Life of Evel: Evel Knievel - Stuart Barker

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       4 Theatre of Pain

       ‘I’m Evel Knievel. I’m not supposed to be afraid.’

      The Caesar’s Palace crash resulted in the worst injuries of Evel Knievel’s career. He landed so hard that his left hip was forced up into the pelvis, leaving both structures comprehensively smashed. He also broke his nose, sustained several broken ribs, smashed out several teeth and fractured his jaw. But the immediate and most serious concern was for the head injuries which left Knievel in a coma. His head had taken repeated blows as he was thrown viciously along the Tarmac, and even though crash-helmet technology in 1967 was extremely basic by today’s standards, Knievel’s Bell Magnum helmet had at least saved his life. In acknowledgement of the fact, he has kept it to this day.

      Evel lay unconscious for day after day and week after week with his devoted wife Linda at his bedside, wondering if her husband would ever wake up and, if he did, would he be brain-damaged? Would he be able to walk again? She knew better than anyone that a man as active and daring as her husband would never tolerate being confined to a wheelchair and would never be able to accept being dependent on others.

      As the weeks crept by, feeling like years, it became increasingly unlikely that Evel would regain consciousness, but after an agonising 29 days for Linda, Kelly, Robbie and Tracey Lynn, the man they all loved and admired showed his true mettle: he woke up. The family, not to mention the nurses who had tended him night and day, were understandably beside themselves when Knievel not only opened his eyes but proved that he’d lost none of his abilities of speech and understanding. It was a moment of unadulterated joy that few experience. Evel Knievel had, to all intents and purposes, prised himself from the very jaws of death and returned to life.

      When he was stable enough and when his doctors were confident that he was in a fit state of mind to be told, Knievel learned the true extent of his horrific injuries, which, while they were gruesome and painful, were at least not life-threatening. A successful operation was carried out to insert an 18-inch steel rod between his left femur and pelvis, but, as a result of his hip being pushed up into his pelvis, his left leg was now almost an inch shorter than his right. Knievel would be left with a permanent limp, but that seemed almost irrelevant; the only thing that mattered was that he was alive when he really shouldn’t have been.

      Surprisingly, Knievel remembered every bone-crushing moment of the crash (at least up to the point of being knocked out), but to this day he still doesn’t know quite what went wrong. When asked at what point he knew he wasn’t going to make the landing he replied, ‘I never knew it. I thought I’d made it. It was a surprise and a shock – a big shock.’ He added, ‘I was hurt real bad – landed on my head. That was the most serious of all. I remember the whole thing; every tiny bit of it. There was a little six-foot safety ramp and I landed right on top of it. It was just a piece of steel sitting on a van.’

      When asked if he had any idea what actually went wrong, Knievel replied ‘I just wasn’t going fast enough’, while also explaining that he simply couldn’t go fast enough because the run-up ramp wasn’t long enough. But what was done was done, and, besides learning from the experience, there was nothing more that could be done about it. All he could do now was focus on getting better.

      Knievel remained in hospital for a total of 37 days. It wasn’t his first hospital stay and it wouldn’t be his last, but it was certainly his longest. As he lay in bed recuperating, the world outside was going Knievel crazy, and it was largely down to the fact that Evel’s horrific crash had been captured in all its bone-crunching detail, not by ABC or any of the other mainstream networks but by future Dynasty actress Linda Evans. Evans was at the time married to movie director John Derek, who later married and made a huge star out of Bo Derek. Many years later, Knievel actually claimed that he was responsible for introducing John Derek to Bo, despite their insistence to the contrary. ‘John was filming a project at a Harley store where Bo worked for her father. I didn’t know her but I introduced her to John anyway. She has a sister that looks almost exactly like her. Anyway, to hear John and Bo say it they met on the Mediterranean. They met at a Harley store in Long Beach.’

      Whatever the case, Knievel had struck a deal with John and Linda Derek allowing them to exclusively shoot his Caesar’s jump on 16mm IMO cameras. It proved to be a wise move, as Knievel explained: ‘The film that was shot of the Caesar’s Palace jump has been said by a lot of people who are in the film business to be one of the greatest pieces of film footage ever filmed. This was filmed by one of the most beautiful blondes; her name was Linda Evans. John Derek shot the jump at the take-off and Linda shot the landing and the accident.’

      The footage shot by the couple was aired over and over again, both in real time and in slow motion, and it was unquestionably responsible for transforming Evel Knievel from a fairground attraction into a national star. So frequently was the footage shown that it was widely believed to have been played more times than any piece of film since the infamous Zapruder footage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas back in 1963. Knievel always believed that ‘In any adversity there is the seed of benefit’, and that never proved to be more true for Knievel than now. He may have come close to losing his life, and, having survived, had to endure enormous pain as physiotherapists forced his limbs back to life, but the upside of the Palace crash was that it had captured the attention of the great American public: Evel was famous at last.

      Someone crashing a motorcycle is, in itself, not usually an act which guarantees widespread mainstream celebrity. If it was there would be no end of motorcycle racers and stuntmen who would qualify as household names. While the American public had thrilled, cringed and been utterly amazed upon seeing footage of Knievel’s accident, it was the unsaid, almost intangible reasons behind why he had crashed – why he had been prepared to crash – which appealed to the collective subconscious.

      For the first time in modern history, Americans had become disillusioned with their government, their society, and their country as a whole by the late 1960s. The massively unpopular war in Vietnam, which America had been involved in since 1961, had polarised the nation, and mass protests and riots were literally tearing the country apart. Being an American suddenly wasn’t so simple any more. Millions believed the government was wrong to commit so many young soldiers to lay down their lives in a war on the other side of the world for a cause most did not understand.

      The American people were, quite simply, confused. It was no longer clear-cut as to who were the heroes and who were the villains. Thousands performed the previously unthinkable act of burning the Old Glory, the starred and striped American flag. For one brief moment in time, Evel Knievel offered an escape. He offered Americans the kind of hero they could believe in, one who gave hope and inspiration to anyone facing problems, challenges, danger – or all three combined. Here was a man who gave his word that he would attempt to fulfil his dream right there in front of anyone who cared to watch and he would not back out of the challenge, even in the face of hideous injury or possible death. If it is true that God loves a tryer then so does the public, and Evel’s was a simple one-act stage play which preached the message that if you want to achieve something then don’t let fear get in your way. In a modern-day version of Robert the Bruce and his spider, he encouraged the nation to believe that if at first you don’t succeed then try and try again. ‘I always said you can fall many times in life but you’re never a failure as long as you try to get back up. Use your body or use your head, or use anything you got left to be a worthwhile human being. And I think America needed that kind of figure when it was on its knees with Vietnam. You have dreams in your life which require taking risks, and if you see someone else taking risks to get what they want you are inspired to try yourself.’

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