vinyl LP front cover
cover design by Saul Saget
photo of album cover by Styrous®
Robert Craig "Bob" Knievel Jr. (
, was born on October 17, 1938. Known professionally as
Evel Knievel, he was an American
stunt performer,
painter, entertainer, and international icon. Over the course of his career, he attempted
more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps; in 1974, he failed an attempted canyon jump across
Snake River Canyon in the
Skycycle X-2, a steam-powered rocket.
I learned about Knievel in the early sixties; I'd already had a decade-long love affair with the motorcycle via
Marlon Brando and the film,
The Wild One (1953). On March 3, 1972, at the
Cow Palace in
Daly City, California,
after making a successful jump, Knievel tried to come to a quick stop
because of a short landing area. He suffered a broken
back and a concussion after getting thrown off and run over by his
motorcycle, a
Harley-Davidson. I remember when this happened because I bought my BMW six months later in September (
Beemer link below) after considering whether I really should but decided I wasn't going to be jumping over motorcycles, cars or canyons.
I'd had my bike a couple of years and had my Canadian venture (
link below) behind me when I found, the album,
Evel Knievel. The recording includes a press conference, a meeting with kids, the song,
Ballad of Evel Kneivel (sung by
John Cullitton Mahoney and Kneivel) as well as his poem,
Why? (
links below).
Never Is Forever is the second full-length album by the
Norwegian band
Turbonegro released in 1994 on
Dog Job Records. On the CD-version there are three hidden tracks in the end of the final track:
Bingo singing
Staten och kapitalet, a 1970s radical
left-wing progressive rock tune by
Blå Tåget (some really weird sh*t about the same time as the
Residents) (
links below) made into a national hit song in
Sweden in 1980 by punk rock band
Ebba Grön,
Evel Knievel performing a poem named
Why? and
John Cullitton Mahoney performing his song
The Ballad of Evel Knievel.
The album also includes a photograph of Knievel autographed by him.
8" x 10" signed photograph
photographer unknown
When he was 18, after a police chase in 1956, in which he crashed his motorcycle, Knievel was taken to jail on a charge of
reckless driving.
When the night jailer came around to check the roll, he noted Knievel
in one cell and a man named William Knofel in the other. Knofel was well
known as "Awful Knofel" ("awful" rhyming with "Knofel"), so Knievel
began to be referred to as "Evel Knievel" ("Evel" rhyming with
"Knievel"). He chose this misspelling for his first name because he
didn't want to be considered "evil".
After many unsuccessful business ventures, motorcycle dealerships, etc., Knievel recalled a
Joie Chitwood
show he saw as a boy and decided that he could do something similar
using a motorcycle. Promoting the show himself, Knievel rented the
venue, wrote the press releases, set up the show, sold the tickets and
served as his own master of ceremonies. After enticing the small crowd
with a few wheelies, he proceeded to jump a twenty-foot-long box of
rattlesnakes and two
mountain lions.
Despite landing short and having his back wheel hit the box containing
the rattlesnakes, Knievel managed to land safely.
cover design by Saul Saget
He found a sponsor in Bob Blair, owner of ZDS Motors, Inc., the West coast distributor for
Berliner Motor Corporation, a distributor for
Norton Motorcycles. Blair provided the motorcycles, but he wanted the name changed from the
Bobby Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils Thrill Show to
Evil Knievel and His Motorcycle Daredevils. Knievel didn't want his image to be that of a
Hells Angels rider, so he convinced Blair to allow him to use
Evel instead of
Evil.
Knievel and his daredevils debuted on January 3, 1966, at the National Date Festival in
Indio, California. On February 10, in
Barstow, California. During the performance, Knievel attempted a new stunt in which he would jump,
spread-eagled, over a speeding motorcycle. Knievel jumped too late and the motorcycle hit him in the
groin,
tossing him fifteen feet into the air. He was hospitalized as a result
of his injuries. When released, he returned to Barstow to finish the
performance he had started almost a month earlier.
Knievel's daredevil show broke up after the Barstow performance because
injuries prevented him from performing. After recovering, Knievel
started traveling from small town to small town as a solo act. To get
ahead of other motorcycle stunt people who were jumping animals or pools
of water, Knievel started jumping cars. He began adding more and more
cars to his jumps when he would return to the same venue to get people
to come out and see him again. Knievel had not had a serious injury
since the Barstow performance, but on June 19 in
Missoula, Montana,
he attempted to jump twelve cars and a cargo van. The distance he had
for takeoff did not allow him to get up enough speed. His back wheel hit
the top of the van while his front wheel hit the top of the landing
ramp. Knievel ended up with a severely broken arm and several broken
ribs. The crash and subsequent stay in the hospital were a publicity
windfall.
cover design by Saul Saget
With each successful jump, the public wanted him to jump one more
car. On May 30, 1967, Knievel successfully cleared sixteen cars in
Gardena, California. Then he attempted the same jump on July 28, 1967, in
Graham, Washington,
where he had his next serious crash. Landing his cycle on the last
vehicle, a panel truck, Knievel was thrown from his bike. This time he
suffered a serious
concussion.
After a month, he recovered and returned to Graham on August 18 to
finish the show; but the result was the same, only this time the
injuries were more serious. Again coming up short, Knievel crashed,
breaking his left wrist, right knee and two ribs.
Knievel first received national exposure on March 18, 1968 when comedian and late night talk show host
Joey Bishop had him on as a guest of the
ABC Television,
The Joey Bishop Show. To keep his name in the news, Knievel proposed his biggest stunt ever, a motorcycle jump across the
Grand Canyon. The national attention brought both a larger paycheck and larger fanbase.
cover design by Saul Saget
cover design by Saul Saget
On January 7 and 8, 1971, Knievel set the record by selling over 100,000
tickets to back-to-back performances at the Houston Astrodome. On
February 28, he set a new world record by jumping 19 cars with his
Harley-Davidson XR-750 at the
Ontario Motor Speedway in
Ontario, California. The 19-car jump was filmed for the movie
Evel Knievel. Knievel held the record for 27 years until
Bubba Blackwell jumped 20 cars in 1998 with an XR-750.
[19]
(In 2015 Doug Danger surpassed that number with 22 cars, accomplishing
this feat on Evel Knievel's actual vintage 1972 Harley-Davidson XR-750.)
For 35 years, Knievel held the record for successfully jumping the most
stacked cars on a Harley-Davidson XR-750 (the record was broken in
October 2008). His historic XR-750 is now part of the collection of the
Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Made of steel, aluminum and fiberglass, the customized motorcycle
weighs about 300 pounds. This is 200 pounds lighter than my Beemer.
cover design by Saul Saget
During his career Knievel may have suffered more than 433 bone fractures, earning an entry in the
Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of "most bones broken in a lifetime"
However, his son Robbie told a
reporter in June 2014 that his father had broken 40 to 50 bones; Knievel
himself claimed he broke 35.
cover design by Saul Saget
Knievel died in
Clearwater, Florida, on November 30, 2007, aged 69. He had been suffering from
diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis for many years.
A longtime friend reported that Knievel had trouble breathing while at
his residence in Clearwater, but died on the way to the hospital. The
friend said, "It's been coming for years, but you just don't expect it.
Superman just doesn't die, right?"
Knievel was buried at Mountain View Cemetery in his hometown of
Butte, Montana on December 10, 2007, following a funeral at the 7,500-seat
Butte Civic Center presided over by
Pastor Dr. Robert H. Schuller with actor
Matthew McConaughey
giving the eulogy. Prior to the Monday service, fireworks exploded in
the Butte night sky as pallbearers carried Knievel's casket into the
center.
Knievel was inducted into the
Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999. On July 10, 2010, a special temporary exhibit entitled
True Evel: The Amazing Story of Evel Knievel was opened at the
Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 2017, a 13,000 square foot (1,200 m
2) museum about Knievel opened in
Topeka, Kansas, featuring some of his motorcycles, leathers, and helmets along with various displays and a
virtual reality motorcycle jump.
In November 2010,
General Motors
premièred a television commercial featuring footage of Knievel's
Wembley Stadium crash in 1975, followed by Knievel getting onto his
feet. The ad focused on GM's
restructuring and emphasized the belief that "we all fall down".
On July 18, 2012,
Audi of America recreated Knievel's Snake River jump (
link below) in a promotional commercial for the
Audi RS5. The commercial depicts the RS5 being driven by a professional driver and jumping the canyon off a jump ramp.
Knievel has been the subject of five films and documentaries, the most famous starring
George Hamilton as Knievel (
link below).
In one of his last interviews, Knievel told
Maxim magazine:
| “ |
You
can't ask a guy like me why I performed. I really wanted to fly through
the air. I was a daredevil, a performer. I loved the thrill, the money,
the whole macho thing. All those things made me Evel Knievel. Sure, I
was scared. You gotta be an ass not to be scared. But I beat the hell
out of death. [...] You're in the air for four seconds, you're part of
the machine, and then if you make a mistake midair, you say to yourself,
"Oh, boy. I'm gonna crash," and there's nothing you can do to stop it,
not at all. |
Tracklist:
Side 1:
A1 - Prologue - 1:46
A2 - Press Conference - 23:10
A3 - Why?, Lyrics By Evel Knievel, Music By Carl Setty - 3:24
Side 2:
B1 - The Ballad Of Evel Knievel, Lyrics By Ron Kramer, Music By Dean Kay, Vocals –
John Cullitton Mahoney - 2:30
B2 - Evel Talks With The Kids 20:36
B3 - Evel Talks Of The Future 2:17
Companies, etc.
Manufactured By – Transcontinent Record Sales, Inc.
Produced For – Len Levy Associates
Phonographic Copyright (p) – Amherst Records
Phonographic Copyright (p) – Transcontinent Record Sales, Inc.
Copyright (c) – Transcontinent Record Sales, Inc.
Pressed By – Columbia Records Pressing Plant, Terre Haute
Published By – Bro-Sil Publishing
Published By – T.B. Harms Co.
Recorded At – Sound City Studios
Mastered At – Artisan Sound Recorders
Credits:
Arranged By [Music], Conductor – Jim Helms (2)
Design [Cover Design] – Saul Saget
Engineer – Bill Drescher
Executive-Producer – Len Levy
Lyrics By, Liner Notes – Evel Knievel
Narrator – Jerry Fogel
Producer – Ron Kramer
Notes:
Recorded at Sound City Studios, Van Nuys, California.
Gatefold release with an inlay, a print of an autograph card with the catalog number on it.
Cat # AMH-1001 appears on the label.
Cat # AMH 1001 appears on the spine and front cover, top-left.
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Matrix / Runout (Side A Label): AMH-1001-A
Matrix / Runout (Side B Label): AMH-1001-B
Matrix / Runout (Side A [Variant 1]): AMH-1001A-1A -P
Matrix / Runout (Side B [Variant 1]): AMH-1001A-1B -P
Matrix / Runout (Side A Etched [Variant 2]): AMH-1001-A-1A T1
Matrix / Runout (Side A Stamped [Variant 2]): C [Artisan Sound Recorders logo]
Matrix / Runout (Side B Etched [Variant 2]): AMH-1001-B-1B T1
Matrix / Runout (Side B Stamped [Variant 2]): Λ [Artisan Sound Recorders logo]
Rights Society: ASCAP
Evel Knievel –
Evel Knievel
Label: Amherst Records – AMH-1001, Amherst Records – AMH 1001
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Gatefold
Country: US
Released: 1974
Genre: Jazz, Non-Music
Style: Interview, Spoken Word, Easy Listening
Viewfinder links:
Beemer Memories Pt. 1 ~ the end & the beginning
The Family Dogg, Sixto Rodriguez & Canada
The Residents
The Wild One ~ 1953 12" 45 EP
Net links:
Evel Kneivel website
Stunt performances
Snake River Canyon
Evel Knievel, The Man Who Invented A Sport
Strange & Famous ~ Evel Knievel's last interview
Portrayals in film
YouTube links:
Prologue
Press Conference (23:10)
Why?
Ballad of Evel Kneivel
Evel Talks With the Kids (20:36)
Evel Talks of the Future
Learning Channel ~ Evel Knievel: The True Story documentary
Matthew McConaughey speech ~ Knieval funeral (9:49)
Evel Knievel & the Hell's Angels (4:49)
Blå Tåget ~ Gröna Lund
The Residents ~ One-Minute Movies
I love the feeling of the fresh air on my face and the wind blowing through my hair.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/evel_knievel
I love the feeling of the fresh air on my face and the wind blowing through my hair.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/evel_knievel
"If you don't know about pain and trouble, you're in sad shape.
They make you appreciate life."
~ Evel Knievel
Styrous® ~ Tuesday, October 17, 2017
