction worker. In South Africa, he is a rock icon. The film Searching for Sugar Man explores the singer who was believed to be dead—but actually found new life through music. Words: Cortney Harding Photography: Kareem Black
Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul set out to travel the globe in search of great stories—the most amazing, dynamic, insightful tales the veteran documentarian could tell. He came across just what he was looking for in South Africa. Leaning across a table in the basement of the City Winery in Manhattan just days after his film, Searching for Sugar Man, screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, Bendjelloul says the saga of the musician known as Rodriguez was “the best story I had ever heard in my life.” At first glance, that story seems so fantastical it would have to be fiction. Rodriguez, whose full name is Sixto Diaz Rodriguez and who also goes by Jesus Rodriguez, was the child of Mexican immigrants living in Detroit and playing political folk music in the late ’60s and early ’70s. His tale begins as a traditional musicindustry yarn: discovered by local producers when he played bars in the seedy part of town; signed to a small label for a single; signed to another small label for an album. That album, Cold Fact, was released in 1970 on Sussex Records to great hope and very little fanfare. A year later, a second album, Coming from Reality, was released and met a similar fate. 46
Both albums leaned heavily toward the political, with Rodriguez’s grizzled voice encouraging listeners to fight the powers that be. But they weren’t completely joyless, dry affairs. There were plenty of nods to carnal pleasures (including the oftquoted and remarkably straightforward line “I wonder how many times you’ve had sex”) and the merits of experimenting with drugs. When the label dropped Rodriguez, he retreated from music, at least publicly, and went back to working construction. In most cases, that would be the end of the story. Unknown numbers of artists have cut albums for small labels and been rejected; almost all of them simply find other work and occasionally pull out those records to show friends and family a glimpse of a past life, the road not taken. Living in Detroit, working a blue-collar job and raising a family, Rodriguez never saw a dime from the sales of any recordings and had moved on with his life. But while he scraped and sanded, paid the bills, and took his daughters to school, he had no idea that half a world away Cold Fact had become the soundtrack of a revolution. And the people who considered his music so vital had no idea that he was living a
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quiet life in the States—because they all believed he was dead. MEANWHILE, ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD The story of how Cold Fact came to South Africa has never been confirmed, but it is generally accepted that a woman from the United States brought the record with her and copied it for some friends, who started passing it around. The album’s anti-authoritarian vibe seemed to strike a chord with white South Africans struggling with feelings of guilt and powerlessness under apartheid, and while it was sold fairly freely in record stores, it was banned from the radio and only received airplay on pirate stations. Cold Fact was released in South Africa on A&M Records and in Australia, where Rodriguez was also well known, on Blue Goose/RCA, but somehow the money never made it back to Detroit. In the film, Sussex Records founder Clarence Avant tries and ultimately fails to explain the money trail, but it might have something to do with the events that led to Sussex’s demise and the seizure of the label’s assets by the IRS. “The U.S. label is almost sympathetic in a way,” says Bendjelloul. “I don’t think [Avant] was a bad guy on purpose. He went insolvent and there were other people involved; it was all very complicated to sort out. If I wanted to take the time and work with lawyers and track down all the old contracts, I could make a whole other film just about that.” But the lack of money and communication from the label meant that Rodriguez had no idea he was famous overseas—and thus no incentive to visit South Africa and tour the country. And because no one in South Africa had ever seen him, let alone spoken to him or watched him play live, rumors began to circulate that Rodriguez was dead—after all, logic would dictate that someone who was alive would want to visit a country that so loved his music. Not only was Rodriguez dead, according to legend, but the methods of his demise were violent, numerous, and bordering on legendary. He wasn’t felled by a common car accident or cancer; the two most cited rumors were that he killed himself on stage by setting himself on fire, or that he ended a performance with a shotgun blast to the head. “People just couldn’t believe that this guy who was so famous could also be totally anonymous,” says Bendjelloul. “We’re not talking about someone who just wrote songs that people liked; we’re 48
Rodriguez’s recording career consisted of the albums Cold Fact (1970) and Coming from Reality (1971). They sold next to nothing in the United States, but in South Africa his soulful, stirring songs made him a sensation.
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photography: Courtesy of Rodriguez
tears streaming down their faces, it is as though they are seeing a ghost. From the mid-’90s on, Rodriguez has lived almost a double life: a superstar in South Africa and Australia, and an ordinary man in the United States. Toward the close of the film, one of his co-workers in the construction trade reiterates that the story is almost too good to be true—that someone could play for thousands of people in another country and then show up at the building site for another day of labor. “I’m self-employed, so I can take off as much time as I want,” he says. If all goes according to plan, he’ll be taking more time off soon—the film will screen at several more festivals before opening in New York and Los Angeles on July 27. There are also plans for a full U.S. tour, as well as shows to coincide with additional screenings of Searching for Sugar Man. Light in the Attic Records secured the rights to both Cold Fact and Coming from Reality and re-released both albums in 2008, almost 40 years after they originally appeared.
talking about someone who really sparked a revolution.” In this light, it almost makes sense that the rumors about how Rodriguez died took on violent, revolutionary airs. Even to this day, public suicides can spark movements; the Arab Spring was catalyzed by a young merchant selfimmolating in a local square. Add to this the fact that South Africa remained fairly disconnected from the rest of the world and the Internet didn’t exist as we now know it, and the wild rumors begin to make a little more sense. In the mid-’90s, a South African music journalist named Craig Bartholomew decided that once and for all he was going to solve the mystery of how Rodriguez passed away. As detailed in the film and in his original 1997 article “Looking for Rodriguez,” Bartholomew began tracing leads and calling up record labels. It was only then that he met up with Cape Town record-store owner Stephen “Sugar” Segerman, who put him in touch with a man named Richard Armstrong, of Ace Records in London. Armstrong in turn passed on the name of Mike Theodore, who produced Cold Fact. And it was a call to Theodore in Michigan that brought Bartholomew news he never expected to hear. Rodriguez was alive.
“NOT LOST, JUST IN DETROIT” “When I got that first call, man, I can’t really describe it,” says Rodriguez a few days after the screening at Tribeca. Dressed in a worn dark suit and wearing sunglasses indoors, the 70-year-old singer is soft-spoken and a bit spacey—he has a Sarah Palin–like habit of answering questions with whatever he wants to talk about at that moment. After diverging for a few moments to talk about how the Rolling Stones basically invented the touring industry, he circles back to reiterate that he really, honestly, had no idea about his impact in South Africa. Once it was discovered that Rodriguez, as he puts it, was “not lost, just in Detroit,” he flew to South Africa to play a series of concerts. As the film draws to a close, Rodriguez is playing in a sold-out arena to thousands of people who had assumed for all these years that he was dead. As the audience sings along with
“It’s too much of a fairy tale.”
MYSTERIOUS TERRITORIES Bendjelloul thinks that there will never be another story like Rodriguez’s. “It’s too much of a fairy tale,” he says. “This all took place in the age before the Internet, when you really had to be a detective.” It does seem hard to imagine that anything similar could happen in this interconnected day and age. Artists try to remain mysterious but are often debunked by well-connected journalists and bloggers: A U.K. artist who called himself Burial managed to remain anonymous for a few years before he was revealed to be William Bevan, an alum of a well-known British art school. Likewise, an unidentified blonde singer using the handle iamamiwhoami managed to fly under the radar for a couple of months before being unmasked as Swedish singer Jonna Lee. There are, of course, thousands of artists who remain unknown in their home countries and are stars in other territories; but in these cases, the artists know they are famous overseas and can take advantage of it, playing coffee shops in their hometown and arenas in, say, Norway. As for Rodriguez, he’s excited that he can finally be part of the revolution he helped create—even if he didn’t know it at the time. “Music is a cultural force that brings people together,” he says. “And I’m just happy to be a part of it.” www.sonyclassics.com/searchingforsugarman
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ACtIon
THE INSIDER
the only festival guide you’ll need this summer, courtesy of the biggest names in music. Words: Florian Obkircher & Hayley Joyes
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Björk is a fan of Dirty Projectors.
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Yelawolf recommends Big K.R.I.T.
Jarvis Cocker is shook up by Alabama Shakes.
Kings of Leon’s Jared Followill loves Chairlift.
Beyoncé is crazy about Frank Ocean.
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piTcHfoRK fEsTivaL july 13–15, ChiCaGo Info: Pitchfork.com is the New York Times of online music mags. A good review there leads to sold-out gigs and plenty of media interest. Once a year, the opinion-shapers invite you to their own festival in Chicago. Headliners: Feist, Vampire Weekend, A$AP Rocky, Flying Lotus, Grimes www.pitchfork.com/festivals/ chicago/2012
PhoTogrAPhy: gETTy ImAgES, PICTUrEDESK.Com, LIoNEL DELUy, ThE gUArDIAN, rEX FEATUrES, SoNy mUSIC
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Dave Longstreth is the principal songwriter in Brooklyn sextet Dirty Projectors.
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celand’s pop minx isn’t exaggerating. The Dirty Projectors’ music really is unbelievable—they can change style or tempo in a single second. Complex string arrangements, west African melodies, folk guitar, walls of sound, and elaborate falsetto singing … somehow
the Brooklyn-based rockers squeeze it all into a song without it ever sounding too overdone or cerebral. They’re as elegant and experimental as David Byrne was in the early Talking heads years. No surprise, then, that lead singer Dave Longstreth, 30, has broad musical tastes. he
knows his classics, too. Stravinsky, for example: “Brutal yet absolutely modern.” These are adjectives that might equally well apply to his own work. hear it for yourself on Bitte Orca, voted second-best album of 2009 by Time, or on the freshly released Swing Lo Magellan.
pitCHfoRk festivAl ChiCago U.s.A.
“I’m so excited for their new album! they’re truly talented. one of the most interesting groups from that side of the Atlantic.” BJÖRk on dirty proJeCtors
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Caroline Polachek makes up one half of indie synth-pop two-piece Chairlift.
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aron Pfenning and Caroline Polachek met at the University of Colorado in 2005. They shared an interest in horror film soundtracks, and both planned to make haunted house music. After school they moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn to perfect their retro-guitar dream-pop sound and create the Daylight Savings EP. Theirs is an enigmatic mix of dark ’80s jams that’s a cross between Joy Division and Berlin. The international hit “Bruises” cemented them as the go-to guys for progressive indiepop, perfect for both dinner party and dance floor. Pfenning left the group in 2010, but Polachek and multiinstrumentalist Patrick Wimberly carried on. The duo are currently on a world tour promoting their latest album, Something, turning every stage into a romantic ghost train wherever they go.
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MELT! festival july 13–15, ferropolis, Germany Info: The backdrop is stunning. The stages are positioned between huge, illuminated excavation towers in an abandoned coal mine. It’s a landscape reminiscent of the rough, post-apocalyptic vistas of Mad Max. It can get hot and dusty, but not to worry, as Lake Gremmin provides an opportunity to cool off between concerts. Headliners: Gossip, Justice, Bloc Party, M83, Lana Del Rey, Richie Hawtin www.meltfestival.de
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Melt! festival ferropolis GER
“I’m a sucker for female singers, and Caroline Polachek has one of the most amazing voices. It’s unique. She throws her voice; she’s all over the board.” Jared followill, kings of leon, on Chairlift
Photography: Getty Images (2)
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“I’m a huge fan. It was my manager who turned me on to his music and since then I can’t stop listening to his album. He’s a massive talent!” yelawolf on big k.r.i.t.
08.17
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Royal arena festival August 17–18, biel, switzerland Info: Royal Arena is a lot more than just a music festival—it’s a celebration of the four pillars of hip-hop: rap, DJing, b-boying, and street art. So as well as the concerts, there’s a Royal B-Boy Battle and a graffiti gallery. Headliners: Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube, Mos Def, Dilated Peoples, Dizzee Rascal www.royalarena.ch
royal arena festival biel SWI Big K.R.I.T.’s fans include The Roots and Method Man.
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ig K.R.I.T. is 25 and the hottest name in the hip-hop business. His bouncy, catchy hit “I Got This” recently went viral online and had a million YouTube hits within a few days. His debut studio album, Live from the Underground, has just been released and is already tipped for Album of the Year by the rap community. And this hotshot from Mississippi only started making music seven years ago. He tinkered with beats on his Sony PlayStation and then freestyled over them with friends. Big K.R.I.T. does it all himself; he raps and produces his tracks. And his tongue’s so swift you could be forgiven for thinking his rivals were on Valium. His lyrics are shrewd and his beats strong and soulful. He cites Curtis Mayfield and Bobby Womack as key influences. Big K.R.I.T.’s breakthrough would appear inevitable; his fans and promoters—like The Roots and Method Man from WuTang Clan—are sure of that.
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electric picnic Festival August 31–September 1, stradbally, ireland Info: The crush at Ireland’s boutique festival will be even greater this time around as its big brother, the Oxegen, is taking a break this summer. Over the years it has grown to be as massive as other festivals, but Electric Picnic has stayed true to its alternative side. It’s also green, family friendly and has a whole load of young, exciting artists to offer. Headliners: The Cure, Sigur Rós, Elbow, Patti Smith, Squarepusher www.electricpicnic.ie
Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard’s love for her home state is more than skin deep.
“ ‘Hold On’ is the best song of the year. And their bassist, Zac, has got the best look I’ve seen in a long time.” Jarvis Cocker on Alabama Shakes
08.31
electric picnic festival stradbally irE
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hey appeared out of nowhere with an album that celebrates traditional blues and Southern rock. Boys & Girls is the best album Janis Joplin never recorded, a slap in the face for all Auto-Tune prodigies and talent-show winners. This quartet from Athens, Ala., 54
produce handmade rock. Piano, guitar, bass, and drums. Frills? Not for them, thanks. And then, of course, there’s that voice, the scratchy, soulful voice of lead chanteuse Brittany Howard, a voice that has captivated the likes of The Strokes and Jack White. White, indeed, was so taken
with the Alabama Shakes’ earthy sound that he signed them up to support him on tour and to release a single on his own label. Alabama Shakes are living proof that honest music with a real sense of tradition will never die. It also proves that there’s still a buzz about blues, even in 2012.
09.06
Bestival isleofwight U.K.
“Jay had his CD playing in the car. I was immediately struck by his voice, the arrangement, and his way of telling stories. I called him the very next morning and invited him to New York to work on my record.” beyoncé on frank ocean
Photography: Getty images (2)
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n the beginning there was Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, a rowdy hip-hop collective of postteenagers who made a sizable impression on an otherwise lame pop circuit last year with wild live shows and bloodthirsty lyrics. Their number included Frank Ocean, the cooler older brother whose transition from songwriter to silky-voiced solo act was a sensation. Hip-hop royalty Jay-Z and Kanye West asked the 24-year-old to provide two soulful refrains for their Watch the Throne album. He’s currently working on his debut album with production team The Neptunes, who are, lest we forget, the people who launched the careers of Kelis and Justin Timberlake. And the web is already awash with thousands of teenagers sitting in front of their webcams covering Frank Ocean’s cool R&B anthems, like “Thinking About You” and “Novacane,” on their guitars.
Frank Ocean’s music career took off after he moved from New Orleans to L.A. after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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bestival September 6–9, isle of wight, U.K. Info: Radio presenter, DJ, and recordlabel owner Rob da Bank has been hosting his outsized garden party off the British south coast since 2004, featuring great artists and a Sunday costume party code to which a surprising number of attendees adhere. Headliners: Stevie Wonder, New Order, Florence + The Machine, Justice, De La Soul www.bestival.net
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Rock ’n’ Roll’s SPIN DOCTOR
Hans-Jürgen Topf has been washing rock stars’ stage outfits for 30 years. He tells us what really works on red wine stains, and why he won’t say a word about Madonna’s leggings. Words: Andreas Rottenschlager Photography: Philipp Forstner
It all began at a red traffic light in Ludwigshafen, Germany. I was 25 and working in my parents’ laundry when Ted Nugent’s tour bus pulled up beside me. I knew straightaway that the driver had taken a wrong turn, and I directed him to the concert venue. The tour manager gave me free tickets to say thank you. And I washed a whole case of their laundry for them in return. When I went to give them back their clothes, he said to me, “Do the same thing for other bands!” Meat Loaf was playing in the Eberthalle two days after that. I went to the backstage door and said, “Hello, I wash clothes for free tickets.” And that was that. Then it was Deep Purple and The Scorpions. They were all happy that someone relieved them of the crappy job of washing their clothes. At some point I realized, either you start going along on tour, or you end up dying here in some rock-music backwater. In 2012, my Rock ’n’ Roll Laundry is washing clothes for Batman: The Musical in South America, Cirque du Soleil in the U.S., and Madonna in Europe. I looked after U2 in Australia in 2011. The only continent I’ve yet to work on is Antarctica. Artists’ laundry requires special treatment. The dresser will say, “Be careful. These are Keith Richards’ trousers!” These people stand next to the washing machine and pour the laundry soap in themselves. There can also be special requirements. Paul McCartney and Pink will only allow their laundry to be washed with non-biological detergent. 56
Rock ’n’ roll dry cleaner Hans-Jürgen Topf: A non-bio wash for McCartney, radical measures for Slipknot.
The worst laundry experience ever: Slipknot at Rock am Ring, 2005. They had drenched their overalls in artificial blood, cream, and beer, and then left them on the hot tour bus. There were things living in there. All I had to do when I opened the plastic bag was whistle and the clothes ran into the washing machine of their own accord. The best thing for getting out sauce stains is dishwashing liquid. Pour a small drop of white wine onto a red wine stain. Ink stains on your sofa? Just spray
some hairspray on them! Your sofa will be as good as new in no time. Angus Young from AC/DC sat on my washing machine after his concert. You could have a good old chat about laundry with him. He wanted to know how to get grass stains out of his trousers. Of course there’s a code of honor among clothes washers. Only a groupie knows what underwear their favorite star wears. Well, Topf knows, too, but he isn’t telling. If I find drugs in trouser pockets, I throw them away. I’m strict about that. It all goes straight down the toilet. I once found 6,000 deutsche marks in a tour manager’s jeans. I returned the money and was given a free T-shirt. There are winners and losers in rock ’n’ roll. You see bands that make it big and artists who go broke. But everyone feels that they’re part of a community, especially us roadies. We usually work 35 hours straight and can still find the time to laugh. We’re one big touring family. I would like to have worked for The Beatles. I haven’t done Ozzy Osbourne either. The biggest band ever? Led Zeppelin. They played the music of my youth. I still have an orgasm when I hear Whole Lotta Love. My mother was a farmer. My father was a grocer. They fled East Germany when the wall went up and opened a small laundry. But my parents made sure that the name Topf always stood for quality. I think they’d be proud of their son if they were still alive today. www.rock-n-roll-laundry.com
Name: Hans-Jürgen Topf Born Oct, 8, 1956, Ludwigshafen, Germany Profession Founder and manager of Rock ’n’ Roll Laundry Really wanted to be... A nursery worker Rock dreams Topf drums “pretty badly” The memoir The Rocking Laundry Book: Groupies, Stars & Dirty Socks
“Angus Young once sat on my washing machine and asked me how to get out grass stains.”
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OLIVER “ I Have
STONE :
a Right TO
Mad “I feel like shit.” When an interviewee starts an interview with those words, you know the next hour or so is going to be about as pleasurable as a two-day Kardashians marathon. Oliver Stone may well have invited us to his house in an idyllic setting at the western end of Sunset Boulevard, but he had a long night the night before and is struggling with a pretty major hangover. He tried playing a bit of table tennis that morning “to get his juices flowing,” but it didn’t help. And then an important letter he’d dictated the day before got lost. But the early signs were deceptive. The director was being too harsh on himself. Which we should have expected. Not many Hollywood directors have demonstrated as much vitality and overcome as many obstacles in recent decades as the 65-year-old Stone. So it’s only natural that he should seek another pulsating, provocative subject for his latest movie. Savages tells the tale of two young marijuana growers whose common girlfriend gets kidnapped by a Mexican cartel (headed by Salma Hayek and Benicio del Toro) and the vicious campaign they wage to get her back. So we can simply ignore Stone when he says in the course of our conversation that his comments may be disjointed and unfocused. This interview is evidence of his clarity—and it’s almost two hours before he finally asks for an aspirin.
Words: Rüdiger Sturm
I
”
n some of your classic movies—from Platoon to Wall Street—the young protagonists were alter egos of the youthful Oliver Stone. Does that also go for the twentysomething dope dealers of Savages? oliver stone: These characters have nothing to do with me personally. Except at a younger age I could have been a bit
BE
like them. I had the violence inside of me, and I like dope—I mean I liked dope. Of course, as a director I identify with my characters. But this was never my lifestyle. I never did this kind of thing. So you were never tempted to dabble in the world of crime? Now that I’m safely ensconced as a dramatist, I guess I can say that when I was a young man I did everything that I could to survive on this and that side of the law. I was in my mid-20s, I was driving a cab and doing all kinds of stuff trying to keep above the water level so I could keep writing two screenplays a year with the hope of breaking through. I’ve forgotten much. What made you give up dope? I stopped smoking grass a few years ago. I do it much less—every once in a while. Because I don’t want to become addicted to anything. I don’t want to be a slave of anything. Nevertheless you show an authentic portrait of the drug world in Savages. Of course. We did all the research. We built a real growhouse for dope, we talked to DEA agents, we talked to the Mexicans. I also spent a little time, like I did on Scarface, with some people who are on the other side. You mean the cartels? Yes. During the rehearsal period with the actors, we brought in three or four major drug people who had experiences in laundering money, various enforcers, and a woman who had been with one of the top dealers. With Benicio and my executive producer, Fernando Sulichin, I went to Tijuana to see one of the big shots. 59
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Who was that? I can’t say who. He was not a cartel leader, but he was one of the major launderers. How did you find these guys? We had a lot of Spanish connections going back to the documentaries I made about Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. Not to suggest they gave us those names. But one person said to us, “There is this guy in Tijuana who works with the cartel.” A fascinating guy. We met with him and he led us to other people. We had to go more than once in order to pass. What do you have to do to pass? The first time was all formality. The second time Benicio, Fernando, and I had 25 shots of tequila for lunch. It was the guy’s private collection of tequila. Later in the day, he took us to one of his offices, with Chihuahuas running all over the place; in the back room he was making the tequila based on a formula devised by a Chinaman who was about 103 years old. And then I saw what I had been drinking. It was disgusting: tarantulas, scorpions, rattlesnakes, a cobra, bulls’ penises. But it all comes together in this great tasty tequila. How risky was it to research that netherworld? Not at all. We were not going in deep like journalists who would put information out. That would be very dangerous. We were making a fiction movie with people coming from a novel, and we were trying to get a broad concept of the atmosphere. Then again, you are no stranger to danger, as one of the very few Hollywood directors who fought in the Vietnam War. Can you recall that experience? After my freshman year at Yale I went abroad to teach at a school in Saigon, which turned into six months. Then I quit and joined the merchant marines, and in the winter of 1966 I went back to the States in a boat. After my return I started writing a novel, Child’s Night Dream, and then I went back to Yale in September. I failed again to finish, left, and completed the book. It was rejected by the publishers; I was very upset and joined the army in April of ’67 in order to disappear, to become anonymous and come to terms with myself. But not every college dropout and failed writer goes to war to find himself. What was your mindset like at the time? What can I say? The adolescent period for young men is very difficult, very volatile. And I was filled with anger. Anger at the lies. At the lies of our life. When you are 60
born, your parents tell you lies. You find out about it, and you get angry. You mean the fact that they divorced when you were 15. That, too. There were all kinds of lies. Also with regard to my medical condition. What kind of medical condition? I can’t talk about it. There were some medical things that were done to me that my parents never told me about. You get scared and you don’t trust them. They are bullshitters. They get divorced, while you think you are a happy family. But then you go to Vietnam, and the lies are even bigger, because everybody is talking about democracy and that we are the good guys. Only we were not behaving like the good guys. We were behaving like a**holes. Was your experience similar to Platoon? Platoon really does reflect the journey, because I did not know what I was doing. You become fatalistic in situations such as that. There were many times where I didn’t feel I was going to make it. Then I became better as a soldier. It was a question of knowledge, or what they call on-the-job training. I was athletic at school, I had good night vision. Above all you need peripheral vision, you need to smell—all these factors come into play. It’s no longer cerebral; it becomes instinct, primal. By the time I left I was really an animal. But I was not a killer in the sense that I had no control. I was a good guy. However, a part of me was ruined. I could never cross back to the generation that I grew up with. I could and can never be part of them. Despite those scars you managed to carve out a unique career, including three Academy Awards. I came back relatively stable compared to some people. There are a lot of successful veterans. If you read my novel, which I finally published in a rewritten version in 1997, you get a sense of my personality. The protagonist comes to a place where he identifies himself as a “solitary realizer,” which is a Buddhist term. You are a person who lives alone a lot in your head, you don’t have the ability to join an organization. You try to make your way in the world by your own lights. It’s what they call autodidacticism. You can’t believe what they tell you in school. Maybe in chemistry and math you can, but not in history. They can’t tell you how to live your life. Would you call yourself a loner? No—I collaborate with people, I enjoy people. It’s very important for me not to be cut off. I have been a writer for many
“
A part of
me WAS
rr uu ii nn ee dd I could never cross back.
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hours of the day, but if you keep doing that only and don’t mix it up with life, you can become a very unsocial and nasty person. That’s why a lot of writers are nasty people. Was this a danger for you when you started out as an author? Yeah. I was going crazy at times. That’s why I gave up the novel. This was insanity. But I never was a joiner, not even in high school. Were you bullied? No, because I was a hider. I was minding my own business. My father, who was Jewish, had always told me, don’t bring any attention onto yourself—that was his lesson from the Holocaust. Only one time I got into a lot of trouble. In fourth grade—I was 8 then—there was a vendetta against a boy who was a bit dorky and also not good at school. I didn’t know him that much, but I didn’t like them picking on him and so I defended him against the class. As a consequence I was ostracized that year. A lot of people turned on me, which I found really amazing. It was a very interesting insight into human affairs. Over the years that experience has repeated itself, as you keep getting attacked for your nonconformist views of American history and politics. Does this mockery and vilification sometimes get under your skin? It gets under my skin. Of course you hope to get better at it. And you have to hang in there. If you feel strongly about something, you cannot back down.
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I have never been much of an
activist
TT YY PP EE I’m a dramatist.
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There is already a lot of controversy surrounding your upcoming documentary series, The Untold History of the United States. What we are trying to do is to show U.S. history from another, outside-America point of view, which is the hardest thing to do in America. For example, we are saying that during the Cold War we were under the hypnosis that the Russians were coming. The Russians were made into this easy enemy. The concept of creating an enemy has haunted our foreign policy and our domestic policy for generations. The amount of money we spend on this is ridiculous. This is a lifetime issue for me. According to some press reports you allegedly also offer a sympathetic view of Hitler and Stalin. There is no question that Hitler and Stalin did a lot of damage and killed a lot of people. So did Mao. But so did the U.S. We are simply bringing up the level around these figures and showing what was going on in the rest of the world. You cannot just single out villains and say, “These people are the aggressors.” You have to see it in the context of time. There was a reason that Roosevelt liked Stalin and got along with him. But people don’t know that from American history lessons. We get this stuff in school, we learned it, and still we don’t know anything about our country. I re-checked this stuff with our historians, three times, four times. The fact-checking for this series is unbelievable. So when we say something about Stalin, we really know what we are doing. What kind of reactions do you expect? I know I’m going to be murdered again in some way. But I am very proud of the work, and I am hoping it will stay out there in the cosmos and find a life. Maybe some young person will see it and it will help him understand history. What else can we do except fight for change? So you are not fully hopeless? I don’t give up on people. They have power. And most people want to be good and want the world to be a better place. Is Obama your man? We are all going to vote for him because we have no choice. If America is deeply ignorant and if it goes further to the right with Mitt Romney, it’s sad. But Obama is no man of the left—he is a man of the center-right. He has not shifted anything; he continued the war on terror with the same illegal methods. He left the system in place. Have you ever thought about going into politics yourself? 62
HIGHLIGHTS In his long career, the outspoken Stone has never been afraid to walk the walk in his films.
Platoon 1986
The winner of four Oscars, including his first best director nod, Platoon is a close reflection of Stone’s experience in Vietnam.
JFK 1991
While Stone’s depiction of the plot to assassinate JFK might not have been accurate, it was thrilling at the very least.
Born on the Fourth of July 1989
The second best-director Oscar win for Stone. Tom Cruise gave a powerful performance as an incensed Vietnam vet.
Natural born killers 1994
Among his most violent films, the serial-killer love story has been accused of encouraging copycat crimes.
I don’t think I could. You need to have the temperament. You have to like negotiations. Of course, in a sense being a director is a political assignment, but the consensus I have to achieve is about illusions. It’s a consensus to dream. Besides, I have never been much of an activist type. I am a dramatist, a news gatherer, a researcher. And an angry man, so it seems.
Well, there is an anger that builds up, as I see the lies of U.S. politics going on. We keep going back to another war. Why wouldn’t I have the right to be mad? But the thing is taking the anger and trying to make it a creative anger as opposed to bitterness. How do you do that? I meditate every day. The breathing in meditation also helps. I read all kinds of texts that point to the spiritual side of your nature, Buddhist teachings among others, although I wouldn’t call myself a Buddhist. I am just a student. You never arrive, even if you think you have arrived. Which notions of Buddhism can you identify with? That you are hypnotized by the world, or deluded ... whatever you want to call it. And you have to try and look through the illusion to find the reality. I don’t see Buddhism as a religion; it’s more like a meditation. It’s paying attention to your life on a daily basis. If you can carry it through the rest of your day, that’s wonderful. But often you lose track. We are overwhelmed by our thought processes. By our feelings. We are overwhelmed by so many things. And Buddhism to me is the detachment from that. It’s a very strong awareness in all things that the world is more than just a passing illusion. So there is something beyond our visible reality? Yes, I agree with the Buddha that there is something imperishable in our makeup that goes on. A consciousness. It has always been there, and it goes through the world. That’s why I identify with history. There is something to be achieved in our lifetime, which is a better spirit. But don’t push me too much on this, because people might perceive this as some mystic mumbo jumbo. Then let’s stay in this reality. What keeps you going? You do get burned out if you get beaten down every time. It is demoralizing, no doubt. But I am in search of something that is more important than my personal pain. It’s great to have a reward, but I know it does not happen very often. In a way I see myself as a railroad engineer. I want to make sure that the train runs. That is, I have to make sure that my movie has suspense. Whatever story I tell, it is my challenge to make it work. So if I can get Savages together and if it works as a good thriller, I would really be happy. But I have to tell you, my head really hurts. If I want to be happy now, I need a cup of coffee. Out now: www.savagesfilm.com
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BEYOND THE ORDINARY THE RED BULLETIN IWHAD8
o C n E m E a h L F in T The flip side: Czech motocross rider Martin Koren freestyling at Glen Helen Raceway, San Bernardino, Calif.
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S E i , dies o b . ered egend t t a L s, b rs ed c air an call -Fighte f i p e a m bull X rland o d n a red the oss. the the mo otocrhlager in tyle mRottensc rwan s ka s free Andrea 端rgen S ds: y: J Wor ograph t Pho
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Wednesday
6:30 p.m.
Los Angeles International Airport Into the rental car and out onto Interstate 10, where streams of cars head east. Better keep to the speed limit. The CHP doesn’t mess around. The drive to Glen Helen Raceway takes around two hours. This storied motorsports arena hosts Red Bull X-Fighters, which, for the record, is freestyle motocross—or gymnastics on a motorbike: double backflips, 360-degree spins in the saddle, jumps with 100 feet of air. And why Glen Helen? Because freestyle motocross was born here.
Thursday
9:00 a.m.
Glen Helen Raceway Over an area as large as three football fields, quarterpipes, ramps, and kickers tower out of the earth, offering more than 30 jump options, the most ever at a Red Bull X-Fighters event. The toughest challenge at this latespring competition is the “step-up”—a ramp almost 20 feet high that catapults riders up to a 60-foot dirt plateau. Those who dare to try it are shot to the seventh story of a high-rise. Freestyle veteran Ronnie Renner checks out the playground and gets poetic: “You can draw lines here, like an artist with his brushes.” 66
10:30 a.m.
First practice When Eigo Sato crashes, things go quiet around the course. His motorbike—a Yamaha YZR250—rolls on riderless for a couple of feet and tips over. Sato lies still on the ground. After a few seconds he slowly starts to pull his legs up to his chest. He stands up carefully. Sato, in black helmet and red pants, beats the dust off his chest. He trots to the bike, climbs stiffly onto the seat and kick-starts the engine. Then he heads off toward the pits. The course has just shrugged off its first rider.
Eigo Sato crashes on the back of a kicker. Things go quiet around the course.
Straight up: Californian Nick Dunne pulls a “Ruler.” Right: The old master, Eigo Sato. Far left: Fans enjoy the sunshine at Glen Helen Raceway— sunglasses, tattoos, and hot pants are de rigueur.
Additional Photography: Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool
Left: After a two-year break, Red Bull X-Fighters returns to the U.S., the birthplace of freestyle motocross, to be greeted in special flag-waving style.
67
Dany Torres
in the pits The crashed pilot Sato sits on his camping chair, sipping tea. “When you notice something going wrong during a jump, you have two choices,” he says. “You throw the bike away or you hold onto it. I kept hold of it and that was the right decision.” How do you know that? “Look at me, I’m still sitting here.” Beneath Sato’s chin, a crescent-shaped scar runs from one side of his face to the other. A pea-sized cut next to his left eye is a reminder of another injury. At 34, the Japanese rider is still one of the top players. He’s the oldest athlete on tour and perhaps the toughest of all. What his damaged back doesn’t allow, Sato makes up for with blood, sweat, and tears. “As preparation I visualize my rides a lot,” says Sato. When he lies in his hotel room at night, he flies over the circuit, tests out ascents, plans his next landing. Right now he fishes a piece of paper out of his pants pocket and makes notes for his qualifying run. As well as a few sentences, he draws some stars—only he knows what they mean. He wants to continue riding for a couple of years. His dream is “to do backflips until I’m 40.”
5:00 p.m.
main grandstands Until the sun sets, riders fly back and forth over the ramps. How to master this monster of a course? The trick is to estimate flight distances, test approach speeds, and hone trick options. Everyone is in agreement, the massive step-up is still 68
“Riding in front of 40,000 fans, I can’t hear them. I'm totally focused.” Dany Torres
the greatest risk. It dawns on several riders: This is the difference between victory and defeat. A question goes in the notebook: “How do you cope with the idea of crashing from so high up?”
Friday
10:00 a.m.
back in the pits “This damn dust!” Dany Torres sneezes into a tissue. In front of us sits the champion: Torres, 25, winner of the Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour of 2011. One thing immediately stands out: Torres is slight of build and looks more like a dancer than a top athlete. Before the start he listens to flamenco, preferably from his favorite group, Los Rebujitos. Torres is famous for his “double grab backflip,” a backwards somersault on his KTM 250 SX, during which both hands grab tight onto the supporting holes of the seat and he extends the rest of his body out the back. His career started at 5 when his father put a red-and-white-painted kids’ motorbike under the Christmas tree. Torres is regarded as one of the most technically accurate riders on the Red Bull X-Fighters
11:00 a.m.
trackside at Glen Helen Anyone wanting to know more about the origins of freestyle motocross should talk to Monte Lee, who can be found beside the finish jump on the Glen Helen track. Not far away, the Red Bull X-Fighters playground winds up a hill. In the corner of Lee’s mouth is the smoldering stub of a cigar. He wears a sunhat and an eyecatching, exquisitely twirled mustache. Lee is 64. In Glen Helen they call him “The Legend.” When he climbed onto his first motorbike, a Triumph 650, almost 50 years ago, not one of the X-Fighters riders had been a twinkle in their mothers’ eyes, let alone been born. Lee rode off-road and desert races, breaking several ribs in the process. Freestyle probably originated from classic motocross, he explains, when
Levi Sherwood
Additional Photography: Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Content Pool
10:40 a.m.
World Tour. When he walks into the supermarket in his hometown of Arahal, near Seville in Spain, people point at him and say, “Look, here comes El Campeón!” So how does he cope with the idea of crashing from so high up? “Fear is a part of it. Shortly before the jump it gets really quiet inside my crash helmet. You ride in front of 40,000 people, but I can’t hear them. I’m totally focused. The noise only returns after I’ve landed.” Does your mother worry when you jump? “She gets nervous before every competition.” What do you say to her then? “I say, ‘Relax, Mama!’ ” Torres would one day like to open a freestyle school and teach children. But first he has to go out on the course. “I can defend the title,” he says and coughs. Damn dust.
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Far left: The next generation of Red Bull X-Fighters? Niko Munoz and Ricky Negrete Left: Support from the stands. Below: France’s Thomas Pagès at work.
Levi Sherwood, 20, can twist like no other rider. They call him “Rubber Kid.”
riders began to improve their jumps with tricks about 20 years ago. “We called that styling,” he says and takes a drag on his cigar. “At some point the boys headed into the desert and began to make the first big ramps.” What does he think of the Red Bull X-Fighters? Lee laughs a legend’s laugh. “One thing is for sure,” he says. “These guys have big balls.”
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at the start ramp Torres’ greatest rival rocks a mullet and answers to the name “Rubber Kid.” Levi Sherwood, 20, can twist his body on the KTM like no other. “I’m more relaxed than the others and that makes me strong,” says the New Zealander from Palmerston 69
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Glen Helen veteran Monte Lee: “These guys have big balls.” Below: The 50cc race has a casual dress code.
North. Sherwood doesn’t like flamenco. On his iPod boom the beats of the hottest electronic music acts, Skrillex, or house music from Deadmau5. Sherwood was only 17 when he won a Red Bull X-Fighters round in Mexico City in 2009—the youngest rider to do so. A broken wrist interrupted his career. “Before your first crash you feel invincible” he explains. “Of course, injuries make you grow up.” The more mature Sherwood says “tactics is the key to winning. I now think more long term.” What’s the worst that can happen to a Red Bull X-Fighters rider? “When you want to do a grab and you miss your bike in midair. That’s not good news.” Sherwood’s girlfriend has accompanied him to Glen Helen, and it looks a bit too easygoing the way he lets her jump on the back of his bike and ride back to the paddock. But Levi is pragmatic: “The more time I spend on my bike, the safer I feel.”
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press tent Surprise qualifying result: Frenchman Thomas Pagès, an unconventional rider with a loud, roguish laugh, finishes ahead of Eigo Sato and American Todd Potter. Pagès, who refuses to do backflips, offsets this deficit with a dream line and innovative tricks. Highlight: the so-called Volt Body Varial, a seated 360-degree spin during a jump. On the program leaflet it says, “Degree of difficulty 10 out of 10—the mother of all tricks.”
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main entrance It’s the day of reckoning and the sun blazes straight down from overhead. A bird circles over the grandstands. It looks like a vulture— not surprising, since Glen Helen borders the Mojave Desert. Fifteen thousand spectators stream in and are scorched by the midday heat. The dress code for fans:
Todd Potter
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Ladies pour themselves into ultra-tight hot pants; men generally sport T-shirts from the freestyle brand Metal Mulisha or full-body race overalls. Estimated percentage of tattooed visitors to the event: about 80.
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Glen Helen Raceway Pagès and Potter deliver a top-class finalé. Each has 120 seconds to impress the five judges. Pagès continues with his typical style: no backflips, but mighty leaps right over the step-up. Potter, with his three-day stubble under his helmet and the almond-brown eyes that drive the girls crazy, rips up the infamous step-up and drops down again, gaining points with backflip combinations. He makes the most of the 225,000 square feet of track, thrashing his four-stroke Honda over the jumps. It’s this fearless freeride style that the California native has perfected over the hills of his home state. The crowd cheers him on. Todd
Potter is crowned King of Glen Helen. On the podium he says: “Here you have to swallow your fear.” The press conference moderator says: “This course was Todd Potter’s wet dream.”
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Glen Helen campground It’s by far the smallest ramp built this weekend: two shovel-loads of dirt, flattened with a spade, about four inches high. At this moment, Tyler Pham hurtles towards the bumps on his mini-Yamaha. The urchin is just 3 and a half years old and is dressed in full motocross gear. He hops over the mini-kicker and almost tips over. Samy Fayad, 29, Tyler’s minder and ramp builder calls out: “Show the people how a freestyle motocrosser does it!” Little Tyler turns around, raises his left hand, extends his index and little finger and gives us the “rock on” sign. Then he turns and rides on. www.redbullxfighters.com www.redbull.com/WoodstockonWheels
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Photography: jay nemeth/Red Bull Stratos
How to jump Once Felix Baumgartner opens the door of his capsule, it gets serious. Years of planning by the Red Bull Stratos science team comes down to a few calculated, vital decisions.
This is Red Bull Stratos Red Bull Stratos is a mission to the edge of space, in which Felix Baumgartner will ascend to 23 miles in a helium balloon and come down to Earth in free fall, collecting useful scientific data and setting four world records:
1. Break the speed of sound unaided 2. Free fall from the highest altitude 3. Longest free-fall time 4. Highest manned balloon flight The Red Bulletin is following the mission closely, each issue focusing on a specific topic. All back issues can be downloaded for the iPad.
In MARCH we interviewed Felix Baumgartner (1.1) and Joe Kittinger (1.2).
in APRIL we took a look at
Baumgartner’s capsule (2.1), his cockpit (2.2), and the cameras on board (2.3).
In MAY we looked at how the helium balloon carrying the capsule and its occupant got airborne (3.1) and how Baumgartner went about getting his license for it (3.2). In JUNE we discussed Baumgartner’s spacesuit (4.1) and explored the colorful history of spacesuits (4.2).
in juLY we spoke with Jonathan Clark, medical director of Red Bull Stratos, about the dangers to Baumgartner’s body (5.1) and took a sci-fi journey to Überworld (5.2). this month we skydive with Luke Aikins (6.1), calculate if Baumgartner can go supersonic (6.2) and listen to the man himself as he tests from 13.6 miles (6.3).
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6.1 Luke in the Sky
How to come down to Earth again: Skydiving specialist Luke Aikins on making Baumgartner’s fall from the stratosphere as safe as possible. Words: Werner jessner
Jumping from the stratosphere feels “like driving a car with flat tires.”
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e jumped. Then he pulled the reserve chute, and once it opened he severed the line and trusted that the main parachute would open. The next time he jumped, he opened the drogue chute and the reserve chute together. or he leapt and began to spin on his own axis, faster and faster, until he became dizzy and the horizon turned blurry before his eyes. He did everything wrong that you can possibly do wrong—and explored every eventuality that could threaten Felix Baumgartner in his Red Bull Stratos mission. Twenty days after the birth of his son logan, luke Aikins jumped from Mandalay Bay, one of the largest hotels in las Vegas. don’t you ever start thinking about fear and risk, luke? The giant with the broad smile shakes his head. “The second a strange idea enters my thoughts before a jump I’ll stop immediately.” Aikins, 38, is a child of the skies. He grew up, literally, on Kapowsin Airfield in Kapowsin, Wash., where his grandfather founded a skydiving company, later to be taken over by his aunt and uncle. Aikins’ father is a pilot, and all his siblings fly. other families go fishing or diving. The
Aikins clan takes to the air. At 12 years old, Aikins did his first tandem jump, but for legal reasons he had to wait until his 16th birthday to go solo for the first time. Aikins’ skydiving logbooks recording around 15,000 parachute jumps fill half a bookcase. Alongside the scientists who stand behind Red Bull Stratos are true sporting professionals contributing crucial pieces of the puzzle toward the success of the project. Guys who actually test the scientists’ and technicians’ calculations and prototypes. Aikins’ other “clients” are the elite soldiers of the u.S. Navy SeAlS. He shows them the finer points of skydiving. Initially, Aikins was to have no real major role in the Red Bull Stratos project. He was booked as the airborne photographer, responsible for taking shots of Baumgartner during his pressuresuit familiarization in the wind tunnel and later during the first jumps from the plane. Aikins was not at all impressed with the original design of the parachute—but he shut up and readied himself to become a flying guardian angel should Baumgartner become tangled up in the rather confusing layout. The first test jumps in April 2009 were top secret. In California City, a couple of hours north of los Angeles, two helicopters waited on standby to document Baumgartner’s first leaps in the pressure suit. What’s more, a 33-pound Red-Hd camera had been strapped to Aikins’ helmet so that he could film Baumgartner during the fall. The mission was ill fated from the outset. “It was too windy outside, which wasn’t particularly surprising,” says Aikins. “It’s no coincidence that the area around Cal City is full of windmills.” Two helicopters and a Cineflex camera waited on the ground, while the crew nervously twiddled their thumbs. Baumgartner began to feel out of sorts. It seemed jinxed. The waiting dragged on; time was running out. So what did Aikins do? He called a friend in Taft, not 30 minutes away by helicopter, a small town whose location behind a ridge meant calmer conditions. He spun a story to the guys at the airfield—something about filming a Red Bull commercial. Give us 500 bucks, they said, and you can come. Baumgartner and the crew were happy: Well, lookie here—the film/photo guy solves problems just like that. The day was saved, but not quite: In the original parachute design, Baumgartner’s drogue chute also deployed and flew away when he pulled the main chute
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pHoToGRApHY: JoeRG MITTeR/Red Bull STRAToS
“I think your equipment is unsafe. We have to rebuild the parachute system.”
cord. Aikins stood in the door ready to jump and indicated to the pilot of the second helicopter not to dive immediately in case the rotors got caught up in the parachute. Thinking about the safety of a helicopter isn’t typically among the core priorities of a skydiver. But Aikins did it anyway. Then he jumped out and filmed. For Aikins, it’s simply normal to take the initiative and fix things. Technical project director Art Thompson, life support engineer Mike Todd, and Baumgartner were so impressed by the performance of the supposed cameraman that they wanted him on the team. But he hesitated. “I think your equipment is unsafe. If I should come aboard we will have to rebuild the parachute system.” originally, the drogue chute was to be fixed to the shoulders. Aikins thought
“the risk that the ropes could wrap around Felix’s neck was much too high.” While others calculated and fiddled, Aikins was up in the sky trying something out for himself. “I hooked the drogue up simple and dirty on my parachute and jumped out of a plane and just threw it in my hand. An early generation drogue chute—and it worked really good. So I sent them a video the next day.”
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erived from this and refined with input from suit handler Todd, Aikins put together a crude model for the parachute rigging. Aikins is, and he says it himself, “not a finaltouch guy—it’s more about ideas with me.” The finishing touches were given to Kelly Farrington, founder of parachute specialists Velocity Sports. during many
months of night and weekend shifts, he built the parachute rig that Baumgartner now uses in the Red Bull Stratos mission. With his immense free-fall experience, Aikins can perhaps best imagine what awaits Baumgartner in his fall through the stratosphere. “during the first half a minute he won’t notice any wind. For a skydiver it’s as if you are driving a car with four flat tires. I suspect he’ll tumble over a couple of times during the first 30 seconds. There is simply not enough air for him to work with. As soon as he feels enough air under his body, he’ll be able to assume his normal jumping position. I think way up there, Felix shouldn’t even try to prevent himself from somersaulting. Nothing you do—whether it’s flailing the arms or kicking the legs— will change the position. That’s hard for a skydiver to accept, but in an atmosphere that is so thin that a feather falls to earth as fast as a lead weight, you can only ride it out and wait for thicker air.” At tests for Red Bull Stratos, a metal cylinder was released from 120,000 feet to see how it would react (the team dubbed this pod “Felix Bombgartner”). That it began to spin worried the technicians but not skydiver Aikins: “Where there’s air that allows you to wobble, then there’s air you can work with. We can do more with air than many aerodynamicists can imagine. In 1960 when Joe Kittinger jumped, he had only completed 33 parachute jumps. Felix has done over 3,000. In 1960 the record for formation free fall was at 8 people; today we’re at almost 500 who link hands in 75
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6.2 Calculate Speed Hefty discussions on the Internet: Can a human jumping from the stratosphere go supersonic? For a bit of clarity we asked Dr. Martin Apolin of the Institute of Physics in Vienna what pure physics had to say. The results are astonishing. Words: Martin Apolin
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hy can Felix Baumgartner break the sound barrier in free fall when a parachutist in the head-down position can only reach about 186 mph? We’ll start with the short answer. Air density is much lower at high altitude, meaning his rate of descent will be significantly higher. By contrast, the speed of sound is much lower there because of the low temperatures. These two factors combine to make breaking the sound barrier possible. That’s the short answer. If you want to understand it in greater detail and make calculations, you’ve got to dig into the physics. It’s a good case study for demonstrating the problems that arise when trying to make as accurate a prediction as possible and for showing that reality is too complex to allow for precise calculations. You must first take into account the governing factors for achieving maximum speed in free fall. Then you have to understand the two forces at work on a person in free fall. Although my analysis does not include compressibility effects due to shocks, it yields a good first-order approximation of Felix’s performance. The first factor is the force of gravity: FG = –m g, where g equals gravitational
acceleration and m is the mass of the person jumping and his equipment. (Baumgartner weighs in at 308 pounds when in his pressurized suit.) As FG pulls downward, we give it a minus sign. As the person jumping moves through the air, a decelerating force is also at play— air resistance, or drag: FD = ½ ρ v² cw A, where ρ is air density, cw the drag coefficient, A the flow area, and v the instantaneous velocity. Thus the total force being exerted on the person jumping is Ftotal = FD + FG = ½ ρ v² cw A – mg. For simplicity’s sake, let’s assume that gravitational acceleration remains constant. This would mean the weight was also constant. It is, of course, a different matter when it comes to air resistance. This grows proportionally with the speed squared. If the speed doubles, FD quadruples. Therefore, as speed increases, so does air resistance. So maximum speed is reached when air resistance and gravitational force balance each other out, i.e., when F total is equal to zero. So in this case we can set the equation for the total force to zero, solve it for v and come up with v = √ 2mg/ρ cw A. This corroborates the initial assertion. Given the same body position and mass, all values except for air density are constant and therefore v is proportional to √ 1/ρ . As air gets thinner the higher you go, maximum speed increases with altitude. If, as planned, Baumgartner makes his jump from 120,000 feet, he will achieve his maximum speed at just below 92,000 feet. If we give normal air density at sea level the notional
photography: Joerg Mitter/Red Bull Stratos
free fall. An insane amount has changed.” And still, “no one has leapt from as high as Felix plans with Red Bull Stratos. There is only one way to truly know what happens during free fall from such a height—someone has to do it.” Aikins’ job is to investigate all eventualities, predict problems, and work on solutions. He has jumped more than 100 times with the Red Bull Stratos rig, testing every possible malfunction. Suppose that Baumgartner jumps and the reserve chute opens accidentally: Baumgartner wouldn’t survive because he will be carrying too little oxygen to last him the slow descent. So he needs to be able to possibly cut the reserve chute—an absolute no-go in normal skydiving. And this system needs
Baumgartner (left) with skydiving pro Aikins during a test jump.
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someone who is prepared to test whether it actually works as planned. Aikins doesn’t regard himself as a lab rat, and he’s no thrill seeker. On the contrary, he is arguably one of the most experienced and calmest skydivers in the world. And his respect for Baumgartner is huge. “Felix has so much to do for this mission that it’s simply helpful to have a skydiver alongside to take on some of the test work. In racing there are test drivers. The mission pilot can’t do everything himself.”
During a trial run in Taft, a jump with the old parachute system almost went wrong. “Felix pulled on the wrong ripcord and the chute didn’t open. More than a few jumpers have been killed in such a situation. They panic and don’t yank on a ripcord until it’s too late. But Felix took half a breath and very calmly made another decision—he pulled the correct deployment cord. Instead of waiting for someone to help him, he takes action. He makes decisions, he makes them fast and he makes them right. That’s what is
“A great athlete wants the opportunity to screw up. A lot of people shrink in that moment—but a champion wants that shot.”
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Fig. 1
Raw data (white dots) and fitted curve for the air density between 20km (12.45 miles) and 40km (24.9 miles).
Air density in kg/m3
0,06 y=1,5906e-0,151x
0,04 0,02 0
20 Height in km
25
30
35
40
800
Fig. 2
Simulation of Baumgartner’s speed for the first 100 seconds from three different heights (see text).
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Speed in mph
400 200 0
0 20 Flight time in seconds
40
60
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100
If you look at Fig. 2, you will notice that the jumps are almost identical for the first 10 to 15 seconds. What is this due to? value of 1, at this altitude ρ is only 0.02 (or 2 percent). Thus for maximum speed, we use 1/ρ = √ 1/0,02 ≈ 7. So at this altitude, Baumgartner can achieve a speed seven times faster due to the low density than in a denser atmosphere. A simulation that shows what speed
will be achieved when is particularly fascinating. The simplest way to do this is numerically, i.e., to calculate the values step by step. This is actually fairly easy using spreadsheet software. You simply proceed from the known to the unknown values and then repeat. You start with the
special about Felix Baumgartner. A great athlete wants that opportunity to screw up—just to show that they can do it. A lot of people shrink in that moment—but a champion wants that shot. Felix belongs to that second group.” In Red Bull Stratos, Aikins sees above all the sporting value, the records, the quest to push the limit of his sport a little. “We want to show that it’s possible to jump through the stratosphere with a spacesuit and a parachute, to break the sound barrier and make a safe and controlled landing.” What would Luke Aikins rate as a Red Bull Stratos success? “Once the parachute is open and we see that Felix is moving, it’s all good.”
altitude the jump will be made from and a speed of zero. Calculate the total force exerted on the person jumping at that moment (only gravity to start with). Then, let’s assume that the overall force remains constant for a short time (e.g., one 10th of a second). This isn’t in fact completely correct, but it is only a marginal deviation. We can calculate acceleration from the total force, from there the new speed and new altitude and so on. Essentially very straightforward— but the devil is in the details.
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f we want as accurate a simulation as possible, we must first factor in that the gravitational acceleration g, a consequence of gravitational force, will decrease with height. In Roswell, N.M., where Baumgartner test-jumped from about 71,600 feet on March 15 of this year, g is 8,957 yards/s², but at 120,000 feet it is only 8,855 yards/s², so about 1 percent lower. If we overlooked this difference, we would end up somewhat overestimating the final velocity. A significantly greater problem is that it’s impossible to calculate flow area A and drag coefficient cw at every point of the descent, because these are very much dependent on his body position. But we can try. To start with, we don’t need to know the individual values, just the product of A cw . We can estimate this by evaluating additional data from the test jump earlier this year. On that occasion, Baumgartner achieved a top speed of 365 mph. Now adjust A cw in the simulation until you achieve the same speed there. 77
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“If Felix somehow goes into a tailspin and has to open his drogue parachute, he can wave bye-bye to breaking the sound barrier.”
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he evaluation gives a value of 1.06 for A cw, which we can now use in our simulation. Let’s assume that his body position will be the same for his record-breaking jump. A real crunch point comes when trying to estimate air density. It lowers the higher you go, because there is less air weighing down the air, so to speak. Unfortunately, the temperature also decreases with altitude, which affects air density, too. There is plenty of data from the lower atmosphere—the troposphere—up to 6.2 miles. But when it comes to data from the stratosphere, between 9 miles and 31 miles, the evidence is thin, like the air. If we take the little raw data there is for high altitudes, we can estimate the air density between 12.4 and 24.8 miles up using the equation ρ = 1.5906e–0.151h (Fig. 1), whereby h is the height in kilometers. Of course, air density is constantly changing slightly and is dependent on the time of day, time of year, humidity, and location. In other words, you can’t predict air density at any given time. So it could be the case that there will be slightly different conditions for the record-breaking jump.
Jump height 110,000 feet 120,000 feet 130,000 feet
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f we want to know how many Machs Baumgartner has hit at a specific height, we need to know the prevailing temperature there. As we have already stated above, it’s not easy to come by data for the stratosphere. However, we do have some temperature data given in two-kilometer increments, which we can interpolate. But it’s similar to the problem with air density in that slightly different conditions might very well prevail at the time of the jump. The table gives the temperatures at the respective altitudes and the speeds in Mach. It shows that Baumgartner would not reach the speed of sound if he jumped from 110,000 feet. The jump from 120,000 feet would give him a safety margin of 7 percent, and the jump from 130,000 feet a margin of up to 19 percent. No one, however, can anticipate what might happen just before the sound barrier is broken. If Baumgartner somehow goes into a tailspin and, in the worst-case scenario, has to open his drogue parachute, he can wave bye-bye to breaking the sound barrier. But whatever happens, the jump will still be extremely fascinating, as even the best simulation can never replace an actual attempt.
Time taken to reach the speed of sound
Altitude at which the speed of sound is reached
Time taken to reach maximum speed
Maximum speed (vmax)
Altitude at which maximum speed is reached
T in °F at this altitude
vsonic at this altitude
vmax in Mach
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–
43 seconds
639 mph
85,300 feet
-59.3° F
669 mph
0.96
37 seconds
100,065 feet
46 seconds
719 mph
90,550 feet
-56.4° F
671 mph
1.07
34 seconds
112,200 feet
50 seconds
801 mph
95,140 feet
-53.9° F
674 mph
1.19
Table: Data on the three simulated jumps. All values have been rounded off save those for maximum speed and temperature.
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denoted as 767.4 mph, known as Mach 1. Baumgartner would only have reached 0.96 Mach in the planned jump from 120,000 feet and thus not broken the sound barrier. Thankfully the established default value only applies at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, but the speed of sound is dependent on temperature, and this decreases very considerably at high altitude. You can calculate it using the formula vsonic = 44.74 mph · √ T + 273.15 whereby T represents temperature in degrees Celsius. (Values in the table below have been converted to Fahrenheit using the formula F = C × 1.8 + 32.)
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ow we are ready for the simulations (Fig. 2). I have only produced simulations for the first hundred seconds of Baumgartner’s jump because the formula used to calculate air density may not be accurate enough after that. But the most important stuff will all have happened within 50 seconds at most anyway. I chose starting heights of 110,000 feet, 120,000 feet and 130,000 feet for the simulations. As things stand, the intention is to jump from the second height (represented by the blue dotted line). The results do not seem dogmatic. These models can, of course, never be more accurate than the raw data. And deviations of a few percent are always possible because the basic conditions could very well be different from those assumed. If you look at Fig. 2, you will notice that the jumps are almost identical for the first 10 to 15 seconds. What is this due to? The answer is the extremely low air density at the starting height. It’s so low at the start that in all three cases we are dealing with virtually unimpeded free fall. It’s backed up by something Joe Kittinger said after his 1960 jump. “At the end of the countdown I make a leap into the unknown. There’s no wind blowing; my suit doesn’t inflate. I don’t have the slightest sensation of the speed increasing.” The speeds are noticeably different after 30 seconds. There is already a difference of 62 mph at that point, and a difference of more than 161 mph in maximum speed between the jumps from the lowest and highest altitudes. This is shown particularly well in the table below. This simulation produces a maximum speed of 719 mph for the planned jump from 120,000 feet. But how much is that in Mach? This is where one last complication arises. The speed of sound is normally
The moment everyone has been waiting for: Baumgartner launches himself into the stratosphere
6.3 Photograpy: luke aikinis/Red Bull Stratos
7 minutes, 52 years A leap from the stratosphere is like climbing Mount Everest: Felix Baumgartner talks about his plunge from 71,600 feet, the impossibility of training for supersonic flight, and what really worries him. Words: Felix Baumgartner
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pace is jet black. You can see the curvature of the Earth. This is the moment when you realize just how lucky you are, standing on the platform of the capsule at an altitude of about 13 miles, ready to jump. You’re relieved to finally be up here. Relieved to be able to show at last what we’ve been working on for the last five years. Relieved to give something back to those people who have always believed in us. Then you release your grip on the handrails and fall, just as you’ve envisaged it a million times over. That moment of free-standing and leaping off, those first six seconds of free fall, where you don’t exactly know what will happen to you next: That was really cool. After six seconds of my test jump over Roswell, N.M., in March, I flipped forward until I was lying on my back. My higher center of gravity with the oxygen bottles, the parachute, and the massive chest pack put me in this position. My plan was not to fight against the unfamiliar, and in fact incorrect, jumping position. Further down, where the air becomes denser, I would have enough opportunities to correct my position. “Just ride it out” is what skydiving pro Luke Aikins says, and sure enough, I was able to assume a stable position shortly afterward. After a six-second free fall we
already had the answer to one question, namely: In which position would I find myself after jumping? Our bungee test jump hadn’t given us any clarity on this, because when you’re attached to a rope the fun is over after just two seconds. For my record leap from 23 miles it means that I might possibly break the sound barrier on my back, blind and helpless. That is not what you want, but you can’t discount such a horror scenario. Scientists don’t even know what happens when you break the sound barrier. Anticipation is difficult, because I don’t actually know what I should be anticipating. And then there’s the
pressure suit, which basically hinders quick responses. Jumping in a pressure suit is like walking under water, very slow and arduous. In an environment that calls for 100 percent from athletes, the equipment necessary for survival reduces your ability to 30 percent. You can’t train to fly supersonically. When I jump from 23 miles, I’ll have notched up a total of seven minutes of free-fall practice from two test jumps at high altitude: three minutes from the first, four from the second. That’s just seven minutes of experience to break a 52-year-old record. You have to look at this in direct relation. I’ve had to quickly 79
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Baumgartner plans to do another test jump from 90,000 feet before he tackles the big one.
gather the knowledge I’ll need for the high altitude: First, how it feels to fly, and second, how to handle the psychological stress of going beyond the “Armstrong Line,” where you’re aware you are surrounded by lethal danger, invisible but nonetheless very real. Even though the first test went well, we were only halfway there. Any mountaineer can climb to 4,000 feet. But Everest is a completely different caliber. People often ask me if I’m afraid heading toward the jump. The opposite is true: I look forward to it, because from the moment I take the leap I get closer to the safety of Mother Earth. This is another thing you can compare to mountaineering: After reaching the summit, the mountaineers descend to base camp; for me I reach a breathable atmosphere. With each passing second, the air becomes more maneuverable, I can control my position, and the greatest problem is relatively trivial— namely, icy cold hands. From then on, the rest of the jump is no big deal anymore: I can do it, I love it, this is my world.
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cushion two fat Harley Davidsons. Radio means information, information allows time to react. Even if it had been a broken leg or arm, you don’t want to be lying around in the desert near Roswell. What if I’d been unable to open my visor? The oxygen runs out, I suffocate in my suit, and all because the onboard radio didn’t work? That can’t happen. I’ll only get back into the capsule when the radio works flawlessly. We now know that the mistake originated in the chest pack, which aside from various controls and documentation functions also houses the radio. The device is now being rebuilt, and the specialists from [German communications company] Riedel will sort it out. In the meantime, I’m now feeling generally very confident as far as my equipment is concerned. Over the last few months you’ve read about the capsule, suit, and balloon here. I’m very happy with how the parachute has been perfected. We should have answers to any problems we’ll face up there. The greatest unknown is still the breaking of the sound barrier. There is only one way to find out what happens: You have to try it. And that’s exactly what I will do this summer. www.redbullstratos.com
“Am I afraid heading toward the jump? The opposite is true. Because the moment I take the leap I get closer to the safety of Mother Earth.”
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Next month: Roswell Extraterrestrials, rattlesnakes, airplane parking and a river called Felix: We visit the launch site of Red Bull Stratos.
photography: luke Aikinis/Red bull stratos
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e’ve practiced everything so many times, from different altitudes, with and without an inflated suit, from a bungee rope and in the wind tunnel. Because of this, the test jump worked with almost frightening precision. When you climb the same mountain for the hundredth time it doesn’t seem as exciting as the first time. You don’t notice the speed. I reached 364.4 mph on this jump—the thirdhighest free-fall speed any human has reached—but it felt like a normal jump. There are no reference points—you don’t feel the speed through the pressure suit. You don’t even notice the sound of speed: Further up you hurtle quickly through few air molecules, further down you go slower through more molecules. At the end of the day it makes no difference. I was afraid, though, of a radio malfunction during the first jump. Not because I want to chat, but because one of our mission goals is to communicate during free fall. Radio failure can be dangerous, as we witnessed from my landing. [Baumgartner lost radio contact briefly after exiting the capsule.] Because I couldn’t direct the helicopter with the flares onboard, I landed with the wind and hit the ground at 4 G. Suit included, I weigh 308 pounds, so my ankles had to
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Contents 84. TRAVEL TIPS Montreux Jazz Festival 86. GET THE GEAR What makes Pyro Pete’s job go out with a bang
PHOTOGRAPHY: KIM JAE-HWAN/GETTY IMAGES
88. TRAINING Tips from bike racer Marc Márquez 90. NIGHTLIFE A top club, an exotic cocktail, the best in music and much more —everything you need to get you through the night 94. THE LIST 96. SAVE THE DATE 97. KAINRATH 98. MIND’S EYE Columnist Jeff Wise
Here’s mud in your eye: Why 1.5 million people make a pilgrimage each year to the Boryeong Mud Festival in South Korea. See page 95.
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get into the groove this month’s travel tips
Music, with Nobs on montreux jazz festival Bob Dylan and Miles Davis, Lana Del Rey and Janelle Monáe—every summer for the past 46 years, Claude Nobs has invited top musicians to perform by Lake Geneva. The festival director on where to find the highest density of musicians, Kid Rock’s jail time, and the best view in town.
“Funky Claude” Nobs, 76, an incomparable music connoisseur and international music stars’ host of choice.
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For 349 days of the year, Montreux is a sleepy little Swiss town on the shores of Lake Geneva, complete with lakeside embankment and stunning views of the Vaud Alps. But every summer since 1966, it’s been the epicenter of the music world. The man responsible for this is Claude Nobs, founder of the renowned festival. Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Prince, Radiohead ... all have accepted invitations from the 76-year-old music connoisseur. And the 200,000 fans who turn up every year are thankful for that. Nobs is famous for getting stars to Montreux before they are stars, thus
ensuring their loyalty. Jazz legend Herbie Hancock, for example, will be making his 28th appearance this summer. And Deep Purple even paid tribute to Nobs in their song “Smoke on the Water” with the line “Funky Claude was running in and out, pulling kids out the ground” (see facing page). Through the years, Nobs has collected an archive’s worth of anecdotes associated with hometown locations, so for anyone heading to the festival this year—it runs until July 14—here are a few suggestions for a magical history tour. www.montreuxjazzfestival.com
WORDS: adrian schrader. illustration: julia Pfaller. PHOTOGRAPHY: Charly Rappo, Montreuxriviera.com, picturedesk, Mountain-Studios
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Tracing the stars’ footsteps in Montreux Bob Dylan on a racing bike, Kid Rock in the clink, and six more musically unique markers on the shores of Lake Geneva. 1 Montreux Casino The casino was already a concert venue before the Montreux Jazz Festival existed. “My first ever live guest was John Lee Hooker, 50 years ago. I had to come up with a $500 fee for him. Years later he was charging $50,000,” says Nobs. The long nights after the festival are also legendary. Fans and musicians alike would head for the casino garden after the concerts, first to restore their energy at the buffet and then for a naked swim in the pool. Things will be much more civilized this year after the big dance-music night featuring Nile Rodgers and Mark Ronson: Nobs is inviting guests for a special muesli brunch.
reconstruction, paid for by Queen. In subsequent years, artists including David Bowie, AC/DC and Duran Duran went on to record legendary albums there. It’s now home to a nightclub, and the door to the club has become a memorial wall for Freddie Mercury.
2 Mountain Studios The casino almost burned down during a Frank Zappa concert on December 4, 1971, while Deep Purple were working on new material in another building close by. They immortalized the event in “Smoke on the Water” (and also celebrated Nobs as the fearless savior of several youngsters). A basement recording studio was included in the
3 Montreux Palace The best hotel in Europe (rooms start at $318 a night) would also be the one with the highest density of pop stars on the continent during the festival. You might end up getting even closer to them than you’d like. Three years ago, Kid Rock was having a riotous party in his suite. One high-spirited guest jumped out of a window and landed,
luckily enough, on someone’s balcony below. He went to the wrong room on his way back to the party, where a surprised and frightened Chaka Khan started pummeling the intruder with an umbrella. The police soon arrived and escorted the party host off the premises. “Kid Rock rang us distraught from the police station the next day,” Nobs recalls, with a laugh. “He didn’t have any money on him and he was in his bare feet.” 4 grand rue On Montreux’s fancy main thoroughfare, you can buy anything that glitters and sparkles: Swiss watches, jewelry, souvenirs. But Nobs thinks you’d be better off keeping an eye on the traffic instead. “Once we were waiting in front of the casino for the limousine that was meant to bring Bob Dylan from the hotel. But the car was empty. A few minutes later he appeared on a bike, fully outfitted in helmet, gloves, and cycling shoes.” 5 Le Petit Palais The Art Deco building used to be home to Nobs’ spectacular nightclub, where he would bring international flair of a somewhat different kind to Montreux. “I’d seen psychedelic light shows where the colors merged into each other in San Francisco,” he says. “I wanted the same thing in my club but didn’t know how to go about it properly. So I took three plates and an overhead projector and mixed up blue shampoo, grenadine, and peppermint syrup. One time I even put squashed cockroaches between the plates. It looked crazy. People screamed.” Now Le Petit Palais is home to festival workshops at which musicians such as Trombone Shorty will be explaining just what it is they get up to with their instruments. 6 Hostellerie de Caux This restaurant directly above where Nobs lives is where his guests go to
eat when they decide their host deserves a break. The meat fondue (Fondue au Chaudron, $45) is exquisite, as is the view over the lake. And right below you, on the lawn by Nobs’ chalets, the musicians limber up for their performances. “Paul Simon was late once for a concert because he just had to see the sun setting over the lake from up here,” Nobs reveals. 7 Mercury’s monument A statue by Czech sculptor Irena Sedlecká on the embankment pays homage to one of pop’s greatest stars: Freddie Mercury. The Queen frontman was yet another good friend of Nobs’. “One evening, David Bowie and the members of Queen were having dinner with me. I asked them, ‘Why don’t you go to the studio together?’ Two hours later they were back and they’d recorded ‘Under Pressure.’ ”
8 miles davis hall Miles Davis and Montreux went way back. The Picasso of jazz performed here 10 times, the last time in 1991, just two months before he died. One of the festival’s main venues was named after him in 2007. This year the Miles Davis Hall will play host to soul legend Bobby Womack, New Orleans voodoo funk king Dr. John, pop-rock chameleon Lana Del Rey, bossa-nova god Gilberto Gil, new-soul princess Janelle Monáe and many more.
Paul Simon insisted on seeing the sunset from here before taking the stage.
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The Rolling Stones use 60 to 80 gallons a night of propane for their show; KISS, around 50 gallons. The difference? The Stones play stadiums.
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Get the Gear A Pro’s essentials
Pyro Pete
KISS, The Rolling Stones, Mötley Crüe … if anyone wants to blow things up on stage, Peter Cappadocia is their man. Here’s how the mayhem gets made.
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1. Road cases We have our own 48-foot semitruck. An average tour has 10 to 20 road cases on it, most tailormade for the equipment. 2. Pyrodigital Consultants controller Typically in a show we’d have one controller and 50 to 100 modules laid out around the stage. You put in the program, or the script, and it gives the musical cues for fire shooting.
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3. Whirlwind splitter It’s for redirecting cables. There is one cable coming in and six cables coming out. Those cables attach to the firing modules (4.) from the board.
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4. Pyrodigital Consultants firing module Each slot is one channel, and the module connects to the controller. If you want number one to go off, you write a program for it. You download the script for the show, and the controller communicates with the module.
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words: Andreas Tzortzis. photography: mike basher
5. Fire button It’s an awesome feeling. You press that button and the whole arena goes “ooh … ahh ...” and you’re like, “thank you, thank you, that was me.” The button is all powerful. 6. CO2 siphon tanks We get them from local compressed gas companies and they weigh about 240 pounds. They power the CO2 heads that shoot jets of smoke into the air. Those jets have little LED lights at their base (at the edges of the photo), so you can change the color. 7. Honeywell Burner Control System 7800 series This is what controls the pilot light and ignition system for all of our flame effects. It’s the brains behind the flame bar.
8. Stage & Effects stadium flame gun We use this at outdoor shows. It creates a column of flame about 90 to 100 feet high and 10 feet in diameter. With The Rolling Stones, we were running three stadium guns. 9. Stage & Effects 8-foot burn bar This is used wherever we need to get a wall of flame. It can shoot up to 10 feet. It’s powered by the accumulator (cropped out of the picture), which holds the propane gas supply. 10. McMaster-Carr safety switch/dead switch We’re always on the side of the stage and under the stage. You have to be on this switch for all of it to work. When you have your foot on that switch, you press the button. 11. Fire extinguisher We carry several different types—CO2 and dry chemical extinguishers. We use them all the time. Gene Simmons would wipe his face and throw the towel and sometimes it would land right next to the jets, and it would start smoldering. 12. Liquid CO2 tank It holds up to 200 gallons, and it creates a fog effect. It works well if you’ve got some moisture in the air. 13. The wispy goatee I dye it using L’Oréal red hair color; otherwise it’s grey and I look like an evil Santa Claus. 14. CO2 jets The CO2 units are new and made for us; these are the prototype. The LED lights at their base can be changed to a different color. Their debut will be the 30 of them we unveil on the upcoming KISS tour. Light it up at www.stgfx.com
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WORK OUT
Need for speed
TRAINING WITH THE PROS
MARC MÁRQUEZ The Spaniard took second in last year’s Moto2 series and is flying again in 2012. But his speed isn’t down to brawn or the throttle.
Out of season Márquez keeps his exercise varied and his loads low to stay strong, lean and in harmony with his bike. Monday 7 a.m. “I start each day with a simple breakfast of cereal, yogurt, and fruit.” 8-10 a.m. 25-mile mountain-bike ride 2-4 p.m. Gym training. Working whole body using free weights and lots of reps Tuesday 7 a.m. Breakfast. 8-10 a.m. Gym training as above. “Training with my motorbiking brother Alex helps keep me motivated.” 2-4 p.m. Tennis at the local court with trainer Wednesday 8 a.m. Breakfast 9-11 a.m. 25-mile mountain-bike ride 2-4 p.m. Go-karting with friends. “This is fun and also helps with relaxation.”
Thursday 7 a.m. Breakfast 8-9.30 a.m. Light jogging 12-2 p.m. Swimming 2-3 p.m. Massage; helps promote muscle elasticity Friday 7 a.m. Breakfast 8-10 a.m. 25-mile mountainbike ride. “Cycling is not really like hard work to me as I enjoy it so much.” 1-2 p.m. Gym training. Working the whole body with lots of reps Saturday 8-10 a.m. 25-mile mountainbike ride 3-5 p.m. Go-karting. “As well as putting in the training, I try to enjoy my weekend.” Sunday “Day of rest!”
Search for Marc Márquez at www.redbull.com
WORDS: RUTH MORGAN. PHOTOGRAPHY: DDP IMAGES/AP, SERGEY ILLIN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL
No one knows better than 19-year-old Marc Márquez that when you’re in charge of almost 300 pounds of metal traveling at 174 mph, you need to be in complete control. But bulk isn’t the answer. “Muscle can actually hinder us,” he explains. “You don’t want a lot of muscle in your legs or forearms, as it limits movement. We need flexibility to move with the bike and Biker Marc Márquez react. So training is difficult, because you need to have power to control the bike, but you can’t go to the gym and lift big weights. I avoid heavy loads and go for lots of reps, followed by stretching to loosen up. That gives you power but not bulk.” And a desire to go fast won’t make you a winner. “The key to speed is in your head,” says Márquez. “If you go into a race only thinking ‘I must be fast’ and ride aggressively, you’ll end up being slower. Your mind needs to be strong. For example, when I start riding after winter, I’ve spent two months without the bike. My physical condition is better than in midseason, but because my confidence with the bike is lower, I get tired and I’m slower. When you have confidence on the bike you are free, you can ride it the way you want and the speed comes naturally. You need to do a lot of laps to feel that confidence, to get in sync. After a crash, some riders struggle to regain their confidence but I’m lucky. I’ve never had a problem with that.”
Variety shows
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WORLD-CLASS RIDERS. MIND-BLOWING MACHINES. TWO U.S. RACES
JULY 27-29
redbullusgrandprix.com
AUGUST 17-19
redbullindianapolisgp.com
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Nightlife Whatever gets you through the night
aCtION
Night Golf DO YOu NEED GLOW-IN-THE-DARK BALLS? Yes. Others have battery-powered lights. The fairways are illuminated by searchlights or floodlights—and you also need to take your sunglasses off. WHERE DID IT ALL START? In Florida and California. There are a number of lit-up par-3 holes there. GOLF SANCTuARY The Nick Faldo Course at the Emirates Golf Club in Dubai is lit by 500 searchlights and so can be enjoyed at pleasant ambient evening temperatures. Only the locals could cope with 18 holes during the day, when the mercury can rise over 104 °F.
OUt NOW
Kraftwerk in our heads Hot Chip, that band of indie-dance mavericks who make masterful pop music loved by festival crowds, dance clubs, and critics, are back with their fifth—and best—album. With their large specs and colorful sweaters, Hot Chip is the band that made it cool to dress like the IT guy, while their big-hearted electro tunes proved that nerds can throw some sweet moves on the dance floor. Maybe more importantly for their street cred, one of their songs cracked a recent episode of The Simpsons. Joe Goddard, one of the quintet’s two main songwriters, talks new record In Our Heads and his own chart-topping form. You take risks on In Our Heads—some songs head off in all sorts of directions but still sound very pop. We made it in an excellent little studio in London with a producer who makes making music fun. He has a mixing desk Kraftwerk used to make their records in Düsseldorf. He spent a lot of time and money restoring it and it’s beautiful.
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The first single, “Flutes,” doesn’t actually contain any flute, does it? Well, there is a tiny sample of flutes playing in the background at the beginning, but it doesn’t feature massively. That track does have a sample of Buddhist monks chanting a mantra that’s 2,000 years old, though. Were you surprised when your soulful solo tune, “Gabriel,” reached number one in South Africa in March? I honestly don’t know how it happened. I think house music is big there, and it started getting played on the radio, but I haven’t heard the whole story.
In our heads is out now. More details and samples at: www.hotchip.co.uk
the night golf Series concludes in august: www.charitypoolgermany.de
WIse WORDs
“Never be the first to arrive at a party or the last to go home. And never, ever be both.” David Brown, producer of Jaws and A Few Good Men
COCktaIL
Black Daiquiri
CLUB
Magnum
phoTography: sTeVe gulliCK, manfred Burger, magnum CluB (4), foTosTudio eisenhuT & mayer
HONG KONG
CLUB
“We’ve brought a new concept to Hong Kong.” The Magnum Club is a party temple in the heart of Hong Kong. Patrons enjoy live performances, a luxurious atmosphere, and crystals in the toilet seats.
MagnuM CLuB 3 & 4/f, Silver fortune Plaza, 1 Wellington Street, Central, hong Kong www.magnumclub.com.hk
We love running a club in this town because … We’ve brought a new concept to Hong Kong—not only a glamorous clubbing space, but also a perfect show platform for live performances. The first thing that you see when you enter the club is … Our magnificent and noble décor! The golden front-door entrance promises a splendid night out! Our interior will wow you with … More than 100,000 crystalinlaid bubble chandeliers, crystal staircase, and three-sided LED walls with laser spotlight effects. To get past the bouncer you should ... Be well dressed and good looking. A friendly manner would help a lot. Your regular customers are ... Mainly residents and professionals living and working in the center of Hong Kong, such as lawyers, accountants and bankers. Your toilets are worth a mention ... Because we have 10 ravishing gold-and-silver flashing toilet seats inlaid with over 10,000 crystals. When you get tired of dancing ... You can find rest on our two-sided terraces. We put in a color-shifting lighted fountain, which helps make an elegant oasis within the city amid its hustle and bustle. Interview with Rocky Wong, owner
This month, award-winning cocktail crafter Josh Harris, the man behind San Francisco’s Bon Vivants, gets all tropical on us. Blending high-quality rum with the Sicilian liqueur Averna and an easy-to-make-at-home coffee tincture, the black daiquiri is the quickest way to Cuba without bribing a travel agent. Says Harris: “It’s Caribbean, but classy Caribbean.” IngredIentS Pampero aniversario rum, averna, limes, coffee tincture* aMountS 1.5 oz. Pampero aniversario .5 oz. averna 1 oz. fresh lime juice 1 oz. basic molasses (2 parts sugar, 1 part water) 6-8 drops coffee tincture* glass: Coupe trimmings: orange zest
Method Put the ingredients in a cocktail shaker, add ice, pour twice through a sieve into a Coupe cocktail glass and decorate with orange zest. *Coffee tincture: fill a Mason jar with coffee beans and cover with some high-proof alcohol (e.g. Wild turkey 101). Leave for a week, shaking regularly, then strain the liquid. use an eye dropper, or similar, for the drops.
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Leonard Cohen Songs of Love and hate This album was always on my parents’ record player; the songs are etched in my mind. Leonard Cohen played a concert in Iceland in 1984. I was only 7 but begged my parents to take me with them. I couldn’t understand the lyrics back then, but I could understand the magic of the music. I still listen to the album a lot now, preferably my parents’ old vinyl.
Late eats
Take 3
“Like actually fly, not with an airplane”
Paul Auster Mr. Vertigo I never read a book twice, but I devoured this one five times. The story is fascinating: A boy meets a strange man who promises to teach him how to fly. Like actually fly, not with an airplane. The way it’s described comes across as so incredibly real. You end up believing it could really work. It’s an amazing book and perfect for a journey because it takes you on one itself.
Sigur Rós Their haunting music is perfect for a nighttime train journey, but what inspires the Icelanders when they're on the road? Their music is as rambling and spherical as the landscape in their Icelandic homeland. They play their guitars with violin bows and for some of their songs have created their own language: Hopelandic, a mixture of Icelandic and tonal singing. Sigur Rós’s new album, Valtari, could not be more appropriately named. Georg Hólm, the group’s bassist: “It means steamroller. Steamrollers are heavy and slow, just like our songs.” Indeed, Sigur Rós’s music is not for people with a short attention span. It’s a soundtrack for wandering minds and walks in the snow. On Valtari, gentle strings, meandering piano, and the fragile voice of lead singer Jónsi make a sound both comfortingly warm and probingly epic. The quartet will present the album live this summer at festivals including Lollapalooza (Chicago, Aug. 5), Rock en Seine (Saint-Cloud, France, Aug. 24), and Electric Picnic (County Laois, Ireland, Aug. 31). Hólm tells us what he relaxes to during downtime on the tour bus.
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VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS When I discovered this Czech vampire film from the 1970s on video at my sister-in-law’s place, I watched it three times in a row. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The plot, images, colors, and music were all strange but also surreally beautiful. I got the film on DVD, and every time I watch it, I discover some new strange aspect to it. It's a forgotten masterpiece.
Tokyo: Ramen At dawn, after the tuna comes under the hammer at Tsukiji, the world’s largest fish market, noodle soup goes on the boil. MORNINGS AT THE MARKET People start cooking ramen at 4 a.m. in the little shops around the Tsukiji fish market in central Tokyo. Not only do you get the freshest sushi at Tsukiji, but the best noodle soup is there too. Ramen connoisseurs either take their place in the longest lines or look for where the workers, their clothes stained with fish blood, are slurping their ramen the loudest. In Japan, to eat noisily is to mark appreciation of the food.
Text: words: Klaus kamolz. photography: emi, fotostudio Eisenhut & Mayer
national treasure There are 200,000 ramen-ya, or standard noodle-soup restaurants, in Japan, and more than 5,000 in Tokyo alone. The basic recipe is wheat noodles, broth (usually meaty, but it could be fish), sliced chicken, pork or beef, with miso or soy sauce for the salty kick. Other ingredients can be included; regional variations abound. You might get eggs, tuna, negi (a leek-like onion), nori seaweed, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, or bok choy.
BOWL o’ Ramen Recommending one ramen joint over another is a difficult task, but the culture of noodle soup has long been a big part of the Japanese national discussion, debated passionately on the printed page and on TV. Now, of course, the chat also takes place online. Useful English-language sites are: www.ramentokyo.com www.goramen.com www.ramenadventures.com.
I’ll have what he’s having The discerning visitor to Japan knows there is very little English spoken or seen there, but this does not make ordering ramen difficult. You just look around the noodle counter and point to one of the soups someone else is eating. A good bowlful from a central ramen-ya will cost about $7.50.
From Counter to SCREEN Ramen plays a leading role in Tampopo (1985), a Japanese film championed as one of world cinema’s best ever on the dual topics of sex and food. Then there’s The Ramen Girl (2008), in which Brittany Murphy, stuck in Tokyo, learns to cook the titular dish. Ace Korean monster movie The Host (2006) features a Seoul family who run a ramen stall.
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The List
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Sports JULY 19-22, 2012, ROYAL LYTHAM & ST. ANNE'S GOLF CLUB, LANCASHIRE, U.K.
The Open Championship
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JULY 28, 2012, ULURU, AUSTRALIA
Australian Outback Marathon With the heat of summer making marathons more difficult than they already are in the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere races step into the stoplight. One of the most visually stunning is the Australian Outback Marathon, with a start and finish near the base of Uluru—also known as Ayers Rock. Temperatures in the Outback during winter average around 68 degrees—perfect for a quick lope around some red earth trails. Proceeds from the marathon will go to the Cathy Freeman Foundation, which supports education in the aboriginal community.
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The peak season for summiting Mt. Fuji coincides with mild summer weather—the top of the mountain should be free of snow—as well as the traditional time for school vacations in Japan. To see the sunrise from the summit, take two days for the complete trip and spend the night at the seventh or eighth station; there are 10 total. A tip: To beat the crowds, avoid Obon Week from August 11 to 19, when throngs of people will head to the mountain to observe the Buddhist holiday to commemorate ancestors.
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WRC Rally Finland
Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series
You won’t get higher speeds or wider jumps anywhere in the rally world: The 1000 Lakes Rally, held since 1951, holds the record for the widest recorded jump (in 2003, Estonian Markko Märtin set down at 187 feet) and the highest average speed (Finn Marcus Grönholm reached 76.35 mph in 2005). The Finns are famous for mercilessly exploiting their home advantage on the difficult gravel roads and have claimed victory in all but three rallies over the past 20 years. Those three wins were claimed by Märtin in 2003 and French mega-star Sébastien Loeb in 2008 and 2011.
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Mt. Fuji Climbing Season
AUGUST 2-4, 2012, JYVÄSKYLÄ, FINLAND
JULY 20-21, 2012, VILA FRANCA, PORTUGAL
The third stop on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is serving up a first: In the Azores, the divers will be launching themselves from an actual cliff rather than a platform. Competitors like two-time series champion Gary Hunt and former world champion Artem Silchenko will dive from the volcanic island Ilheu Vila Franca do Campo into the crystal-clear waters of the Atlantic from 88 feet.
JULY 20-AUGUST 31, 2012, MT. FUJI, JAPAN
Sébastien Loeb takes off in Finland.
PHOTOGRAPHY: IMAGO, GETTY IMAGES (5)
It started in 1856 and has been roaming the land for 156 years: The British Open is the oldest golf tournament still played today. A few things have changed over the years, most notably the prize money on offer, which has gone from nothing at all (1856-1862) to £6 (1863) to the current £5 million ($8 million). Darren Clarke, 43, from Northern Ireland, comes to Lancashire as title defender of the famous Claret Jug trophy. Clarke has won more than 20 tournaments around the world; last year marked his first victory at a major.
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Janelle Monáe will perform at Slottsfjell in Norway.
JULY 14-27, 2012, DAECHEON BEACH, BORYEONG, SOUTH KOREA
JULY 19-21, 2012, TØNSBERG, NORWAY
Boryeong Mud Festival
Culture JULY 6-14, 2012, PAMPLONA, SPAIN
The Running of the Bulls
Slottsfjell
Tønsberg is a small, sleepy harbor town just south of Oslo, with a forested hill in its center. And that hill is crowned with an imposing Viking tower, which is taken over by the organizers of “Slottsfjellfestivalen,” as this open-air event is known in Norwegian. A pathway winds through the Narnia-style enchanted forest to the fort, and at the path’s edge there are four stages of magical aural refreshment, from synth-pop heroes New Order, retro rockers Wolfmother and new funk queen Janelle Monáe to Chase & Status, the drum ’n’ bass gods of thunder.
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festival! And not just any mud festival, 7 Abutmud the biggest in the world, Boryeong lures 1.5 million bog-loving visitors to South Korea each year. They wallow, slide and grapple in the grey sludge, which is taken from mud flats and spread out on the beach. This celebration is a global summit meeting for anyone incapable of passing a puddle without secretly wanting to jump in it.
The tradition stretches back to the late 16th century, and fearless men in search of a thrill have been in its thrall ever since: As part of the San Fermín Festival, every morning a herd of bulls stampedes through the city; foolhardy bull runners drive them on with red scarves and sashes, dashing in between, in front of and sometimes ending up under them. Their goal is to run as close as possible in front of the animals without being rammed or skewered. If you don’t fancy experiencing it live, Ernest Hemingway raves about the festival in his novel The Sun Also Rises.
AUGUST 3-5, 2012, CHICAGO
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Lollapalooza
Alternative rock hero Perry Farrell has been making dreams come true for more than 20 years by bringing stars together on his Lollapalooza stage. This year offers a color-coordinated menu of Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Keys, Black Sabbath, and Jack White. And because Farrell can sniff out up-andcoming talent like no other, he’s also invited the hottest rising stars to Chicago: Tune-Yards, SBTRKT, and LP.
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10 7 Muddy paradise on Daecheon Beach, South Korea. JULY 5-21, 2012, MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA
Reggae Sumfest
Since 1993, Sumfest—on Jamaica’s northwest coast—has been the country’s largest music festival, and with 55,000 revelers in attendance each year it’s also the largest reggae event in the world. That said, the festival has opened up musically over the years: Last year even pop princess Nicki Minaj was on the bill. Thursdays are the big dancehall night featuring local heroes like Bounty Killer and Lady Saw, and the Red Bull Music Academy’s very own stage, broadcasting shows live at www.redbullmusicacademyradio.com.
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Bulls on parade in Pamplona, Spain.
Jack White brings his blues-rock to Lollapalooza.
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Save the Date July/August 2012 JULY 12, 2012
Backgammon World Championship
JULY 10, 2012
Baseball All-Star Game It’s the annual battle of the American League versus the National League, with home-field advantage for the World Series at stake. While the game may be a snooze—players are loath to risk injury—the other weekend activities should be a hit. Among the events around Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium: an All-Star Fan Fest—get a George Brett bobblehead!— and a charity 5K run. www.mlb.com
Oh look, here's Kelly Slater defying physics and winning again. JULY 30–AUGUST 5, 2012
Nike U.S. Open of Surfing They don’t call it Surf City USA for nothing—with more than 8 miles of beaches, Huntington Beach, Calif. is nature-made to again host the U.S. Open of Surfing. More than 500,000 people attended the free event last year, which also included a BMX invitational, the 3rd annual Converse Coastal Carnage Finals and Best Trick contests—won, respectively, by skaters Tom Remillard and Tony Hawk—as well as three nights of live music and an art show. On the waves, 11time ASP Champ Kelly Slater—surprise, surprise—won the men’s title and Sally Fitzgibbons took home the women’s trophy. www.usopenofsurfing.com
JULY 27–30, 2012
Eclipse Music Festival With performances from Bird of Prey, Asura, and Boris Brejcha, dance music fans have plenty of reasons to take a bus three hours north of Montreal to the Bonnet Rouge campsite in the Canadian wilderness near Sainte-Theresede-la-Gatineau. The festival also will offer yoga classes—both in the ashtanga discipline and, terrifyingly, something called “acrobatic yoga”—and a circus performance by Jamye La Luna.
Buy me some BBQ, peanuts, and Cracker Jacks.
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www.eclipsefestival.com
Let the sunshine in—or not—at Eclipse.
WORDS: ANN DONAHUE. PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES (2), SHUTTERSTOCK, MARIE-PIERRE BOISVERT
Sure, sure, when it’s a strategy game that consists of rolling dice and plunking little tiles around a board, the world championship is going to be nerds gone wild. But when it comes to backgammon, it’s nerds gone wild in Monte Carlo, which makes them awesome, high-rolling nerds competing for a $250,000 prize purse. The 37th Backgammon World Champion will be crowned at the poshy mcposherton Fairmont Hotel; last year’s winner was Takumitsu Suzuki of Japan, who beat out more than 130 other players. www.bwcmc.com
illustration: dietmar kainrath
K a i n r at h
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A
s we round out another musicfestival season, it’s worth pausing to ask: Why do we do this, anyway? Why do we endure long lines, sweltering weather and dubious hygiene for the pleasure of bathing our ears in certain frequencies of sound, modulated at various tempos? What, exactly, is this thing called music? Given how ubiquitous music is in our daily lives, you might be surprised to learn that scientists really have no grasp of what it’s all about. Archaeologists tell us our species has been enjoying it for a long time—the oldest known musical instrument, a flute, was made out of an extinct bear’s thigh bone some 50,000 years ago—so it’s clearly a deep-seated part of our psyche. But no one knows exactly why we love it. And this is strange, because most of the things we enjoy are obviously useful from the perspective of natural selection. We like looking at attractive members of the opposite sex because they are crucial to reproduction. We enjoy playing sports because they involve skills (throwing, hitting, moving in coordination with a group) that were crucial in Neolithic hunting and warfare. We enjoy novels and movies because they allow us to learn about the interpersonal dynamics that are crucial to our survival as social mammals. Music, in contrast, doesn’t seem to help us do anything. The phenomenon is strange in other ways, too. Though we respond to music primarily at an emotional level, without needing to think through our response, it turns out that deep in our subconscious music follows a remarkably rigorous and sophisticated logic. The notes of a chord only sound good together if their frequencies obey a strict mathematical relationship to one another. And the unfolding of a melody must obey its own law, revealing to the listener a gradually emerging pattern while also breaking that pattern from time to time. This balance between order and chaos is what makes a piece of music enjoyably surprising. These rough parameters have been understood for centuries. But the greater
Mind’s Eye
The Mystery of Music Sure, it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it. But does music serve a higher purpose? mystery—how we came to possess a musical instinct and why—remains elusive. To be sure, psychologists have come up with plenty of theories. One is that music survives as a relic from a stage of human evolution that preceded language. Long ago, perhaps, our ancestors once called out to one another across the African savanna, wordlessly singing their happiness, their sadness, or their loneliness. If this view is correct, music actually exists as a kind of missing link between the hoots and chirps of animals and the full complexity of modern human language. A competing theory is that music didn’t precede language but rather sprang from it as a byproduct. The idea is that, as our ancestors gradually became attuned to the rhythms and frequency of language, particular areas of the brain became specialized in processing these attributes. Our ancestors developed music
as a way to hack into these modules. Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist, famously promoted this view by likening music to “auditory cheesecake”: It cropped up by evolutionary accident, he suggested, and though pleasurable serves no useful function. For scientists, the key to deciphering what music is all about may ultimately lie in studying those who don’t understand it at all. About one person in 25 suffers from a condition called “amusia,” whose effects range from tone-deafness to the total inability to find any pleasure in music. People can be born with amusia or come down with it after sustaining a brain injury. Such people tend to have damage to certain areas of the brain, including the primary auditory cortex and the frontal lobe. These areas are located far apart within the brain and serve a range of different functions, including memory and the perception of time. Music also engages both the primitive parts of the brain that handle emotion and the more recently evolved areas that carry out reasoning and planning. It ties us together inside. It ties us together collectively, too. Music turns a crowd into a community. It’s no accident that soldiers once marched off to battle singing to the accompaniment of pipers and drummers, or that an entire stadium’s worth of spectators stands and belts out “The Star Spangled Banner” at the start of every baseball game. Nothing can match the power of music in spreading an emotion across a crowd of people and binding them together. And this, some have suggested, might be the real purpose of music after all. That is why we really go to music festivals in the summer—not just to hear the music but to be a part of it, to be swept away into something greater than ourselves and ineffable. To be, for a moment, carried along in a great ocean of collective feeling. Jeff Wise is a journalist and the author of “Extreme Fear: The Science of Your Mind in Danger.”
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Illustration: Roland Vorlaufer
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