Life of Evel: Evel Knievel (24 page)

Given Knievel’s state of health it is unlikely he could have broken anyone’s arms; he was now gaunt and frail, a shadow of his former overweight self in the 1980s, and his skin tone was a sickly yellow. He had also become increasingly depressed by the prospect that he might die relatively young – if he didn’t get a liver transplant in the first few weeks of 1999 he was a dead man and he knew it. Knievel had by now fallen so ill that he was taken into Tampa General Hospital to be cared for round the clock as he waited and prayed for news of a suitable donor.

Finally, on 27 January, Evel was told his body was shutting down and he was given just 48 hours to live. He decided he would prefer to spend his last hours at home with Krystal and die peacefully there rather than in hospital. After a lifetime of defying death, Knievel was finally forced to accept that he was going to lose, and for the first time in his life he practically gave up the fight. He had been repeatedly warned by doctors that this battle would be the biggest and most serious thing he would face in his life and it now looked like the defiant Knievel was finally beaten. At least he had put up one hell of a fight.

Clearwater, Florida, where Krystal and Evel had their condo, is linked to the city of Tampa by a 12-mile-long land bridge. Krystal helped Evel from the hospital into his car to drive across it on what he knew was his last journey, his last sight of the outside world and the Florida sunshine. He was going home to die. In the end it wasn’t to be a ‘glorious death’ as George Hamilton had predicted in his 1971 movie; it was to be a slow, painful degeneration, sinking into nothingness, that was finally to fell Evel Knievel. The obituaries were sure to note the irony in a few days’ time, if they didn’t already have them written up.

Then, when everything appeared to be lost, it happened. It wasn’t Evel’s pager that went off, it was his mobile phone. ‘As she [Krystal] was driving across the bridge I got that call on the phone from a nurse named Debby, and she said, “Evel, where are you at?” and I said, “I’m on the bridge back to Clearwater.” She said, “There’s been a car wreck in Miami. There’s been a young man killed who has your exact blood-type. We think his liver’s perfect and he is a donor. He was 23 or 24. Can you turn around? Your transplant surgeon is on his way to Miami on a Learjet. He’s gonna get the liver, put it in a solution and come right back.”’

Knievel wasn’t out of the woods by any means but his journey home to die had suddenly turned into a race for life. He now at least had a chance, and when Evel Knievel had a fighting chance he usually came out the winner. Krystal floored the accelerator and screeched the car over to the other side of the bridge, ignoring a ‘Do Not Cross’ sign. Within minutes the pair were back at Tampa General and Knievel was readied for the life-saving operation he’d been waiting on for so long. He had been on the waiting list for a whole year, and now Knievel had a chance to defy death one more time he wasn’t about to waste it. ‘They wanted to open me up right away,’ he later explained. ‘I said, “Well, if you open me up and you take my liver out and throw it in the garbage and this [new liver] doesn’t work, I’m a dead man.” The surgeon said, “Well, you’re the daredevil, what do you want to do?” I said, “Take it out.”’

Dr Hector Ramos (MD) of the LifeLink Transplantation Institute went to work on what was Knievel’s sixteenth major operation. Krystal paced the hospital corridors praying her frail but determined partner could stand up to the surgeon’s knife just one more time; praying that he wasn’t too weakened by the disease to take the anaesthetic, that he would have enough strength to pull round and come through. Most importantly, she prayed that Evel’s body would accept the new liver. If it didn’t, it was too late to find another. The operation simply had to work. It did.

Evel awoke some hours later to the news that the operation had been a complete success and that his body was accepting the liver of the unfortunate donor, who had lost his life to give Evel Knievel a new one. The sadness was not lost on Evel when talking about the youngster. ‘He gave me a gift of life through his liver so that I could go on living. He gave me life and I don’t even know him. And I do love him…In the near future I hope to know his family. Not many of us ever have the chance at another go in life.’

Showing his legendary ability to recover from injury and illness, Evel walked out of hospital just five days after his transplant, despite saying that ‘…when they take your liver out of ya and put another one in, it’s like replacing a football in your stomach’. He would need to take a weekly injection of Interferon and three Ribavirin tablets (both medicines help boost the body’s immune system) every week for the rest of his life, but at least he had a life to live again after coming closer to death than even he had managed before. Some weeks later it was discovered that Knievel’s hepatitis C was attacking the new liver, but since the liver itself was functioning perfectly there was a good chance the organ would last for many years.

The operation transformed Knievel’s appearance: he regained weight and a much healthier pallor and found he had more energy than he’d enjoyed for years. It was time to get back to business with a new vigour and taste for life. Knievel fans the world over breathed a sigh of relief as the old gladiator once again showed them that they should never give up hope and never give up trying. Death had tried a new, stealthier, underhand tactic on him, and had been defeated again. He really was beginning to appear superhuman.

On 2 April 1999, in his first major post-operation public appearance, Evel returned to Caesar’s Palace, the venue that had made him famous 32 years before, to launch the CMC Evel Knievel signature-series motorcycle. The massive billboard outside the complex bore the legend ‘Evel Rides Again’ and Knievel posed for pictures with the bike as well as riding it round the fountains, up the steps and into the casino itself, all without a helmet. This time Caesar’s was more forgiving – he didn’t crash.

Having apparently forgiven Las Vegas for all its sins against him, Knievel again returned to Caesar’s on 19 November, but this time with an altogether different purpose: he had decided to marry Krystal. The couple had been together for nine years but ill health had prevented Evel from marrying over the last year and prior to that he’d seemed in no great rush to re-tie the knot. So now, with a relatively clean bill of health, he had decided to tie the knot for the second time in his life. The ceremony itself was pure Las Vegas kitsch, with scores of beautiful people dressed as Romans and gladiators, and Cleopatra flanking Knievel and his 30-year-old bride. Now 61, Knievel proudly rode his CMC bike to the ceremony and was pictured, unusually, wearing a suit in front of a decorative arch that featured several jumping motorcycles spanning its length. ‘I feel like I got a chance at a new life,’ Knievel told the press, ‘so Krystal and I decided to start a new life right here where it all began.’ Evel’s son Kelly acted as best man (even though he was nine years older than his new stepmother) and, as the ceremony was open to the public, several hundred people watched on.

With a new liver, a new wife, and his name providing a licence to print cash again, life looked good for Evel once more. The dark, drink-saturated days of the Eighties were well and truly behind him. Once more, Hollywood came knocking with the intention of making a much more realistic and grittier film of Knievel’s life story than the sugary George Hamilton vehicle had been. Producer Marco Brambilla had sold the idea to Universal Studios and had chosen Betty Thomas to direct. Thomas had already directed the movie
Private Parts,
based on the life of shock American DJ Howard Stern, as well as directing the
Brady Bunch
movie. Heartthrob Mathew McConaughey was selected to play Knievel after
True Romance
star Christian Slater had been briefly considered. It was inspired casting as
U-571
and
Reign of Fire
star McConaughey bears an uncanny resemblance to the younger Knievel and looks even more like Evel’s son Kelly. In fact, the two look so alike that Knievel told McConaughey they could be twins.

Brambilla had been working on the project since 1996 and a budget of $60 million was being bandied about, but wheels can turn slowly in Hollywood and, as the new millennium rolled around, talk of the movie died away and it seemed it would never actually be made.

Knievel’s rejuvenated ability to make money was not making him as rich as it should have done, thanks to his ongoing dispute with the IRS, and he was naturally cagey when discussing his earnings. ‘I have an agreement with a big investment firm that I’ve signed everything to,’ he explained. ‘I just live on a salary plus expenses. But as far as expenses go, I can have anything I want – from a Learjet to a horse.’ Significantly, he had neither, but his name was usually enough to ensure he’d be given items of cash value free of charge, simply because people wanted to be able to say they had some kind of link with the man who had by now become a bona fide living legend. ‘I can call up and order a $4,000 super charger and there’s no charge. I order a motorcycle and I get it four days later – no charge. There’s lots of companies and shops that do everything for me.’

Whenever possible, Evel wanted cash upfront for any personal appearances and had even been known to demand cash for giving interviews – an unorthodox method of self-publicity. What the taxman didn’t know about, he couldn’t take, which is why gambling continued to be a safe way of making (or losing) money for Knievel.

Evel was still spending several months of the year in the Maxim Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, mostly in the complex’s Cloud Nine bar, his favourite watering hole outside Butte, which also acted as his ‘office’ when it came to betting on various sporting events. With a new liver in place, Knievel decided he could afford to have the odd drink again, even though Krystal regularly watered down his beer when he wasn’t looking. But he had at least given up on the Wild Turkey that had been his undoing in the 1980s, claiming he had taken his last shot back in 1989 because he had ‘just had enough of it’.

When he wasn’t in Vegas or making public appearances, Evel’s day-to-day life in Clearwater was remarkably normal. He’d stop by the pharmacy and pick up his family-size prescription of drugs for his diabetes, hepatitis C and chronic arthritis (he was having to take 37 pills every day as well as his injections). He’d play a round of golf, visit his tailor to have his carefully faded jeans let out to accommodate his weight gain, and would drop into McDonald’s like everyone else for a burger. But the difference between Knievel and most other celebrities was that he never made any attempt to be conspicuous. Evel loved being recognised, and since word had got round that he lived in Clearwater during the winter it wasn’t hard for fans to spot him in his Evel Knievel-liveried Cherokee Jeep. A whole new generation of kids who admired the Extreme- sports lifestyle and had learned of the godfather of the movement honked their horns and yelled at him as he drove round Tampa and Clearwater, and Knievel loved every minute of it. ‘I can’t even go in a grocery store without people wanting an autograph or wanting to kiss or hug me,’ he explained without any hint of complaint. ‘But it goes with the territory. I earned it so I might as well enjoy it.’

He continued riding his CMC motorcycle, especially when he visited Montana in the summer months when Clearwater became too hot and humid for him. When he was there, he assisted in the organisation of a whole new Knievel spin-off which would prove to be one of the biggest compliments of his career: his hometown was planning to stage an annual event called Evel Knievel Week, which would hopefully attract people from all over the US and further afield to celebrate the town’s most famous son. Few living people have been granted such an honour.

Evel had already had a river named after him in Arkansas, and in 1998 had received a fax from the Governor of Alabama declaring that 4 July, Independence Day, was to be declared Evel Knievel Day in that state. They were both great honours, which were followed up by
Icon
magazine naming Evel as their ‘Icon of the Year’ for 1998. But an annual event held in his own honour was something else altogether, and it gave fans the world over the chance to travel to Butte and ride with their hero; a hero who really was back from the dead.

While his professional life could hardly have been improved upon, Evel Knievel’s private life was an unmitigated disaster by 2001.

He had been suffering from mood swings that often resulted in violence, and according to Krystal she was usually at the receiving end of it. Knievel blamed the medication he had been taking since his liver transplant, but matters were not helped when he began to suspect that Krystal was being unfaithful to him.

By July, the couple’s 10-year relationship had reached the point of no return and they were divorced less than two years after their fairy-tale wedding in Las Vegas. But this was one girl that Knievel couldn’t let go of and he swallowed his Butte pride in a bid to win Krystal back. Thrown out of the condo in Clearwater, Knievel went back to living in his bus, and for a while he parked up in Roosevelt Boulevard in Clearwater so he could be near Krystal, a position that Krystal found increasingly uncomfortable. ‘He initially would leave flowers and cards at the door and on my car but once he understood we were not going to reconcile – I made it very clear I wished for him to leave me alone – he turned very angry.’

The fact that Knievel even attempted a reconciliation with Krystal was at odds with his long-held attitude towards women. Just a few years before he had, with typical bravado, commented, ‘Women are like buses: good to ride on for 15 minutes but they forget that if you get off there will be another one along in 15 minutes – and another one, and another one.’

Krystal became so concerned for her safety that she eventually took Evel to court in February 2002 seeking an injunction against him. At Pinellas County Courtroom on 20 February, Krystal accused Knievel of hitting her and making constant threatening phone calls, prompting Judge Amy Williams to order a permanent injunction against Knievel, who was listed in the court papers as a ‘retired daredevil’. Knievel was ordered to stay away from his ex-wife and forbidden from attempting to make any contact with her.

Bizarrely, Knievel filed for his own injunction, claiming that Krystal always ‘packed a gun’ and had made various threats towards him, one of which was threatening to shoot him in a tug-of-war over her jewellery collection. Judge Williams also granted this injunction and ordered Krystal to stay away from Evel for a period of four years. It was a messy and undignified end to a relationship that, on the surface at least, had appeared close to perfect.

As usual there were hordes of autograph seekers outside the courtroom hoping to meet Evel, who was dressed in his regular flashy style wearing tinted spectacles, glitzy jewellery and blue alligator-skin cowboy boots. Putting on a brave face, he told reporters he was glad to be rid of Krystal, saying, ‘There’s just some things a man can’t live with.’ He then admitted he had asked Krystal to forgive him but added that he was not prepared to put up with her infidelities and snarled, ‘She’s lucky I didn’t hit her. I never want to see her again.’ To another reporter, however, he let his guard slip and bemoaned, ‘Any way you look at it, it’s a sad situation. I came here with a broken heart.’

It was a very revealing statement on Knievel’s behalf; he had never before admitted weaknesses and certainly not where women were concerned, but his recent behaviour in showering Krystal with flowers and messages had proved just how much he wanted her back in his life. As it was, Evel had been forced back into a sad, lonely existence on the road. At 63 years old, he was on his own again and full of bitterness. ‘I went through a pretty tough marriage with a girl who wasn’t what I thought she would be. I was tied to a tree by a rattlesnake for 11 years. She wanted me to stop being Evel Knievel. I am who I am. I’m not going to change. I’ll settle down the day they put me in a six-foot pine box.’

Given the mess he had repeatedly made of his private life, it was somewhat ironic that Knievel was now to be found dishing out advice on all kinds of personal matters via his ‘Ask Evel’ website. He had been offered a spot as a monthly advice columnist on
www.tripod.com
back in 1998 and had accepted the post wholeheartedly, even though he couldn’t seem to offer himself much advice on managing his own affairs. ‘I’m looking forward to sharing my perspective with Tripod members,’ he said. ‘I’ve pretty much done it all. You can ask me for advice on just about anything.’ Anything except, perhaps, relationships.

But Knievel had other things to worry about than his ruinous love life; the taxman was still chasing him and by August 2001 was claiming that Knievel still owed almost $6 million. The Department of Revenue filed two charges against Evel totalling $395,000 and claimed that court records in Butte showed he owed $800,000 in back-taxes to the State of Montana and $5.3 million in federal taxes. Knievel naturally disputed this and he and his attorney, Wade Dahood, claimed they had reached a settlement under which Evel was obliged to pay only a fraction of that amount – just $15,000 in total. Knievel produced a letter from the IRS addressed to Robert C. Knievel which stated ‘You have completed the payment requirements of your Offer in Compromise. This settles any previous owed Federal income taxes, according to the terms of the agreement between you and the Government.’ The IRS refused to discuss the matter publicly but Dan Hoffman, an administrator for the Montana Department of Revenue, did go on the record to confirm that Knievel was finally catching up with the back-payments he owed the State of Montana. Hoffman said claims for $395,000 of the back-taxes had ‘made it through the proper channels for collection’. Wade Dahood remained tight-lipped about the affair, but it seemed that after so many years of living on the run from the IRS, Knievel was finally catching up with his debts.

He spoke openly about his tax problems at the annual Butte Press Club meeting where he was a special guest for the 2001 session. In an unusually sombre mood, Knievel used the event not only to help promote Butte but to clear his name of past misdemeanours. He read out letters from various US government officials relating to the Sheldon Saltman incident, his arrest for soliciting in Kansas City, and, mostly, his tax debts, which he now promised to settle by the end of the year. Knievel also vowed to help promote Butte in any way he could in a bid to attract more visitors back to the once great town. ‘We have no choice,’ he told the assembled journalists and officials, ‘this town is dying.’

Evel backed a proposal to erect 200–300 signs promoting Butte all over the state of Montana and even promised to put up some of the money for the project himself, as well as promoting the town as much as possible during his many television show appearances and radio and press interviews. He even made a travel documentary for the Travel Channel called
Evel Knievel’s Great Ride
in which he took viewers on a tour of his beloved hometown in a bid to entice them to visit.

While it may have been a minor revelation to hear Knievel sounding humble and dipping his toe into council matters, there was much more of a revelation to come when he stunned the world by announcing the unthinkable: he was going to jump again. Those who were familiar with Knievel’s sense of hyperbole sniggered at the very thought of such a suggestion, but there were others who believed – after all, there had been thousands who thought his promise to try and jump the Snake River Canyon would come to nothing and he had proved them wrong that time. Who was to say he wouldn’t do so again?

And it wasn’t going to be a short exhibition-style jump either; Knievel vowed he was going to jump further than he had ever jumped in his life – more than 200 feet – prompting fellow motorcycle jumper Johnny Airtime to remark: ‘The only way Knievel could leap 200 feet would be to take 200 amputated human feet, put them side by side and jump over them.’

Knievel made the startling announcement on 1 June while attending the launch of an Evel Knievel tribute car at the Galpin Ford dealership in the San Fernando Valley, Southern California. The Ford car was dubbed the Evel Knievel F-150 Gladiator and came in a choice of two Knievel-inspired paintjobs – the famous white with blue and red, or the dark blue Wembley colour-scheme.

Of his proposed jump he said, ‘At that time [spring 2003] if I’m still strong enough and feel like I do [now], I’m going to make my last jump. When I get ready to go, I hope you’re all there. Stay on the take-off side and when I take-off blow like hell – you’ll get me clean over.’ The initial statement did sound very tongue in cheek; however, Knievel continued to boast about his comeback jump throughout the year, although the details changed every time he was interviewed. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to jump over yet. I have a lot of companies who want me to jump their trucks and cars so…we’ll see. I may jump over 200 beautiful naked women, laying face down. I jump ramp-to-ramp and rump-to-rump. If I miss, the landings will be so smooth and soft. No problem.’

Knievel hadn’t even worked out how far he was going to jump or what bike he was going to use, both factors pointing to this being nothing more than a publicity stunt. ‘I’ll jump over 200 feet…I may jump 300, who knows? I’m looking into the bike now. There’s a lot of motorcycles out there as good as a Harley-Davidson. I’m gonna test them and when I come up with one you can be assured it’ll be the fastest, safest, best motorcycle in the world. I’m not decided yet. Maybe a Triumph, Triumph from England. I love Triumph.’

Knievel showed how completely out of touch he was with modern motorcycling by adding, ‘Triumphs are the best handling motorcycles in the world. I jumped the T120 Bonneville; [it] runs at 115mph, a great motorcycle.’ Evel did in fact jump the T120 but that was way back in 1967 and before the advent of the modern Japanese Superbike, many of which will now top 180mph straight out of the crate. And the handling of motorcycles since the late 1960s has improved in quantum leaps. If Knievel had been serious about making one last jump, the only realistic option open to him was to use a motocross bike as all other jumpers – including his son Robbie – rode.

Still, the boasting continued: he was going to jump over those 200 naked women; he was going to leap three tractors and trailers end-to-end, with 20 Ford trucks added for good measure; he was going to jump 220 feet because that figure represented his current age on top of the furthest distance he had jumped before (64 feet for the age he was to be in 2003 and 156 for the furthest jump which he, incorrectly, claimed to have made).

In theory, Knievel could easily make such a distance using a motocross bike, which would be light enough, powerful enough and have enough suspension travel to absorb the landing; but was there any real possibility of a man who had to warm his wrists under a shower for 20 minutes just to play a round of golf being able to hang on to a bike as it landed at 100mph from a 200-foot jump? It seemed unlikely.

Even the planned location of the jump varied from day to day. One day it was to be held on the Nevada/California border while his next announcement was that he’d been meeting with the Italian government to gain permission to jump the Colosseum in Rome. Other potential sites were named as the Sturgis Rally in South Dakota (which attracts 750,000 bike fans each year), Yankee Stadium and even Butte itself. There was a lot of room for cynicism despite Evel’s protestations that his coming out of retirement would be good for the American public. ‘By jumping again at my age and after all I’ve been through, the way ups and the way downs, both physically, financially and spiritually, through all the greatest triumphs and the lowest turmoil of my personal life, I feel like maybe I can inspire the people of America to get up again, no matter what they’ve been through.’

Evel insisted all the major television networks had approached him about televising the event and he figured he could make $12 million from the jump, his optimism obviously un-dampened by the financial disappointment of the Snake River broadcast rights. ‘If I make this last jump, I’m gonna come at it so fast that if you blink you’re gonna miss it. I’m gonna take off and I’m gonna be so high and go so far you’ll wonder where the hell I went…If I have an ounce of life in me I’m gonna do it. I will outdraw every event there ever was in this last jump. You watch me.’

In many ways it was rather sad to listen to Knievel’s talk of a comeback; to bear witness to the old gladiator who was simply not able to lay down his sword and enjoy his freedom. After all, Knievel had earned his ‘rudius’ – the wooden sword presented to gladiators who had proved themselves brave enough and won their freedom. He had taken the pain and made his name a legend; he had nothing to prove to anyone. But even though he was back in the limelight as a revered icon of the 1970s, Evel desperately wanted to recapture his former glory. He wanted to be the Evel Knievel of old one last time; to fly through the air with his famous helmet and jumpsuit on and his cape billowing in the wind. Only then could he, at least in his own mind, be in his mid-thirties again, a man commanding the attention of a nation, being watched by millions of fans old and new. There was even some speculation that Knievel’s wish to jump again was the result of a darker motive; that he would have preferred to go out in a blaze of glory with one spectacular crash rather than just falling prey to a slow illness and dying in a hospital bed. He even hinted at this himself on occasion, saying, ‘Things have been so damn tough around here I wouldn’t mind taking a vacation for the rest of my life. Anyone who’s afraid of dying is an idiot.’

But in brighter moments Knievel was happy to pick up the flag for pensioners and hoped he could inspire them like he had inspired the youth of the 1970s. ‘Just because you’re 65 years old does not mean that you have to quit life and retire. If you’ve worked in the job and you’re going to retire, well, that’s fine, but take something else up. I’m not telling everybody to get on a motorcycle and jump over a huge distance like I do, but, you know, for exercise some old people think that they got to get up and walk around the couch two or three times and scratch their ass then sit down and just quit life. In other words, they don’t do anything – they become couch potatoes. I don’t believe in that. I want to live and live and live until the day I die. That’s just the way I am.’