Life of Evel: Evel Knievel

by Stuart Barker

  But the 1990s was another decade, and it was within this new nostalgic climate that Knievel made the greatest comeback of his life. After more than a decade spent in a drunken wilderness, he slowly found his name was beginning to mean something again and he started receiving offers to capitalise on it. Initially the offers were fairly low-key and quite often degrading. The Little Caesar’s pizza company, for example, hit upon an idea for a television ad-campaign with the premise being that because their pizzas were so cheap and no expense was wasted on the consumer they could only afford third-rate celebrities to advertise them. Evel fitted the bill perfectly, and, dressed in his once-famous white suit, he performed a few easy manoeuvres on his motorcycle for two different adverts, both of which ended with a crashing noise off-screen, proving yet again that the collective public consciousness had remembered Knievel for his crashes more than his successes.

  The adverts may have been degrading in a sense but Knievel was not yet in a position to be picky about job offers. The slots at least got him back on to television and also earned him some cash for his ‘third-rate’ celebrity status. Further, they alerted other companies to his presence, companies which were keen to cash in on Seventies nostalgia, and he soon found himself touting everything from breath mints to electric wheelchairs, and motel chains to gambling machines. But there were other offers which allowed Knievel to carry off a little more dignity, one of which was an invite to appear at the Grand Hotel in New York in 1994 for a screening of a video called Evel Knievel’s Greatest Hits. Evel received a stunning reception from a mixed-age audience during a question-and-answer session and he was besieged with requests for autographs after the show from fans of all ages. His fame was on the ascent again.

  What shocked those who remembered him from the Seventies more than anything else was Evel’s appearance. He was old, had thinning grey hair and wore spectacles on a chain like their own grandfathers did. His hands were gnarled, scarred and swollen from arthritis, and his limp seemed even more pronounced with age. He even claimed he had mild Alzheimer’s and needed to use Post-it notes everywhere to remind him what to do. The Evel Knievel with the movie-star looks had been replaced by a frail old man who looked much older than his 55 years. But the fact remained that he was incredibly lucky to be alive at all. As he said, ‘I knew Elvis, I knew Frank Sinatra, I used to drink with Lee Marvin. Funny, if you had been asked back then to place your money on who would still be alive today, it wouldn’t be the stuntman you put your money on, would it? You wouldn’t have put your money on me.’

  Much of his shocking appearance was due to the abuse he had put himself through with alcohol in the late 1970s and throughout the darkest days of the Eighties, but recovering from the amount of injuries Evel had had also takes its toll on the body and often causes premature greying of the hair. Besides his physical injuries, Knievel had by now also contracted Type II (or late-onset) diabetes, a common but chronic condition. The cause of diabetes is still not known but can be contributed to hereditary factors in about 50 per cent of cases. Obesity is another often-cited cause, but while Knievel had certainly added weight over the years he could never have been described as obese. Diabetes can be well controlled if the patient follows a healthy diet, exercises well, does not smoke and does not overindulge in alcohol. While Knievel only smoked cigars occasionally, his battered body would not allow him to exercise to any great extent and his passion for alcohol had always been likely to lead to complications. For Evel, accustomed as he was to dealing with medical problems, diabetes was just another illness he had to deal with, and he was far more interested in retaining his status as a major star than he was in worrying about a pesky disease.

  For a superstar to become a legend often necessitates a period away from the public eye; a time for the public to reassess their career and appreciate how talented and/or charismatic the individual was in the first place to achieve their fame. There is no finer example of this than the actor Sean Connery. For a period in the 1970s and early 1980s, Connery could not detach himself from the James Bond tag and was consequently almost forgotten about as he made a string of below-par movies. It was only in the mid to late 1980s when he had gone through his own wilderness years that he reappeared and became bigger than ever with roles in films like The Name of the Rose and The Untouchables. With his powerful presence in these roles, the public suddenly remembered why they had so admired Connery in the first place and realised how much they had missed him while he was ‘gone’. Once firmly back in the public eye, Connery found himself a bigger star than ever.

  Knievel found himself in a similar situation: his public had grown tired of him in the Seventies and had temporarily forgotten about him, but now, with a slight jog of the memory, they were more than happy to accept him back again. The span of years that had passed since his earlier fame only served to exaggerate his legend.

  But Evel still proved he had an uncanny knack of falling foul of the law, and in 1994, just as it looked like he was getting his life back on track, he found himself in trouble again. This time it was for allegedly beating Krystal. The pair were staying at the Comfort Inn motel in Sunnyvale, California on the night of 9 October when a night porter overheard a violent argument coming from Knievel’s room and called the police. Upon arrival, the police found Knievel had left but Krystal was still in the room and had bruises on her face and neck. While the police were questioning Krystal, Evel called from a nearby topless bar, the Brass Rail, and two police cars were immediately sent to apprehend him. He was arrested quietly and without fuss and was taken to the Santa Clara County Jail. His beloved 1984 Aston Martin Lagonda Sedan was also impounded there as a matter of routine – a routine which would lead to even more trouble for Knievel.

  Upon searching the car, again as a matter of routine, police found a veritable arsenal of guns and knives in the boot, including a .44 calibre handgun with laser sights and two clips of ammunition, a loaded .38 calibre revolver, a stun gun and an array of knives. Knievel had long had a fascination for guns and it’s a fascination that stayed with him to the end. He always slept with a Smith & Wesson .357 under his pillow at night and carried a Magnum .357 in his golf bag, in case there were any arguments over high stakes owed. He also kept a Dirty Harry-style Magnum .44 in his car at all times. When asked why he felt the need to arm himself practically everywhere he went, Knievel replied, ‘Do you know how many murders and car-jacks we have in this country? I don’t go on any trip without a Goddamned shotgun and a pistol with me. If I killed somebody, I’d rather have 12 people judge me on a jury than have six people carry me in a coffin to my grave. That’s the way it is.’

  Knievel had always harboured a rather unhealthy fantasy of killing someone and made no attempt to disguise the fact. ‘I’ve done everything in the world I’ve ever wanted to do except kill somebody. There are a couple of guys I know who need shooting. They represent the rectum of humanity.’

  Unfortunately for Knievel, the Santa Clara police didn’t quite see things the same way, and matters were only made worse by the fact that Knievel was an ex-con and as such was not permitted to carry firearms. He had already been fined $120 back in August for having a loaded handgun on the passenger seat of his car while driving in Helena, Montana, and it now looked increasingly likely that Evel’s semi-comeback was going to be remarkably short-lived and he would be sent back to county jail. As matters transpired, Krystal played down the assault, blamed herself for starting it and refused to press charges. Evel did, in time, confess to beating Krystal. When asked what lessons he had learned looking back upon his life, he responded, ‘Loving someone doesn’t mean that you can love her for six days [of the week] and then beat the crap out of her on the seventh.’

  Even so, Krystal stood by her man when he appeared before Santa Clara County Superior Court in September 1995 to face weapons charges. He was sentenced to 200 hours of community service, which entailed lecturing to kids on the importance of wearing crash helmets, something which, in fairness, h
e had been doing for some time and which he did appear to be passionate about. ‘I always said I’d pay $1,000 to anyone who ever saw me making a jump or doing a wheelie without a helmet in public. There was a time when I took some heat from the motorcycle groups opposing mandatory helmet laws. I will always campaign for those laws. Senator Floyd credits my testimony before the California Transportation Department for the eventual passage [passing] of California’s helmet law.’ Knievel was, however, quite happy to ride round the streets of Butte some years later without a helmet for television cameras, while filming the documentary Evel Knievel’s Great Ride.

  Evel continued endorsing products, even at the expense of his credibility, because he desperately needed money and he desperately wanted to become mainstream famous again. In 1995 he was the perfect choice to endorse a pain-relieving product called ‘The Stimulator’ – a heat-generating device intended to warm muscles and soothe pain. While there was no medical evidence to suggest the product worked, Knievel tried his best to convince television audiences that he swore and lived by it. He also promoted a spin-off product called ‘Evel Knievel’s Pain-relieving Gel’, but in the same year Knievel discovered he had something much worse than arthritis to worry about: he had contracted hepatitis C, a potentially fatal disease which he believes he contracted during one of his many blood transfusions.

  His condition was discovered during tests for another condition that he had brought about himself with alcohol abuse. Evel had passed out several times with massive haemorrhages in his neck, which resulted in excessive blood loss, and he was repeatedly rushed to Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Florida. After one particularly serious incident he said, ‘I thought I was going to bleed to death. The veins in my throat literally exploded.’ He confessed, ‘The drinking got me – I had a bleeding oesophagus [part of the alimentary canal which links the pharynx to the stomach] from drinking too much – I had to quit. I almost died from drinking.’

  While treating Evel for a bleeding oesophagus, a Dr Barsilo ran several blood tests and discovered his celebrity patient had contracted hepatitis C, the most deadly of the hepatitis viruses. The disease was ravaging Knievel’s liver, which was already severely damaged from drinking. Dr Barsilo gave Evel five years to live.

  Hepatitis C (as opposed to the A and B strains) was only discovered in 1989 but affects an estimated 170 million people worldwide, with 3.9 million sufferers in the United States alone. Like the AIDS virus it can be contracted through sexual contact or needle sharing among intravenous drug users, but in Knievel’s case it was determined that he was infected with the virus during a blood transfusion operation. His liver failure, while being partly due to his hepatitis, was also brought on by years of alcohol abuse for which he only had himself to blame.

  It seemed terribly ironic that a man who had stared death in the face on so many occasions, and had come so close to dying but always fought back, was now facing his toughest challenge of all from a debilitating, silent killer, which no amount of bravery or determination would overcome. The only thing that could save Knievel now was a new liver. In the short term, Evel was treated with Ribavirin tablets (to boost his immune system) which he took three times a week, but the looming possibility that his liver would eventually fail him, and thereby kill him, must have played on his mind considerably.

  As it was for now, the show had to go on. Evel was determined to continue his gradual rise back into the public eye, and if he now had to treat diabetes and hepatitis C along with his usual aches and pains, so what? His career as the king of the stuntmen meant he was no stranger to pain and the possibility of death. He even foolishly showed no regard for his doctor’s orders concerning alcohol, even though he had already stated that he had quit drinking. ‘They told me to quit drinking…I am a stubborn man. I have been a big-shot all my life. I thought I knew it all so I continued to drink. I have punished my liver, I can tell you, and that just helps hepatitis C even more.’

  Knievel did eventually stop drinking but was still suffering much of the time, drained of energy and hobbling around like a man 30 years his senior. But he was revelling in the new recognition he was now being showered with as the originator and founding father of a whole new lifestyle, one which was gathering momentum throughout the States and would eventually spread worldwide – Extreme sports.

  While Evel had been primarily associated with motorcycles, he had once strapped himself into a steam-powered rocket and had also planned to freefall from an aeroplane at 30,000 feet to land on some hay bales, stunts which make him more than just a motorcycle jumper. He had no shortage of imitators over the years – whom he more often than not despised as they threatened to steal the limelight away from him. The Extreme-sports fanatics, however, are much closer in spirit to Evel than any of his imitators were. They invented their own ways to live life on the edge, and with it they invented a whole new lifestyle, fashion industry and music form. Whether it was extreme surfing, base jumping, snowboarding or freestyle motocross, a whole host of youngsters ushered in an enviable new lifestyle, all wearing designer brands like Oakley, Fox, On Fire and RipCurl gear and opting to drop out of humdrum society in order to chase thrills. They wore cool shades, baggy pants, beanie hats, combat trousers, covered themselves in tattoos and body piercings and listened to Nu-Metal music. They rebelled against the nanny state and thrived on taking risks and inventing new challenges, just as Evel had done a generation before. For them, copying Evel’s suit and replicating – or even trying to better – Evel’s stunts would have seemed utterly pointless. It had been done before, so where was the risk or triumph in that? They possessed far too much originality to become mere clones; then they would be little better than the thousands of overweight Elvis Presley impersonators who merely dyed their hair black, donned a pair of aviator sunglasses and squeezed into a white-tasselled jumpsuit.

  Many of these kids were too young to even remember Knievel, but the older members of the Extreme community began hailing Knievel as the godfather and originator of everything they did and believed in, and the message soon spread to the younger participants thanks to the back-catalogue of Knievel videos. From being a relic of a forgotten decade and little more than a washed-up joke, Evel Knievel was finally finding the respect he had always craved, and it was coming from a youth that he respected – a youth which embodied the very lifestyle and attitude he had single-handedly created.

  13

  The Return of the King

  ‘He gave me a gift of life through his liver so that I could go on living.’

  Golf does not have the reputation of being a particularly dangerous sport but Evel Knievel seemed to have a knack for getting hurt wherever he went or whatever he did, even in the most relaxed of environments. In December of 1997 he finally underwent the surgeon’s knife in Tampa General Hospital to have a complete hip replacement after falling over during a round of golf and once more smashing his fragile hip. It was, as one would expect, found to be in a terrible state of repair when surgeons opened Knievel up to begin the operation. ‘The doctors said they had never seen a worse hip in their lives,’ he commented.

  It may not have been the most glamorous way to injure himself (wiping out at Caesar’s Palace carries heaps more credibility), but the operation to insert a titanium hip was successful and meant that, for the first time in 30 years, Knievel’s legs were both the same length and he no longer had a limp – or the need for his famous cane. Prior to surgery, Evel had been suffering badly with his hip and was told by doctors to use a Zimmer frame to take his weight off it. Pride, however, prevented Knievel from doing so – at least in public – and he insisted on using only his cane, even though it was woefully inadequate for the job.

  The injuries didn’t stop there either. Some months later Evel slipped while getting out of a Jacuzzi and broke a rib to add to his quite outstanding list of injuries. But all these problems paled into insignificance as Knievel’s hepatitis C approached a critical point much earlier than had been
expected. In April of 1998 doctors gave him between three and six months to live. ‘Three years ago,’ Knievel said, ‘the doctor diagnosed five years, but now it’s just crept up on me so fast.’

  The virus was sapping Evel’s strength and forcing him to remain in bed for up to a week at a time. He was also losing weight fast and was down to 165 lbs from his usual 180 lbs. If he didn’t undergo a liver transplant within the next three-to-six months, Evel Knievel was going to die. But finding a suitable donor is never easy, and being rich and famous (which he was now slowly becoming again) didn’t make it any easier, as he explained: ‘Some people think that if you’re rich you’ll just get a transplant. It doesn’t work that way. The person who needs it the most and is a donor match will get the transplant. It doesn’t matter if you’re Mickey Mantle, Evel Knievel, Walter Payton or Joe Smith. And what if the body rejects the first one you’re given? You can’t just say, “Hey doc, I’m rich, here’s another $467,000. Go find me a new one.” Believe me, they’re just not available.’

  If Knievel was to be lucky enough to find a matching donor in time, there was still, as he said, no guarantee that his body would accept it. Even if it did, he estimated that a new liver would only buy him about seven years. To further add to his worries there was every chance that his hepatitis would immediately attack the new liver all over again.

  Part of Knievel’s appeal in his glory days was that he simplified things, even death itself. He faced a ramp, gunned his bike up it, and tried to bridge the gap. He either landed successfully, got hurt or got killed. Gruesome but simple. And if he did get killed, chances are it would have been so quick that he wouldn’t even have known about it. Now he was in a very different situation, little better than a prisoner waiting on death row hoping his appeal will grant him life. But to his eternal credit, Knievel faced this new form of death in exactly the same way he had faced it in a different guise. He talked openly about his illness and remained philosophical.