To jump London Corporation red buses – a very symbol of the city itself – in the world famous Wembley Stadium was an inspired touch of marketing, but there was one slight problem which no one had anticipated: the great British public didn’t seem to know anything about Evel Knievel, apart from the fact that he was some nut who had failed to jump a canyon in America. Knievel was going to have to make himself famous all over again and he only had a few weeks in which to do it.
Evel arrived in the UK in early 1975 to begin his whirlwind promotional tour and to make the as-yet-unconverted Brits sit up and take notice of him. He was filmed being given a guided tour of London and looked utterly bemused as a Beefeater at the Tower of London gave him a history lesson concerning the decapitation of Henry VIII’s wives. He showed his contempt for the various authorities governing the River Thames by driving scores of golf balls into the river and he caused traffic chaos in central London by refusing to drive on the left-hand side of the road in his custom-built Cadillac pick-up.
Bizarrely for a supposedly fearless daredevil, Evel had a row with a London cabbie who he felt was driving too fast and ended up storming out of the Hackney cab and hailing another. Knievel also cycled round the capital carrying his famous cane and stopped to talk to anyone who would listen, all for the benefit of television cameras and all in the name of selling tickets. Knievel condensed ten years of self-promotional experience into three short weeks and used every trick he knew to draw attention to himself – and it worked. From having sold just 7,000 tickets prior to Evel’s promotional activities, the event became completely sold out by show time as 90,000 people booked tickets to discover for themselves what the madcap phenomenon of Evel Knievel was all about.
Knievel seemed to appreciate his new fans as much as they took to him and he seemed to genuinely enjoy his time in England making new friends – and new conquests. ‘The English crowd and people were great to me. I spent three weeks in London and made a lot of friends like Henry Cooper and Graham Hill. And I dated a pretty little English girl who worked in a golf shop…and a French girl.’
Behind the scenes, John Daly had been having his share of headaches with the Wembley authorities. Accustomed as they were to staging football matches and the Horse of the Year Show, the officials expressed all manner of reservations about Knievel to Daly. ‘They were about to put on a show which quite honestly they became more and more terrified over. Let alone filling the stadium, they were also concerned as to whether the people would get full value for money. What about the turf? What exactly does this Evel Knievel do? Is there any chance we could change his first name?’
Eventually Daly and co-promoter Bob Arum, veteran of the canyon jump who obviously thought there was still some mileage left in Knievel, soothed the nerves of the Wembley officials and the jump was given approval to go ahead. Even though Wembley was Britain’s biggest stadium at the time there was still insufficient room for Knievel to make a fast-enough run-up to clear 13 buses and he reverted to building yet another ski-jump-style ramp reaching up into the highest seats of the stadium. But when Knievel first set eyes on the ramp and the 13 buses he knew it still wasn’t enough, as ABC commentator Frank Gifford – who was present when Knievel first saw the Wembley set-up complete with the 13 buses – explained: ‘The first time he looked over and he saw the buses he said, “Hell, I can’t do that.” I said, “Can’t do what?” and he said, “I can’t jump that far.”’ Gifford suggested that Knievel remove one or two buses but Knievel was adamant: ‘I said I’d jump 13.’
During some practice runs before the big day, Evel discovered that he had the wrong gearing to reach the required speed for take-off and knew he would never get the correct parts shipped over from Harley-Davidson in the US in time for the event. But with all the hype he had struggled so hard to generate, Knievel decided to go ahead with the jump rather than risk his reputation in the UK to add to his now rather tarnished image in the States.
The day of the jump was, somewhat unusually for Britain, scorching hot, and the capacity crowd stripped off to enjoy the May sunshine and watch majorettes, high-wire motorcycle performers and a man setting himself on fire and diving 50 feet into a tank of water, while they awaited the appearance of the main man. By the time Knievel was ready to make his appearance they had worked themselves up to fever pitch, eager to get their first glimpse of the all-American hero in the flesh.
Knievel had brought his growing collection of branded trucks and vehicles and displayed them on the hallowed turf alongside the doomed Sky Cycle. The tunnel which led onto the famous football pitch had been fitted with microphones to capture and amplify the noise of Knievel’s Harley-Davidson as he revved it up. After a rendition of both the British and American national anthems, Knievel gunned the bike into life and revved it wildly to work up his audience. Then, as the screams and cheering reached a crescendo, he roared out into the stadium, one hand in the air, and rode round the circumference of Wembley, waving to his new-found adoring audience.
In another touch of marketing genius, Knievel had – for the first time since making it his trademark – abandoned his white jumpsuit and replaced it with a navy blue outfit, mimicking the colours of the Union Jack while still keeping his American stars. When it came to working an audience, Evel Knievel never missed a trick, and with his own personal tribute to all things British he sent the Wembley throngs into a frenzy. Whatever happened afterwards, Knievel had cracked the UK. For one man to attract such a massive crowd for a show that would last only a matter of minutes was a real tribute to his talent for self-promotion and a true measure of the popularity of Evel Knievel in the mid-1970s.
What did happen next cemented his fame in Britain in a way that a successful jump could never have done. After two practice runs to gauge his speed and play to the crowd, Evel came storming down the flimsy, narrow ski ramp at around 80mph, raised his body slightly off the seat of his Harley and took off smoothly to rapturous applause and the flutter of thousands of camera shutters. The jump was long and low (Knievel was actually jumping single-decker buses and not double-deckers as is commonly believed) and all looked to be going well, but his analysis of the gearing proved accurate and Knievel landed roughly and slightly sideways on the safety deck covering the thirteenth bus. The resulting crash footage has since become almost as famous as the Caesar’s Palace wipe-out which had first made Knievel’s name eight years before.
Evel was thrown high into the air, almost performing a handstand while still desperately struggling to hold on to the Harley’s handlebars, and, as the bike bucked and tossed at high speed, Knievel was finally forced to let go, and his body was slammed onto the Wembley turf, where he rolled end over end, churning up dust. The rogue bike eventually caught up with Knievel and slammed into him hard, chasing him down until both man and machine gradually ground to a halt in front of a terrified, and now silenced, audience. ‘I tried to hang on to that motorcycle all the way down that ramp, just like riding a bull, but I just couldn’t hang on to it. It finally threw me off and I went over the handlebars and when I landed it caught up with me and got right on top of me and just burned the hell outta me. And of course I was unconscious for several minutes after that jump. I didn’t know where I was.’
Just as he had blamed Bob Truax for his failed attempt on the canyon, Knievel wasted no time in pointing the finger of blame for the Wembley crash, and this time it was his mechanic, John Hood, who copped the flak. ‘I just didn’t have enough speed to make the jump. I needed to be doing 90mph at the bottom of the ramp but I was only doing 80mph. I shifted gear three times but I knew at the bottom of the ramp I wasn’t going to make it. My idiot mechanic didn’t get the gearing right. He was a complete idiot – he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. In the end we couldn’t get the right gearing from Harley-Davidson in time so we just had to go ahead with the jump. The crowd had paid their money.’
Knievel’s injuries were bad. He had fractured some vertebrae, broken his pelvis, and broke
n his right hand and one finger as well as suffering a concussion. Yet, with pure Knievel bravado – still pumped full of adrenalin and in too much shock to feel just how bad his injuries were – Evel asked to be helped to his feet so he could address the crowd. Battered, bruised, cut, bloodied, and covered in dust from rolling end-over-end on the parched Wembley turf, Knievel shocked the stadium with his announcement. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of this wonderful country, I’ve got to tell you that you are the last people in the world who will ever see me jump because I will never, ever, ever jump again. I am through.’
The crowd applauded wildly, feeling relieved that their new hero was still alive, and feeling that little bit special in having witnessed what was to be the great Evel Knievel’s last-ever public performance. With that, Knievel was laid on a stretcher and whisked off in an ambulance, his career apparently over but his sense of humour still intact. As he apologised to John Daly for wiping out and ruining the planned UK tour, he excused himself by saying, ‘My grandma always taught me to catch the last bus.’
But 24 hours is a long time in the motorcycle-jumping business, and, speaking from his hospital bed the following day, Evel declared that it had only been the pain talking when he announced his retirement and he wished to withdraw his statement.
No matter how willing he was to carry on jumping, he certainly wasn’t able to do so, at least in the short term, and the seven other dates on his UK tour were cancelled, much to the disappointment of all those who had not made the trip to London. Flying back home to the USA, Knievel might well have intended to return to the UK in the future to capitalise on what was essentially a whole new market, but his Wembley appearance was to remain his only-ever performance outside America and Canada.
Back home in the States, Knievel was reunited with Linda and his children who had not travelled to England with him. It was only then that he discovered the true extent of his Wembley injuries. ‘Doctors in the UK made some mistakes after the Wembley jump. They took an X-ray of me and said, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with you.” I didn’t say anything but I’d split the whole of my pelvis. They couldn’t see it on the X-ray though, so they told me to take these Percodans [painkillers]. I couldn’t walk. I knew my pelvis was busted and a week later I was sitting on a motorcycle and I almost passed out because the pain was so terrible. It turns out there were two cracks as wide as your finger up the back of the pelvis. I was a mess after Wembley. I was hurt bad.’
Battered and broken once more and having lost out on the chance to make some serious money with his eight-date tour, Knievel began another process of recuperation, nagged by the constant worry of how he was going to keep himself and his family in the manner they had become accustomed to. His gambling and extravagant lifestyle had begun to take its toll on Knievel’s bank balance and Evel was realistic enough to know that the only way he could earn more money was to jump yet again. He hadn’t performed in the US since the canyon fiasco more than eight months previously. Maybe his American audience would be ready to receive him now the furore over the canyon had died down?
His mind troubled by the constant need to make money and his body racked by pain once more, Knievel was not a good patient when recovering from injury. He gobbled down painkillers in a bid to gain some respite from the constant hurting, and, unable to play golf, fly to Vegas, to gamble or even womanise, Evel turned to his life-long companion, Wild Turkey, for solace. ‘I had my share, and everybody else’s, of beer, whisky and major painkillers.’
For a man who thrived on action and the adrenalin rush of performing dangerous stunts, being cooped up at home was hell itself and he often took out his frustrations on those around him, which usually happened to be Linda. Despite all Evel’s infidelities, Linda still very much wanted her marriage to work and wanted, more than anything, to put an end to her husband’s suffering. She had almost lost count of the times she’d had to nurse Evel back to health and, at 36, Knievel’s body was not healing as easily as it did when he was a younger man.
Evel did everything within his powers to keep Linda sheltered from the press, perhaps fearing she might reveal more than he wanted known about his private life. Yet on the few occasions when she did speak to the media she always stood by her man while admitting that she lived in constant fear of losing him – if not to another woman, then to a fatal accident while performing. ‘It was always scary from the very beginning. His first jumps I know I would kind of hang on to his arm. I think I bugged him a little until he finally told me to leave him alone because it was hard enough to make the jump without somebody bugging him. So I finally kept my mouth shut and let him do what he wanted to do, and this is the only thing that’s ever made him happy.’
The pressure on Knievel to retire must have been immense, both from himself and from those who cared for him. But in his mind the pressure to make money was even greater. He was far too proud to lose the status he had suffered so much to attain, and his expensive tastes simply couldn’t be catered for if he took a regular job or even managed to dream up a way of cashing in on his name without actually having to perform.
It seems strange that Knievel was unable to turn his marketing genius to anything other than jumping, and, try as he might to come up with a viable alternative to leaping a motorcycle, he drew a blank and eventually announced his plans to jump again on home soil. This time he would attempt to leap over 14 buses in Ohio, almost five months to the day after his horrific Wembley crash. In his willingness to trade pain and discomfort for cold, hard cash, it appeared that Knievel would happily have sold off limbs and organs if the price was right. The decision to attempt 14 buses when he had failed to clear 13 in London appeared to be optimistic in the extreme, but with a longer run-up area Evel believed it was possible, and, besides, as he said, ‘I wasn’t going to jump 13 buses – that’s an unlucky number. I decided to jump 14.’
Knievel’s Wembley crash – which was televised in the States on ABC – seemed to have gone some way to winning back his American audience. Ironically, it was the very fact that he crashed which persuaded at least some of the offended populace that he was still prepared to pull the trigger that he was still prepared to get hurt and that he’d shown those Brits what true American heroism was made of. An easy landing would simply have added fuel to the fire that Knievel couldn’t hack it any more and was simply churning out con trick after con trick to make money.
Certainly, ABC seemed happy enough to continue their partnership with the daredevil; the channel showed no fewer than three Knievel-related programmes over a one-month period in the build-up to Knievel’s 14-bus leap at the Kings Island Family Entertainment Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. A one-hour documentary called Evel Knievel: Portrait of a Daredevil was followed by an appearance by Evel on Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, in which the stuntman goofed around with Muhammad Ali, a man he had met on several occasions through their joint associations with promoter Bob Arum.
Knievel had first met Ali before the Snake River Canyon jump at a party in New York, and the clash of egos must have been audible for miles, though the two did get on well together. When Ali turned to Evel and proclaimed, ‘You know what you are? You’re the white Muhammad Ali!’, Knievel readily responded, ‘Then you’re the black Evel Knievel.’ Years later Knievel would boast, ‘I was prettier and just as great as Ali. Every time I saw him I used to kid him and give him one of my pictures, autographed. He is still my champion…I will always admire him because he is the greatest even to this day.’
While he didn’t actually make an appearance, Knievel was clearly the inspiration for a two-part episode of ABC’s hit show Happy Days, which starred Henry Winkler as the Fonz, another Seventies icon and one who was the very epitome of cool. Although often repeated, the two-part show was originally screened just before Evel’s 14-bus attempt, and, in a bid to prove his cool, the Fonz attempted to clear 14 trash cans on his motorcycle, proclaiming as Evel himself had done that ‘13 is unlucky’. He may have fallen from grace at th
e canyon but, at least judging by ABC’s listings schedule, Knievel appeared to be as popular as ever once again on the eve of what was to be the longest jump he would ever make.
10
Unhappy Landings
‘I fear dying but I can’t quit because the banks won’t let me.’
It’s a fact that Evel Knievel is better known for his failures than his successes, and no jump proved this more than his perfect leap over 14 Greyhound buses at Kings Island, Ohio on 25 October 1975.
Most people with even the slightest passing interest in Knievel have heard of the Caesar’s Palace crash, the failed Snake River Canyon attempt and the horrific Wembley wipe-out, but few have heard of Kings Island, the scene of Knievel’s greatest success. This has largely been due to the media who, while repeatedly screening Knievel’s horrific crashes, seemed to ignore the many times he did manage to make safe landings; although, to be fair, the media is at the same time pandering to what viewers want to see and read about – and, more often than not, that’s blood and guts.
Evel arrived in Dayton, Ohio on 13 October to visit the Kings Island jump site and perform some practice jumps before the main event. He had already completed a seven-city, non-jumping promotional tour to publicise the event, taking in Cleveland, Akron, Columbus, Indianapolis, Louisville and Cincinnati.
A jump stadium had been specially built for his attempt just outside the Kings Island Family Entertainment Center. Able to hold 70,000 people, it was hailed as the largest temporary-seating arena in the United States. Even so, there were fears that it might not be big enough as word started getting around that up to 100,000 people might turn out to see Knievel’s longest-ever jump. The attendance record in the entertainment park itself was 43,000, and everyone involved fully expected this to be broken. The centrepiece of the arena was a 400-foot-long ramp leading up to where the 14 Greyhound buses would eventually be placed, but Evel built up to that number slowly during the week, initially jumping just five, six and seven buses.
Life of Evel: Evel Knievel Page 16