Stuart Barker - Life of Evel - Evel Knievel

Along the way there were excesses that would put most hell-raising rock stars to shame. Knievel was fond of boasting that he made $60 million and spent $63 million. At one time he owned 14 aeroplanes, 16 boats, five Rolls-Royces and more sports cars and motorcycles than he could remember. He lost and won millions of pounds in the casinos of Las Vegas and had his own private walk-in bank vault in Butte, into which he literally shovelled his cash.

Evel counted Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Muhammad Ali among his friends, and his appetite for beautiful women was unrivalled. He claimed to have slept with over 2,000 women during his lifetime, despite the fact that he was married for 38 years.

But there were dark times too. Knievel was sentenced to six months in prison, a small proportion of which was served in a cell next to Charles Manson, for breaking a former colleague’s arms with a baseball bat. The colleague’s crime? He wrote a book about Evel which the daredevil took exception to. A $13 million lawsuit followed, but it was the shame of Knievel’s prison sentence that destroyed his reputation and ultimately his fortune, as every company he was associated with withdrew their endorsements. At the same time, the Internal Revenue Service were hunting down Knievel for anything up to $21 million in outstanding taxes. Knievel all but disappeared as the IRS stepped up the hunt.

For the best part of 15 years, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, Knievel was neither seen, heard of nor talked about as he toured the US in a converted bus and trailer that he called home. He hustled for whatever money he could get by betting on games of golf just to buy his next bottle of bourbon. It seemed he had lived his somewhat extended 15 minutes of fame and was destined to fade into complete obscurity, with only hazy, booze-tinged memories as souvenirs of his time as one of the most famous people on the planet.

Then a remarkable thing happened. By the mid-Nineties, all those thirty-somethings who had grown up with the name Evel Knievel discovered a nostalgia for their lost Seventies youth, and suddenly the forgotten decade became fashionable again. Boot-cut denims were the new flares, satellite TV showed re-runs of all the cult, classic programmes from the Seventies; programmes like The Incredible Hulk, Starsky and Hutch, The Dukes of Hazzard and The Bionic Woman (in which Knievel himself once starred). Classic disco anthems like the Bee Gees’ Staying Alive were being sampled by contemporary artists, and the star of the film of the same name, John Travolta, was shot dramatically back into the limelight in Quentin Tarantino’s huge box-office hit Pulp Fiction. It seemed there was no escaping the retro phenomenon and more and more forgotten stars of the Seventies were hunted down and brought out of mothballs to be lionised once again. Inevitably, their twenty-years-after appearances shocked many who could only remember them as the fresh-faced stars they had once been, but they were welcomed back into the limelight all the same.

At some undefined moment, the retro-mongers realised there was one very significant name missing from the Seventies celebration: Evel Knievel. What had happened to him? Was he dead? It seemed likely, given his chosen occupation and the fact that no one could really remember him officially retiring, since his career had simply fizzled out rather than ended in a blaze of glory. Knievel suddenly found himself making after-dinner speeches and being sought out by the media again. But it was the appearance of the once handsome and well-built man that shocked more than the revelation that he was still alive. Time had taken a heavy toll on Knievel, and the frail, grey-headed and bespectacled man who hobbled back blinking into the bright limelight which had for so long neglected him seemed as far removed from the King of the Daredevils as it was possible to be. Apart from the 16 major open-reduction surgeries he had gone through, Knievel’s appearance had also been ravaged by hepatitis C and Type II diabetes and he was suffering from liver failure as well as the to-be-expected arthritis. He was in poor shape for a man in his late fifties, but the fact that he was alive at all still seemed a miracle to most.

In 1999, Knievel needed another miracle. Hepatitis C had ravaged his liver to such an extent that he was given just 48 hours to live. Signing himself out of hospital in order to die quietly at home with his partner Krystal, his 12-mile journey home was interrupted by a phone call that told him a suitable liver donor had been found. He was rushed back to the hospital and underwent a successful transplant operation.

With a new lease of life, Knievel was more determined than ever to enjoy his second shot at fame. The revival of his name took many forms: his famous wind-up toys which had grossed over $300 million in the 1970s were re-released; documentaries on his incredible life were screened both in America and the UK; DVDs of his famous jumps were compiled; tribute bicycles, motorcycles and even cars were manufactured. Rights for an Evel Knievel rock opera were signed over, computer games were churned out and various artists even penned songs about their childhood hero. The new marketing weapon of the late twentieth century, the Internet, provided a perfect platform for the sale of staggering amounts of Evel Knievel paraphernalia – some old, much new. Fans could now buy Evel replica jackets, T-shirts, lingerie, cigars, commemorative coins, aftershave, and almost any other saleable commodity imaginable. If something could be branded, someone stamped ‘EK’ on it and added instant commercial appeal.

But one of the greatest compliments for Knievel during his second, and surely now eternal, period in the limelight must have been the founding of an annual Evel Knievel week in his hometown of Butte, Montana. The inaugural event, held in the July and August of 2002, featured a ride-out led by the man himself, as well as freestyle motocross events, car and bike stunt shows, performances from big-name live bands, an Evel Knievel exhibit and a grand fireworks finale. Few living celebrities can lay claim to such an honour.

Knievel’s remarkable comeback had brought him full circle, back to his beloved hometown of Butte where he once held court as its most famous son before disappearing from the public eye. It had been in Butte that a young Bobby Knievel learned his trade as a bank robber before becoming famous, and it was in the town jail that he was given the nickname ‘Evil’, which would eventually become a byword for anything daring or dangerous.

Throughout his career Knievel never missed the chance to tell the press and the people where he came from. He was proud of his roots in the tough, former mining town and probably realised more than most just how much that upbringing had shaped the man he became. There is no widely acknowledged birthplace for daredevils, but if they’re going to come from somewhere it may as well be Butte, Montana. It certainly provided Robert Craig Knievel with all the right stuff to become the most famous daredevil the world has ever known.

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