April 23, 2024 • 31 mins
Step back with me to a time when the definition of masculinity was as shifting as the tides and every young man was searching for his place in the world. I unfold tales from my teenage years during the tumultuous mid-70s, wrestling with the legacy of my father's wartime heroism and the contrasting peace-and-love ethos of the era. Through the haze of Vietnam War protests and the sounds of Alice Cooper and Creedence Clearwater Revival, I found an unlikely role model in the fearless Evel Knievel—a man who defied death with a charisma that cut through the confusion and offered a different kind of blueprint for manhood.
Join us as we explore the enigmatic life of Evel Knievel, whose death-defying antics and complex persona captured the imagination of a generation caught between old war tales and the search for a new peace. From his iconic jump at Caesar's Palace to his candid interviews on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Knievel lived a life of authenticity that made him an emblem of raw, uncompromising manhood. We'll consider the dichotomy of his off-stage battles and the principles he lived by, and how these reflections helped to shape my own understanding of masculinity. Evel Knievel's legacy, fraught with personal contradictions yet undeniably impactful, offers a nostalgic yet insightful look at the courage to live by one's own terms.
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Take a minute and think about what it was like for
a young teenage kid growing upin the late 60s, mid 70s boy
becoming a man, teenage guy,mid-70s boy becoming a man,
(00:28):
teenage guy and the definitionof what a man should be in this
era.
So your father's a war hero,part of the greatest generation,
world War II, korea.
You're watching Clint Eastwoodon TV kill bad guys.
(00:51):
You're thinking, hey, that'sthe way to go.
You know, tough guy, badass,bad MF-er.
You know, my dad said.
And then you're watching theVietnam War on TV with your dad.
Your dad was overseas.
(01:14):
He fought in Korea in World WarII.
And you're watching Vietnam onTV and you're seeing the
protests.
And you're watching Vietnam onTV and you're seeing the
protests.
And you're seeing the hippiesand you're seeing the four dead
in Ohio.
And you're seeing Timothy Learyand you're watching them march
(01:40):
on Washington and they'repreaching peace, love and
marijuana.
Tune in turn on drop out.
But your dad is a badass Marine, right?
You're not old enough to go toVietnam.
You're not going to Vietnambecause you're born in at least
(02:02):
me'm born in 1960.
I'm not going.
It's winding down, but I'mwatching it on TV and I'm
watching these guys come homeand they're not war heroes,
these Vietnam guys.
They're not coming home toparades, they're not kissing
women in Times Square and beinga more memorialized as heroes.
They're coming home and they'regetting spit on, they're going
(02:27):
through terrible PTSD, they'rebeing accused of mass genocide
in Vietnam.
And you're 15.
And you're saying to yourselfas a young boy what the hell is
(02:50):
a man?
What is a man?
What am I?
Am I Clint Eastwood?
Am I Tiny Tim?
Am I meditating and doing yogaand preaching love, peace and
(03:11):
marijuana?
And it's confusing and you'researching for an identity and
you just don't know where to go.
(03:36):
Alice Cooper sang a song.
The lyrics were I'm 18, I don'tknow who I am.
Am I a boy or am I a man?
I'm like, yeah, I dig that.
I understand what he's saying,but the dude's name is Alice and
(03:57):
he's wearing mascara.
I don't know.
Is he cool?
Is he right?
Am I relating to him?
Is he?
You know the?
Who is talking about singingabout Vietnam, fogarty,
creedence.
Everybody's dissing Vietnam andthe vets.
(04:18):
My dad's like standing up forAmerica.
I'm not sure what my dad isthinking about Vietnam, but
we're watching Vietnam on the TVevery night.
It was like watching a sportevent.
They had scores.
Viet Cong met the 5th Battalionof the Marines in Khe Sanh and
(04:39):
411 Viet Cong died and 32Americans wounded or injured.
It's like a game and I'm justconfused.
Who's who's what?
What is what?
(04:59):
Who am I supposed to be?
Am I supposed to be?
And in the end, my dad wasalways just going to be the, the
um guide light to my life.
But the conflicting personasthat were given to us about what
(05:20):
it was to be a man weredifficult to navigate and really
, really confusing for us.
Am I good or am I evil?
(05:40):
Do I take the side of love andpeace or do I take the side of?
I'm a badass American that'snot going to tolerate shit and
(06:02):
we're going to arm up and invadeand impose our will on the rest
of the world.
And I just was looking forsomebody who was honest, who
(06:23):
believed in something, stuck toit and lived by it and showed it
.
I didn't need a new movie star.
I didn't need Clint Eastwood.
I didn't need Charles Bronson.
They were actors, right.
(06:45):
They were just fake guysshooting fake bullets at fake
people.
I wasn't buying it.
I didn't need fake heroes,hippie heroes, abby Hoffman.
I didn't need Timothy Leary.
I didn't need that whole fakelove and peace hippie stuff.
(07:11):
That really just kind ofdeteriorated into a complete
mess by the end of the 60s.
But then came this guy, thisweird, strange guy that just cut
(07:36):
through all the bullshit andsaid this is what a man is.
And I'm not sure he was evenright, but I'm not sure he was
even sane.
But his name was Evil friggin'Knievel.
(08:00):
And I don't know what you allremember about Evil Knievel.
All I remember was the jumpsand the craziness and the lunacy
and the willingness to justsacrifice his body for God knows
what Money, pride, manliness.
I wasn't sure what he was doing.
I still can't figure out whathe was doing, but I just knew
(08:24):
that he believed in somethingand stuck to it and really and
truly.
I just knew that when EvelKnievel was going to be on
Wilder Sports or when he wasgoing to jump or whatever he was
going to do, everybody I knewwas going to be glued to that TV
(08:44):
set.
So I started researching thepodcast, thinking about Evel
Knievel's jumps, looking at hisjumps and his stunts.
And if you don't know or youdon't remember, Evel Knievel
(09:09):
rode a motorcycle.
He was a Butte Montana, dirtMidwest kid, very little
education, had a motorcycle andsomehow figured out that he
could build a ramp, drive thatmotorcycle up the ramp, jump
over shit, big shit, build aramp at the other end and land
(09:34):
that bike and sell tickets.
And when he was going to be onthe Wide World of Sports or he
was going to be on any kind ofshow, everybody was watching and
we were watching to see if hewas going to make the jump and
(10:01):
we were also watching in aghoulish kind of way to see him
crash.
So let me just back up a littlebit and just tell you what this
guy did.
What he would do he would go in, like the Houston Astrodome,
(10:24):
build a ramp from the top,orange seats all the way down,
line up 14 buses, come down theslope from the top of the
Astrodome, go down, hit the ramp, fly over the 14 buses and he
(10:48):
would supposedly hit the otherramp with his rear wheel and
land safely.
Drive around the stadium popwheelies.
Drive around the stadium popwheelies.
(11:12):
But it didn't really happen likethat.
Quite often what actuallyhappened a lot of the times was
he would jump these buses andcars and sharks, tanks and
rattlesnake pits and he wouldnot make it.
(11:33):
He would hit.
He tried to jump the fountainsat the uh caesar's palace in
vegas and uh, his rear wheel andyou can watch this stuff on
youtube any night he would jumpin.
In this particular instance, healmost makes it.
His rear wheel hits the tip ofthe landing ramp and down His
(12:02):
motorcycle topples over him.
He just gets annihilated.
He breaks several bones and hedid this a lot of times.
That's why I wonder what was thespectacle?
What were we looking for?
Were we watching?
Were we cheering for him tomake it, or were we cheering for
(12:23):
him to watch the disaster thatwas coming?
I'm not sure.
It's human nature to gawk attragedy to some degree, and it's
human nature to root on for theguy doing the impossible.
(12:49):
All I know is that this guywasn't an actor.
He wasn't Russell Crowe inGladiator, that was always going
to win.
He wasn't Clint Eastwood.
He was just a guy.
He dressed like Elvis.
He always made a speech beforehe jumped about America and how
(13:09):
great America was.
He always told kids in hispre-jump speeches to stay off
drugs.
Yet he was a raging alcoholicthat had to have a liver
transplant, and he confessesthat he did a couple of shots
(13:31):
before every jump and he made alot of jumps that ended in
disaster and it's controversialabout how many bones he broke
and how many times.
But this dude broke a lot ofbones, time after time after
(13:53):
time on TV and he would tour, hewould do a jump a week all over
.
He was getting pretty rich fromdoing all this stuff but he was
sacrificing his body.
And the more I researched EvelKnievel, the less I was
interested in the actual jumpsof the performance and the more
(14:14):
I was interested in hisphilosophy and his life and his
reasons for doing what he did,reasons for doing what he did.
And it was like he was a strongguy.
(14:35):
He obviously had a death wish.
He obviously loved attention.
He obviously had a reason tojump because he was making tons
of money.
But he knew like two out offour jumps he was gonna friggin'
(14:56):
crash Concussions, collarbones,two broke ankles, broke wrists,
uh, eight Couple broke pelvises.
He would spend months in thehospital and then he would get
up and just complete hiscontracts and continue to jump.
(15:20):
He stood hard for America.
He was very against drugs, hewould tell you before he would
jump like 17 buses.
Kids always wear a helmet whenyou ride a motorcycle.
He was anti that all the way.
He was an admitted alcoholicthat preached against drugs.
(15:54):
He was very patriotic.
But I always thought he wasgenuine in everything he did,
even though he was sort ofhypocritical.
How do you be a guy that'sagainst drugs when you're
drinking so much that you need anew liver?
You know he had a code.
(16:17):
He had a strong set of rulesthat he lived by, set of rules
that he lived by, but thoserules were kind of friggin'
(16:37):
fucked up.
I live in Fort Lauderdale andthere's an old-time yacht in
Fort Lauderdale that staysparked there and when you take
the water taxi tour they pull upto this yacht.
You know, circa 1975.
It doesn't look like a yachtnowadays 76-foot helicopter pad.
(17:02):
It's square, it it's old, itlooks like something out of the
70s.
And the guy tells you well,this is Evel Knievel's yacht and
he was a big time gambler andhe lost this yacht in a poker
(17:24):
game to his accountant when hewent all in in the living room
of the yacht and lost it.
Now, if you look at, that'swhat they tell you on the tour,
but if you look at the YouTube,it's more like when he jumped
(17:49):
the fountains in Caesar's Palaceand Dan Miller killed himself,
wound up out on the streetthrough Caesar's Palace, out on
some street in Vegas, got him,went to a poker game with the
guy that owns Caesar's Pails andbet the yacht on a poker hand
(18:12):
and lost it there.
It's controversial and it's notthat important.
It's just interesting that theguy was such a risk taker that
he would bet his yacht on apoker hand, that the guy was
such a risk taker that he wouldbet his yacht on a poker hand.
So what do you figure?
(18:33):
Guy like this man dead man, deadman, walking, jumping cars
jumping, frigging stuff on fire,crashing.
All the time.
His family is like begging himto stop.
He can't stop.
He is committed to thisprinciple of patriotism,
(18:58):
manliness, anti-crime,anti-drugs, anti-crime,
anti-drugs.
Yet he's an alcoholic and eventhough the contradictions are
(19:22):
there, I always thought that hewas honest.
I always thought that he wastrue to his beliefs.
I never thought that he wasphony Like Charles Bronson.
You know, good actor, greatactor, but he was a friggin'
actor.
You know, he got fake shot.
He fake shot people.
(19:43):
Lenny, he's a great guy, lovehis movies.
Dirty Harry, great.
You know, self ArnoldSchwarzenegger, this dude walked
the wonk.
He'd break seven bones and makethe next show in friggin'
Poughkeepsie to jump seven morewith a dislocated shoulder and
(20:04):
missing four teeth.
I mean, he was a man's man,right, I couldn't understand it,
but he was true to his word.
And you know, the whole jumpwould take all of ten seconds.
(20:24):
He'd fly through the air.
So when he was going to be onTV he had to put on a pre-show.
He would pop wheelies.
He would take his son out, theywould pop wheelies.
He would race through theauditorium or the parking lot or
whatever, and go up to the topof that ramp and just get to the
top and just hit the brakes andnot go over it.
(20:47):
Then he'd back down, do somemore wheelies, go and go, you
know, just build up the tensionfor the 10 seconds that we were
all waiting for, and then hewould jump and he would make it
(21:07):
or he wouldn't.
But he always stood by his wordUntil he didn't.
He ran out of stuff to do.
He couldn't jump any farther,he couldn't do anything else.
(21:30):
What else could he do?
Like light himself on fire andjump, you know, jump into the
ocean.
So he comes up with this schemehe's going to jump a mile
across Snake River Canyon inUtah or somewhere, I'm not sure
(21:50):
where.
But they won't let him do it.
They're like, no, you can't dothis.
They won't let him do it.
They're like, no, you can't dothis.
So he buys both sides of StankRiver Canyon and he says this is
my property, I can do whateverI want on it.
(22:21):
And he builds this thing, thisrocket ship.
That is not even a motorcycle.
It looks like a little tiny jet, it's got two wheels and he's
got to fly a mile over.
It's got a parachute.
He's got to fly a mile overthis canyon.
And I remember watching it withmy mom and dad when it came on
(22:43):
and everybody knew this is justfrigging impossible.
They showed the ramp.
The ramp that he had to go overfrom the beginning part was
just straight up in the air andthis thing, I guess, had jet
propulsion or whatever.
And we're looking at this stuffand we're saying there is no
way this guy's going to do this.
(23:04):
And I never detected an ounceof phoniness with this guy, but
as a 15-year-old kid I'm lookingat it, everybody's looking at
it.
Everybody's saying this is ahoax, this is this guy's last
(23:27):
chance and as much as he stoodby his principles, I think he's
selling out.
And so he gets in this littletwo-wheeled jet and he goes up
this friggin' ramp like 80degrees up into the air at an
(23:56):
incredible amount of speed.
And you could see that the rampwas too high.
The trajectory was not gonnaallow him to go across this
mile-long canyon, mile-widecanyon.
It was going straight up in theair.
And like three seconds in,after he's off the ramp, the
frigging parachutes blow out andhe floats safely down to the
(24:28):
edge of the canyon and hispeople come and get him.
And I said at that point tomyself man, evil, you were a
great dude, but in the end youscammed us.
(24:49):
You knew you couldn't make it.
We knew you couldn't make it.
I'm a physics major but I couldsee you.
There was no friggin' wayanybody could even comprehend
that you were going to make thisthing.
And it disappointed me aboutevil.
(25:10):
But I don't want to leave youwith a bad taste.
You know, the guy probablyneeded money.
He was a degenerate gambler anda bad drinker, but he stood for
something.
He was a tough guy.
He kind of helped definemanliness, when being a man was
(25:43):
sort of a confusing thing.
He was just I'm a man.
This is what I do.
I break bones.
I love America, I hate drugs, Ihate the Hells Angels.
I'm gonna jump this thing comehell or high water.
(26:06):
And in the end he kind of blewit with me with that scam.
With that scam he's kind of thelast of the manly men, but he
wasn't a fake manly man.
(26:28):
He was authentic.
He was authentically crazy andnarcissistic, with a death wish
and a craving for attention andmoney and adrenaline.
(26:54):
And you know, you see theseguys now on YouTube that do this
crazy stuff, this flyingthrough the air with these skin
suits and these mountainclimbers that climb cliffs.
So the daredevils are still outthere.
(27:16):
So the daredevils are still outthere, but they do it more for
their own personal reasons.
Eva was a showman, a daredevil,a man's man, and when everybody
(27:48):
knew Eva was jumping, everybodymy age was watching and I'm not
saying he was right or he waswrong anti-Vietnam War protester
(28:15):
man, the hippie man that stoodfor love and peace, and there's
nothing wrong with that.
I mean, I bought into that tooFrom the just badass MF-er guy
(28:36):
that isn't acting, who is reallyputting his life on the line
every day, as crazy as he wasand he gave me and like Evel
(29:01):
Knievel or I, could be like JohnLennon.
I got nothing around JohnLennon, but you know, give
multi-rich, you know.
But he set a balance betweenthose two poles where guys like
(29:27):
me could find somewhere inbetween when I could be tough, I
could be a man, I could becompassionate, I could be a
provider and I could be againstviolence.
I saw the whole gamut and Ilanded somewhere in the middle.
(29:57):
But I'll tell you what man youwant to see some crazy shit.
Go on YouTube and watch evilKnievel, do his stuff, watch his
interview with Johnny Carsonand you'll get a really, really
nostalgic, cool view into theguy's life and it'll bring back
(30:21):
memories.
But you'll get a more in-depthlook at the man's inner psyche
that you probably didn't havewhen you were 15, 16, 17.
So that's it.
Evil Knievel Good guy, kind ofcrazy, never hurt nobody but
(30:46):
himself.
My name's John Ward.
This is the Baby Boomers, theStrangest Generation, and I hope
you like the show.
Y'all have a good night now,thank you.
Take a minute and think about what it was like for
a young teenage kid growing upin the late 60s, mid 70s boy
becoming a man, teenage guy,mid-70s boy becoming a man,
(00:28):
teenage guy and the definitionof what a man should be in this
era.
So your father's a war hero,part of the greatest generation,
world War II, korea.
You're watching Clint Eastwoodon TV kill bad guys.
(00:51):
You're thinking, hey, that'sthe way to go.
You know, tough guy, badass,bad MF-er.
You know, my dad said.
And then you're watching theVietnam War on TV with your dad.
Your dad was overseas.
(01:14):
He fought in Korea in World WarII.
And you're watching Vietnam onTV and you're seeing the
protests.
And you're watching Vietnam onTV and you're seeing the
protests.
And you're seeing the hippiesand you're seeing the four dead
in Ohio.
And you're seeing Timothy Learyand you're watching them march
(01:40):
on Washington and they'repreaching peace, love and
marijuana.
Tune in turn on drop out.
But your dad is a badass Marine, right?
You're not old enough to go toVietnam.
You're not going to Vietnambecause you're born in at least
(02:02):
me'm born in 1960.
I'm not going.
It's winding down, but I'mwatching it on TV and I'm
watching these guys come homeand they're not war heroes,
these Vietnam guys.
They're not coming home toparades, they're not kissing
women in Times Square and beinga more memorialized as heroes.
They're coming home and they'regetting spit on, they're going
(02:27):
through terrible PTSD, they'rebeing accused of mass genocide
in Vietnam.
And you're 15.
And you're saying to yourselfas a young boy what the hell is
(02:50):
a man?
What is a man?
What am I?
Am I Clint Eastwood?
Am I Tiny Tim?
Am I meditating and doing yogaand preaching love, peace and
(03:11):
marijuana?
And it's confusing and you'researching for an identity and
you just don't know where to go.
(03:36):
Alice Cooper sang a song.
The lyrics were I'm 18, I don'tknow who I am.
Am I a boy or am I a man?
I'm like, yeah, I dig that.
I understand what he's saying,but the dude's name is Alice and
(03:57):
he's wearing mascara.
I don't know.
Is he cool?
Is he right?
Am I relating to him?
Is he?
You know the?
Who is talking about singingabout Vietnam, fogarty,
creedence.
Everybody's dissing Vietnam andthe vets.
(04:18):
My dad's like standing up forAmerica.
I'm not sure what my dad isthinking about Vietnam, but
we're watching Vietnam on the TVevery night.
It was like watching a sportevent.
They had scores.
Viet Cong met the 5th Battalionof the Marines in Khe Sanh and
(04:39):
411 Viet Cong died and 32Americans wounded or injured.
It's like a game and I'm justconfused.
Who's who's what?
What is what?
(04:59):
Who am I supposed to be?
Am I supposed to be?
And in the end, my dad wasalways just going to be the, the
um guide light to my life.
But the conflicting personasthat were given to us about what
(05:20):
it was to be a man weredifficult to navigate and really
, really confusing for us.
Am I good or am I evil?
(05:40):
Do I take the side of love andpeace or do I take the side of?
I'm a badass American that'snot going to tolerate shit and
(06:02):
we're going to arm up and invadeand impose our will on the rest
of the world.
And I just was looking forsomebody who was honest, who
(06:23):
believed in something, stuck toit and lived by it and showed it
.
I didn't need a new movie star.
I didn't need Clint Eastwood.
I didn't need Charles Bronson.
They were actors, right.
(06:45):
They were just fake guysshooting fake bullets at fake
people.
I wasn't buying it.
I didn't need fake heroes,hippie heroes, abby Hoffman.
I didn't need Timothy Leary.
I didn't need that whole fakelove and peace hippie stuff.
(07:11):
That really just kind ofdeteriorated into a complete
mess by the end of the 60s.
But then came this guy, thisweird, strange guy that just cut
(07:36):
through all the bullshit andsaid this is what a man is.
And I'm not sure he was evenright, but I'm not sure he was
even sane.
But his name was Evil friggin'Knievel.
(08:00):
And I don't know what you allremember about Evil Knievel.
All I remember was the jumpsand the craziness and the lunacy
and the willingness to justsacrifice his body for God knows
what Money, pride, manliness.
I wasn't sure what he was doing.
I still can't figure out whathe was doing, but I just knew
(08:24):
that he believed in somethingand stuck to it and really and
truly.
I just knew that when EvelKnievel was going to be on
Wilder Sports or when he wasgoing to jump or whatever he was
going to do, everybody I knewwas going to be glued to that TV
(08:44):
set.
So I started researching thepodcast, thinking about Evel
Knievel's jumps, looking at hisjumps and his stunts.
And if you don't know or youdon't remember, Evel Knievel
(09:09):
rode a motorcycle.
He was a Butte Montana, dirtMidwest kid, very little
education, had a motorcycle andsomehow figured out that he
could build a ramp, drive thatmotorcycle up the ramp, jump
over shit, big shit, build aramp at the other end and land
(09:34):
that bike and sell tickets.
And when he was going to be onthe Wide World of Sports or he
was going to be on any kind ofshow, everybody was watching and
we were watching to see if hewas going to make the jump and
(10:01):
we were also watching in aghoulish kind of way to see him
crash.
So let me just back up a littlebit and just tell you what this
guy did.
What he would do he would go in, like the Houston Astrodome,
(10:24):
build a ramp from the top,orange seats all the way down,
line up 14 buses, come down theslope from the top of the
Astrodome, go down, hit the ramp, fly over the 14 buses and he
(10:48):
would supposedly hit the otherramp with his rear wheel and
land safely.
Drive around the stadium popwheelies.
Drive around the stadium popwheelies.
(11:12):
But it didn't really happen likethat.
Quite often what actuallyhappened a lot of the times was
he would jump these buses andcars and sharks, tanks and
rattlesnake pits and he wouldnot make it.
(11:33):
He would hit.
He tried to jump the fountainsat the uh caesar's palace in
vegas and uh, his rear wheel andyou can watch this stuff on
youtube any night he would jumpin.
In this particular instance, healmost makes it.
His rear wheel hits the tip ofthe landing ramp and down His
(12:02):
motorcycle topples over him.
He just gets annihilated.
He breaks several bones and hedid this a lot of times.
That's why I wonder what was thespectacle?
What were we looking for?
Were we watching?
Were we cheering for him tomake it, or were we cheering for
(12:23):
him to watch the disaster thatwas coming?
I'm not sure.
It's human nature to gawk attragedy to some degree, and it's
human nature to root on for theguy doing the impossible.
(12:49):
All I know is that this guywasn't an actor.
He wasn't Russell Crowe inGladiator, that was always going
to win.
He wasn't Clint Eastwood.
He was just a guy.
He dressed like Elvis.
He always made a speech beforehe jumped about America and how
(13:09):
great America was.
He always told kids in hispre-jump speeches to stay off
drugs.
Yet he was a raging alcoholicthat had to have a liver
transplant, and he confessesthat he did a couple of shots
(13:31):
before every jump and he made alot of jumps that ended in
disaster and it's controversialabout how many bones he broke
and how many times.
But this dude broke a lot ofbones, time after time after
(13:53):
time on TV and he would tour, hewould do a jump a week all over
.
He was getting pretty rich fromdoing all this stuff but he was
sacrificing his body.
And the more I researched EvelKnievel, the less I was
interested in the actual jumpsof the performance and the more
(14:14):
I was interested in hisphilosophy and his life and his
reasons for doing what he did,reasons for doing what he did.
And it was like he was a strongguy.
(14:35):
He obviously had a death wish.
He obviously loved attention.
He obviously had a reason tojump because he was making tons
of money.
But he knew like two out offour jumps he was gonna friggin'
(14:56):
crash Concussions, collarbones,two broke ankles, broke wrists,
uh, eight Couple broke pelvises.
He would spend months in thehospital and then he would get
up and just complete hiscontracts and continue to jump.
(15:20):
He stood hard for America.
He was very against drugs, hewould tell you before he would
jump like 17 buses.
Kids always wear a helmet whenyou ride a motorcycle.
He was anti that all the way.
He was an admitted alcoholicthat preached against drugs.
(15:54):
He was very patriotic.
But I always thought he wasgenuine in everything he did,
even though he was sort ofhypocritical.
How do you be a guy that'sagainst drugs when you're
drinking so much that you need anew liver?
You know he had a code.
(16:17):
He had a strong set of rulesthat he lived by, set of rules
that he lived by, but thoserules were kind of friggin'
(16:37):
fucked up.
I live in Fort Lauderdale andthere's an old-time yacht in
Fort Lauderdale that staysparked there and when you take
the water taxi tour they pull upto this yacht.
You know, circa 1975.
It doesn't look like a yachtnowadays 76-foot helicopter pad.
(17:02):
It's square, it it's old, itlooks like something out of the
70s.
And the guy tells you well,this is Evel Knievel's yacht and
he was a big time gambler andhe lost this yacht in a poker
(17:24):
game to his accountant when hewent all in in the living room
of the yacht and lost it.
Now, if you look at, that'swhat they tell you on the tour,
but if you look at the YouTube,it's more like when he jumped
(17:49):
the fountains in Caesar's Palaceand Dan Miller killed himself,
wound up out on the streetthrough Caesar's Palace, out on
some street in Vegas, got him,went to a poker game with the
guy that owns Caesar's Pails andbet the yacht on a poker hand
(18:12):
and lost it there.
It's controversial and it's notthat important.
It's just interesting that theguy was such a risk taker that
he would bet his yacht on apoker hand, that the guy was
such a risk taker that he wouldbet his yacht on a poker hand.
So what do you figure?
(18:33):
Guy like this man dead man, deadman, walking, jumping cars
jumping, frigging stuff on fire,crashing.
All the time.
His family is like begging himto stop.
He can't stop.
He is committed to thisprinciple of patriotism,
(18:58):
manliness, anti-crime,anti-drugs, anti-crime,
anti-drugs.
Yet he's an alcoholic and eventhough the contradictions are
(19:22):
there, I always thought that hewas honest.
I always thought that he wastrue to his beliefs.
I never thought that he wasphony Like Charles Bronson.
You know, good actor, greatactor, but he was a friggin'
actor.
You know, he got fake shot.
He fake shot people.
(19:43):
Lenny, he's a great guy, lovehis movies.
Dirty Harry, great.
You know, self ArnoldSchwarzenegger, this dude walked
the wonk.
He'd break seven bones and makethe next show in friggin'
Poughkeepsie to jump seven morewith a dislocated shoulder and
(20:04):
missing four teeth.
I mean, he was a man's man,right, I couldn't understand it,
but he was true to his word.
And you know, the whole jumpwould take all of ten seconds.
(20:24):
He'd fly through the air.
So when he was going to be onTV he had to put on a pre-show.
He would pop wheelies.
He would take his son out, theywould pop wheelies.
He would race through theauditorium or the parking lot or
whatever, and go up to the topof that ramp and just get to the
top and just hit the brakes andnot go over it.
(20:47):
Then he'd back down, do somemore wheelies, go and go, you
know, just build up the tensionfor the 10 seconds that we were
all waiting for, and then hewould jump and he would make it
(21:07):
or he wouldn't.
But he always stood by his wordUntil he didn't.
He ran out of stuff to do.
He couldn't jump any farther,he couldn't do anything else.
(21:30):
What else could he do?
Like light himself on fire andjump, you know, jump into the
ocean.
So he comes up with this schemehe's going to jump a mile
across Snake River Canyon inUtah or somewhere, I'm not sure
(21:50):
where.
But they won't let him do it.
They're like, no, you can't dothis.
They won't let him do it.
They're like, no, you can't dothis.
So he buys both sides of StankRiver Canyon and he says this is
my property, I can do whateverI want on it.
(22:21):
And he builds this thing, thisrocket ship.
That is not even a motorcycle.
It looks like a little tiny jet, it's got two wheels and he's
got to fly a mile over.
It's got a parachute.
He's got to fly a mile overthis canyon.
And I remember watching it withmy mom and dad when it came on
(22:43):
and everybody knew this is justfrigging impossible.
They showed the ramp.
The ramp that he had to go overfrom the beginning part was
just straight up in the air andthis thing, I guess, had jet
propulsion or whatever.
And we're looking at this stuffand we're saying there is no
way this guy's going to do this.
(23:04):
And I never detected an ounceof phoniness with this guy, but
as a 15-year-old kid I'm lookingat it, everybody's looking at
it.
Everybody's saying this is ahoax, this is this guy's last
(23:27):
chance and as much as he stoodby his principles, I think he's
selling out.
And so he gets in this littletwo-wheeled jet and he goes up
this friggin' ramp like 80degrees up into the air at an
(23:56):
incredible amount of speed.
And you could see that the rampwas too high.
The trajectory was not gonnaallow him to go across this
mile-long canyon, mile-widecanyon.
It was going straight up in theair.
And like three seconds in,after he's off the ramp, the
frigging parachutes blow out andhe floats safely down to the
(24:28):
edge of the canyon and hispeople come and get him.
And I said at that point tomyself man, evil, you were a
great dude, but in the end youscammed us.
(24:49):
You knew you couldn't make it.
We knew you couldn't make it.
I'm a physics major but I couldsee you.
There was no friggin' wayanybody could even comprehend
that you were going to make thisthing.
And it disappointed me aboutevil.
(25:10):
But I don't want to leave youwith a bad taste.
You know, the guy probablyneeded money.
He was a degenerate gambler anda bad drinker, but he stood for
something.
He was a tough guy.
He kind of helped definemanliness, when being a man was
(25:43):
sort of a confusing thing.
He was just I'm a man.
This is what I do.
I break bones.
I love America, I hate drugs, Ihate the Hells Angels.
I'm gonna jump this thing comehell or high water.
(26:06):
And in the end he kind of blewit with me with that scam.
With that scam he's kind of thelast of the manly men, but he
wasn't a fake manly man.
(26:28):
He was authentic.
He was authentically crazy andnarcissistic, with a death wish
and a craving for attention andmoney and adrenaline.
(26:54):
And you know, you see theseguys now on YouTube that do this
crazy stuff, this flyingthrough the air with these skin
suits and these mountainclimbers that climb cliffs.
So the daredevils are still outthere.
(27:16):
So the daredevils are still outthere, but they do it more for
their own personal reasons.
Eva was a showman, a daredevil,a man's man, and when everybody
(27:48):
knew Eva was jumping, everybodymy age was watching and I'm not
saying he was right or he waswrong anti-Vietnam War protester
(28:15):
man, the hippie man that stoodfor love and peace, and there's
nothing wrong with that.
I mean, I bought into that tooFrom the just badass MF-er guy
(28:36):
that isn't acting, who is reallyputting his life on the line
every day, as crazy as he wasand he gave me and like Evel
(29:01):
Knievel or I, could be like JohnLennon.
I got nothing around JohnLennon, but you know, give
multi-rich, you know.
But he set a balance betweenthose two poles where guys like
(29:27):
me could find somewhere inbetween when I could be tough, I
could be a man, I could becompassionate, I could be a
provider and I could be againstviolence.
I saw the whole gamut and Ilanded somewhere in the middle.
(29:57):
But I'll tell you what man youwant to see some crazy shit.
Go on YouTube and watch evilKnievel, do his stuff, watch his
interview with Johnny Carsonand you'll get a really, really
nostalgic, cool view into theguy's life and it'll bring back
(30:21):
memories.
But you'll get a more in-depthlook at the man's inner psyche
that you probably didn't havewhen you were 15, 16, 17.
So that's it.
Evil Knievel Good guy, kind ofcrazy, never hurt nobody but
(30:46):
himself.
My name's John Ward.
This is the Baby Boomers, theStrangest Generation, and I hope
you like the show.
Y'all have a good night now,thank you.
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