Read Online Life of Evel: Evel Knievel by Stuart Barker - Free Book Online Page A

paralysed. Most of my ribs were cracked or broken. Someone covered me with a blanket. That was the last time I ever tried that particular stunt.’
    He perhaps didn’t realise it at the time but Knievel had just added another very attractive, however morbid, addition to his show – the very real possibility that he could get a stunt wrong and suffer a spectacular injury. Getting it wrong would ensure crowds kept flocking back for more in numbers, which surely would not have been possible had Knievel always successfully pulled off his stunts. If there was no danger there would be no sustained interest. Knievel may have suffered serious injuries after being smashed in the groin, but if he was going to get paid for it he wasn’t complaining. And when pictures of his ugly mishap made it into several West Coast newspapers the following day, Evel knew he was on to something.
    But the money he earned in those early outings was pitiful, and if Knievel imagined he would one day make millions from his carnival act he was more of a visionary than he has been given credit for. The $500 the team was typically paid for a show had to be split up to six ways on occasion, and each man’s share was reduced further by the expenses incurred by travelling to and setting up each show. As Evel had already proved, the risks were extremely high for such scant rewards, but since he had no other obvious means of making cash he got straight back to stunting after being released from hospital. Knievel simply couldn’t allow the momentum to be halted; if he was going to make anything of this bizarre business he couldn’t let an inconvenience like pain stand in his way.
    In his fourth appearance with the Daredevils, Knievel suffered even more serious injuries. At Missoula in Montana he attempted to leap over 13 cars, having already realised that two pick-up trucks was old news. He came up short and ploughed into a van parked at the end of the line of cars. Apart from being knocked unconscious, Knievel broke his left arm and several ribs – again. He was in bad shape and wouldn’t be up to working again for at least five months. And when Evel wasn’t working his show had lost its main attraction; gigs had to be cancelled and all of a sudden the other riders weren’t getting paid. While some performances went ahead, such as the one at Montana’s Great Falls Speedway on 21 August where Evel acted as host but could not perform, others were cancelled and Knievel’s co-riders began seeking out more consistent forms of employment. They simply couldn’t afford to hang around for months waiting for Evel to recover from injury. During those months of recuperation it must have appeared to Evel that his new career was over before it had really got started. It seemed that everything he turned his hand to would be doomed to failure.
    With the benefit of hindsight, however, the disbanding of the Daredevils proved to be the best thing that could have happened as far as Evel was concerned. He had never been a team player and, since he was the main attraction anyway, he began to realise he could now perform on his own and keep all the money to himself. The shows would have to be shorter and more spectacular, even more risky, in order to keep audiences’ attention, but Evel Knievel the solo artist had finally arrived.
    Wasting no time, Knievel started calling up racetrack promoters touting for gigs. He’d ask them what size crowd they usually drew then boldly promise he’d double it for them. The promoter would profit from sales of popcorn, peanuts, beer and car-parking, as well as half the gate money, while Knievel would settle for the other half of the gate money. He invariably instructed the promoters to ‘jack up your tickets by a buck or two’, and so, with minimal outlay and a percentage of the gates guaranteed, Evel Knievel hit the road.
    Being a solo artist may have entailed a lot more work for Knievel but he didn’t seem to mind: it was, after all,