While his fame began spreading all over the west coast of America, Knievel was still desperately short of money, and while out on the road he and his young family were still sleeping rough under the stars, still bathing in rivers, and constantly aware that another big crash would sideline the only breadwinner in the family and make things even worse. Knievel’s existence truly was hand-to-mouth in the late 1960s.
But despite the hardships of a life on the road, the jumps continued and Evel reached another landmark in the spring of 1967 when his performances in between motorcycle races at the Ascot Park Speedway near Los Angeles were filmed for ABC’s Wide World of Sports. This was his first real chance at the big time. So long as he only performed live at small-time race meetings in front of a few thousand people then he could only ever hope to be a local hero. But with the promise of television coverage came the chance to make it as a national star, and, if he could achieve that, the riches he so desperately craved would surely follow.
The relationship between Knievel and ABC would prove extremely beneficial to both parties in the coming years, and the timing on Knievel’s part couldn’t have been better. ABC’s policy was to offer coverage of lesser-known sports, more often than not with an oddball quality, which is why Knievel’s antics slotted right into place. He was perfect fodder for the network and the link-up would ultimately inspire thousands of American kids to emulate Knievel. In one article describing the relationship between ABC and Knievel, writer Christopher Ross went as far as to say ‘it can be argued that today’s increased popularity of extreme sports can be directly traced to Knievel and Wide World of Sports.’
ABC certainly helped spread the Evel word to a national audience, and he, in turn, rewarded them with five of their 20 most successful broadcasts ever. His 1975 jump over 14 Greyhound buses at King’s Island still ranks as the highest rating the channel has ever had, with an incredible 52 per cent audience share – better than Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s rumble in the jungle and every Super Bowl ever held.
But that was all still in the future; for now, Knievel kicked off his first national television performance by successfully clearing 15 cars, breaking his own record by one. The television coverage did not go out live, however, and American audiences had to wait for another two weeks before getting their first taste of Evel Knievel on 25 March 1967.
Encouraged by his success, Knievel continued gathering momentum and moved on to clear 16 cars at the Ascot Raceway near Los Angeles before attempting the same number again at the Graham Speedway near Tacoma, Washington. This time things didn’t go quite so smoothly and Knievel lost his balance on landing and parted company with his bike, sustaining a slight concussion in the process. Just under three weeks later he returned to the same venue to see the job through successfully, proving to his audience that he was no quitter and that he would see anything through if he had given his word to do so.
This was another crucial part of the Evel Knievel phenomenon: to Knievel his word was his bond, and he could offer nothing more to anyone than that. It stemmed from his Butte upbringing where a man could only be seen as a man if he kept his word. If you say you’re going to do something in Butte, you had better do it, and it was a code that Evel lived by. Throughout his career he attempted jumps he felt he couldn’t make, even at the risk of serious injury or death, because he’d given his word he’d try. It was this strongly held belief that led Knievel to try the biggest and most outrageous stunt of his entire career some years later, and, ultimately, to his undoing.
Evel had by now abandoned his Norton in favour of another British bike, a 650cc Triumph T120 Bonneville, now one of the most revered of all classic British motorcycles. Despite his later association with Harley-Davidson, Knievel never hesitated in naming the Bonneville as his favourite bike of all time for jumping. ‘The Triumph was a much better handling motorcycle than the Harley. The XR-750 Harley had way too much torque. When it got up in the air it wanted to twist because it had so much torque. The Triumph 650 went as straight as a bullet.’ His praise for the 650cc model, however, did not extend to the 750cc version, which he rather amusingly berated as ‘…a piece of crap. It couldn’t pull a sick whore off a piss-pot with Vaseline on her.’
But, as Evel was finding out, there was more to jumping a motorcycle than simply twisting the throttle and hoping the bike went as straight as a bullet. ‘The big thing about jumping over cars on a motorcycle is to hit the take-off ramp just right. I don’t want the bike’s front wheel to hit the ramp too hard. That might throw me over the handlebars. I have to hang on tight. And then I fly through the air and hope for a safe landing. When I jump I stand or lean forward on the balls of my feet. The motorcycle has a tendency to buck and come over backwards on me so I try and lean forward to hold it down. I want to go off the take-off ramp right at the top of the power curve. If I do, the bike’ll go straight through the air. If I don’t, the motorcycle has a tendency to drift sideways and cross up. It’s just like crouching in a crouch; if you crouch too much you can’t jump very high, if you don’t crouch at all you don’t jump very high. You gotta be on the power curve.’
It is, as Evel often explained, only when the rider has left the take-off ramp that the real skill of motorcycle jumping comes into play. ‘Anyone can jump a motorcycle, the trouble comes when you try to land it. I never missed a take-off in my life. It’s like I put you in a Learjet and help you take off but then I give you the controls and say “all right, big boy, now you go ahead and land it”. That’s where you’ll have your ass knee deep in crap, boy.’
The most incredible thing about Knievel’s jumping technique was that it was all based on feel and instinct rather than being scientifically calculated in the way that modern jumpers prepare their jumps. As he openly admitted, ‘I did everything by the seat of my pants. That’s why I got hurt so much.’ One of Knievel’s former friends and helpers, Joe Delaney, recalls being amazed at Knievel’s haphazard approach to jumping. Turning up for the first time to help Knievel set up his ramps he was expecting a much more high-tech approach than what he actually witnessed. ‘He told me, “Step off 40 steps.” I said, “What for?” He said, “That’s how far I’m gonna jump. Just draw a line in the dirt.” So we did and he set his ramps up.’
Knievel’s Triumph Bonneville was slightly customised to meet his unique demands, but it was still far from being an ideal tool for the job; unlike the modern motocross bikes, which are lightweight, have massive suspension travel and heaps of power. Like the motorcycle racers who have no need for road-going gear, Evel ditched the lights, mudguards and numberplates and fitted a racing engine and racing exhaust to help increase the bike’s standard top speed of around 110mph. Less necessary and more for show was the drogue parachute, which was fitted in the rearseat unit; it was designed to slow him down after big jumps but, as he proved when he had no parachute, this was not a major problem anyway unless his landing area was extremely confined. However, the flurry of the chute as it opened added to the drama and further created the impression that Knievel was pushing motorcycle technology to the limit.
Throughout 1967 Knievel toured and performed wherever he could secure a booking, and by the year’s end he had pulled off more than eight major jumps. Notable performances included a leap on 24 September over 16 Chevrolets in front of 4,000 demolition-derby race-goers at the Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Washington. Knievel actually approached the jump too fast and overshot his landing ramp, though he somehow managed to keep the bike upright despite a heavy landing and steered it to safety. He did, however, suffer a compression fracture to his lower spine on landing and had to be administered with painkilling injections.
As successful as Knievel’s assorted dates were becoming, he was realising by now that it was going to take something extra special to drum up the level of public interest he dreamed of. Jumping rows of cars could only look impressive for so long – there had to be something else, something bigger, better and more spectacular. Knievel had bee
n aware since his first jump when he leaped over snakes and mountain lions that what lay between his ramps was just as important as how far apart they were. ‘Right then,’ he told the press after his 1965 debut, ‘I knew I could pull a big crowd by jumping over weird stuff.’ It was a lesson well learned and one which would stand him in good stead throughout his career. The problem lay in dreaming up novelty obstacles that would be just possible to jump while retaining precisely the right amount of risk and danger, while convincing an audience that they could not be jumped. This balance between the possible and the impossible was another key element in Knievel’s unique brand of entertainment.
It’s easy to imagine Knievel, wherever he went from 1965 onwards, keeping one business eye on anything of note which could possibly be jumped on a motorcycle, just as an artist never stops searching for scenes to paint and a songwriter always has one ear open for potential melodies, lyrics and song titles. It’s even easier to imagine him dreaming up more and more crazy ideas during his regular drinking binges, and this was, in fact, how his most famous stunt of all originated in 1966.
Somewhat the worse for wear, Knievel had been boozing it up in a bar called Moose’s Place in Kalispell, Montana with his friend Chuck Shelton. Shelton spotted a calendar on the wall of the bar with a picture of the Grand Canyon on it and told Knievel he should try jumping that. Anyone other than Knievel would have laughed off the idea for the joke it was intended as, and, at least initially, that’s what Evel did. But gradually, through a haze of alcohol, the laughing stopped and Knievel began to realise he might just be on to something big. Very big. ‘The more I studied on it, and the more Montana Marys I put back, the narrower that durned [sic] hole in the ground seemed to get. People talk about the Generation Gap and the Missile Gap, but I suddenly saw that the real gap was right there in the heart of the Golden West. And I knew I could bridge the bastard.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘Ah well, what the hell? I always liked drinking and jumping.’
The Montana Marys Knievel was consuming on that particular evening have become as much part of his legend as his jumps, but the actual contents of Evel’s favourite drink have long been a source of speculation. Some claimed it was a near lethal combination of beer, tomato juice, Wild Turkey and vodka, while others suggested a touch of engine oil added to his beer was the magic ingredient. Like most things surrounding Knievel, the facts have been misinterpreted, distorted and exaggerated, and Evel was, more often than not, prepared to play along – or at least not deny any of his legend. However, he did finally put an end to the speculation surrounding the contents of a Montana Mary in 1998 when he disappointed many by confessing it was ‘…just beer and tomato juice [a drink favoured by Butte miners]. The stuff about Wild Turkey and vodka in it is just crap.’
Of course, even a daredevil wildly drunk on Montana Marys would realise that the massive, gaping chasm that was the Grand Canyon could never be jumped by any standard motorcycle. It was, after all, two miles wide at the spot Knievel was considering jumping and was as much as 5,700 feet deep in places. But that in itself was not enough to put Knievel off and he started making preliminary plans which would one day allow him to tackle the ultimate stunt. He initially conceptualised the building of a giant take-off ramp, 200 feet high and 740 feet long, which would allow him to tackle the canyon in the same way he tackled any other jump but on a much, much grander scale. He would have a custom bike built specially for the stunt, featuring a jet engine, wings and a parachute. Knievel even went as far as to claim he had made scientific calculations (for once) that would allow the bike to bridge the chasm. The bike was to be 13 feet long and weigh in at almost 1,000 kilos and, according to his calculations, it would reach a top speed of 250mph and would accelerate to 158mph in just 3.7 seconds. The total cost of building the ramp and bike he estimated at $1 million.
The whole idea seemed nothing short of ridiculous but, if nothing else, it gave Knievel something more to talk about and he announced these plans on national US television in late 1967, saying, ‘I’m going to try and jump across the Grand Canyon but I may have to parachute off the bike before reaching the other side. I know how to parachute and I can “track” with my body. If I bail off the bike, I’ll just aim my body toward the opposite rim of the canyon, open my parachute and land there.’ To those who scoffed at the idea and claimed Evel was just a publicity seeker, he added, ‘Before I even make the jump I may show these sceptics I mean business by riding a motorcycle across the Grand Canyon on a cable. I’ll be just like a tightrope walker in a circus, but I won’t have a safety net to catch me. That’d show those sceptics.’
In actual fact, the sceptics did have the last laugh as Knievel never did manage to jump the Grand Canyon, nor did he ride over it on a cable. Despite gaining preliminary permission from the Department of the Interior (who owned the land where Knievel proposed to take off from) to make the jump, this was later withdrawn when it was realised that Knievel was actually serious about the attempt. He had already announced a tentative jump date of 4 July 1968 but permission was withdrawn just a few months beforehand. For the time being, Knievel was grounded, at least as far as flying over the Grand Canyon went. But the seeds for jumping a canyon had been sewn; Knievel had promised his public he would see it through and the idea refused to go away. It would change shape and, eventually, location but it did not go away. One day, Knievel vowed, he would jump a canyon, some darned canyon, if only to prove the doubters wrong.
Unable to realise his ultimate dream for the time being, Knievel looked elsewhere for a means of breaking out of the rut that was jumping over cars. He finally found his location at the newly opened Caesar’s Palace casino and hotel resort, which was situated, somewhat appropriately, in the gambling capital of the world – Las Vegas. It was here, he decided, that he would take the gamble that would ultimately lead to worldwide fame and fortune or, equally likely, his own death.
Knievel was in Vegas for a middleweight title fight when he first clapped eyes on the spectacular fountains in front of Caesar’s grand entranceway. They gushed intermittently high up into the dry Vegas air and Evel realised straight away that they were perfectly suited to his needs: he vowed there and then to jump them. But even though he had built up a big-enough reputation to command national media coverage when he announced his jump, it wasn’t so easy gaining permission from the casino’s owners.
It is worth pointing out that Evel Knievel was a notorious yarn teller and it was often difficult to separate whole truths from half-truths, and half-truths from complete fantasy, when listening to his animated and entertaining speech. Over the course of almost 40 years he repeated and exaggerated the same tales to the point where he appeared to believe even the furthest-fetched stories himself. Knievel didn’t become the legend he is by telling modest, mundane anecdotes about himself; his larger-than-life character was very much part of the reason why he attained such fame, and his enthusiastic and often over-the-top story-telling went a long way to creating that character. Knievel himself may well have had the last laugh by telling tongue-in-cheek stories and fooling many into believing them. Indeed, it was once a running joke that in 20 minutes Knievel could tell enough yarns about his early life to keep a reporter busy for 20 years just checking them out. His famed rhetoric was exemplified in his explanation of how he gained permission to jump the Caesar’s fountains.
The day after the aforementioned Vegas title fight, Knievel called Caesar’s founder and executive director Jay Sarno, claiming to be a certain Frank Quinn from Life magazine. Knievel took up the story from both men’s points of view:
Knievel: Do you know Eval Neval?
Sarno: Eval Neval? Who the hell’s he?
Knievel: He’s the guy who’s gonna jump the Grand Canyon, says he’s gonna jump over your hotel.
Sarno: I heard about that nut, he ain’t gonna jump nothin’ around here. I gotta go, goodbye.
The following day, Knievel called Sarno again, this time posing as a reporter:
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br /> Knievel: Hi, this is Larson with Sports Illustrated. You ever heard of Evel Neevle?
Sarno: Evel Neevle? Who the hell’s this Evel Neevle?
Knievel: He’s the guy that’s going to jump the Grand…
Sarno: Oh yes, some guy called me yesterday about that guy. I don’t know, something around here…something’s going on. I don’t know. Call back.
Two days later, Knievel called again, this time impersonating a friend who worked for the ABC television network.
Knievel: This is Dennis Lewen from ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Do you know Evel Knievel?
Sarno: Eval Neval, Evel Neevle, Evel Knievel? Who is this crazy guy? Everybody’s calling me up about him. I think we’ve got a deal with him, I don’t know, call back.
With the ball rolling, Knievel then sent his fictitious business partners to work. Because he admired the Jewish community for their financial skills, Knievel had created three fictitious Jewish businessmen to head up his company, ‘Evel Knievel Enterprises’, the idea being that the list of names on his headed stationery would look impressive and persuade people to take him more seriously.
The president was named as H. Carl Forbes, the vice president was Mike Rosenstein and the secretary and treasurer listed as Carl Goldberg. Knievel himself did a very fine, if stereotyped, Jewish/ American accent and claimed he often called people up, on his own behalf, in this accent pretending to be any one of the three fictitious businessmen. With Sarno at least now aware of who Evel Knievel was, it was time for the killer punch and this time Knievel called impersonating Rosenstein:
Life of Evel: Evel Knievel Page 6