whole troupe of stunt riders. Bobby found no shortage of talented riders among his racing buddies, who were prepared to try their hand at stunt riding even if it wasn’t going to pay much money; there were still bound to be a few laughs in it. By late 1965, Knievel had convinced five other riders that it was worth a shot: Eddie Mulder, Swede Savage, Rod Pack, Skip VanLuwenn and Butch Wilhelm, the midget who stood only four-feet four-inches high and was billed as the ‘midget daredevil’. Many of the gang would remain friends with Knievel after he shot to fame and they dropped by the wayside. Mulder would act as Knievel’s stunt double in his future movies, Savage would become a golfing partner, and Van-Luwenn remained close to Knievel as well as managing to set up one of the largest motorcycle and helmet distribution companies in the world.
Having secured a fleet of British-built Norton scramblers from the Berliner Motor Corporation (the official distributors of Norton motorcycles in the US), the self-styled daredevils planned and rehearsed their act until they felt they were ready to make their debut in front of a live audience. The only thing the team lacked was a name. It was made clear from the start that Knievel was to be the main attraction; after all, it was his show and he was the only member who had any experience of jumping in front of an audience. But ‘Bobby Knievel and his Motorcycle Daredevils’ just didn’t have any ring of glamour to it, and since the group was billing itself as being ‘from Hollywood’, a touch of showbiz glitz was essential. In solving the problem, Bobby created one of the best stage names of the twentieth century and one that would eventually become known throughout the world. With only a slight alteration to the spelling, he decided to use his old nickname: from now on he would be Evel Knievel.
3
What’s in a Name?
‘Evel Knievel was a character I created. He was even hard for me to live with sometimes. He wouldn’t do anything I told him, the dumb son-of-a-bitch.’
Very few people become so famous that they are identifiable to the mainstream public by a single name. The vast majority of people in the Western world would know exactly who Sinatra, Ali or Hitler were, but these are all surnames and the Recognisable-by-a-single-name Club becomes much more exclusive when only first names are permitted. Elvis can certainly claim membership, but so can another white-jumpsuited icon: Evel.
Perhaps it is because both names are unusual, although Elvis is genuine while Evel is merely a nickname-cum-stage name; or it may be that both men were the single-handed creators of the phenomenon they respectively gave rise to. Whatever the case, Evel could rightly lay claim to being one of the few celebrities of the late twentieth century who was recognisable by his first name without any need for further expansion or explanation. Yet how he came to have one of the most recognised stage names in showbiz is not quite so simple, and it is quite possible that the origins of it were hazy even to the man himself, given, as he was, to repeating tales with such frequency that, true or false, he certainly seemed to believe in them himself.
The most commonly repeated anecdote of how Bobby Knievel became Evel Knievel is the jail-cell theory, which holds that Bobby was being held in a Butte police cell overnight along with a man called William Knoffel. According to the legend, a police officer quipped that he had better double the guard because he was housing both ‘Awful’ Knoffel and ‘Evil’ Knievel on the same night. Contemporary newspaper reports prove that a William Knoffel did exist, and Butte police officer Morris Mulchahy has actually testified to this version of events in the documentary Evel Knievel: The Last of the Gladiators.
The problem with this theory is that Evel himself later claimed he was nicknamed ‘Evil’ at a much younger age. In Evel Ways: The Attitude of Evel Knievel, he
Having secured a fleet of British-built Norton scramblers from the Berliner Motor Corporation (the official distributors of Norton motorcycles in the US), the self-styled daredevils planned and rehearsed their act until they felt they were ready to make their debut in front of a live audience. The only thing the team lacked was a name. It was made clear from the start that Knievel was to be the main attraction; after all, it was his show and he was the only member who had any experience of jumping in front of an audience. But ‘Bobby Knievel and his Motorcycle Daredevils’ just didn’t have any ring of glamour to it, and since the group was billing itself as being ‘from Hollywood’, a touch of showbiz glitz was essential. In solving the problem, Bobby created one of the best stage names of the twentieth century and one that would eventually become known throughout the world. With only a slight alteration to the spelling, he decided to use his old nickname: from now on he would be Evel Knievel.
3
What’s in a Name?
‘Evel Knievel was a character I created. He was even hard for me to live with sometimes. He wouldn’t do anything I told him, the dumb son-of-a-bitch.’
Very few people become so famous that they are identifiable to the mainstream public by a single name. The vast majority of people in the Western world would know exactly who Sinatra, Ali or Hitler were, but these are all surnames and the Recognisable-by-a-single-name Club becomes much more exclusive when only first names are permitted. Elvis can certainly claim membership, but so can another white-jumpsuited icon: Evel.
Perhaps it is because both names are unusual, although Elvis is genuine while Evel is merely a nickname-cum-stage name; or it may be that both men were the single-handed creators of the phenomenon they respectively gave rise to. Whatever the case, Evel could rightly lay claim to being one of the few celebrities of the late twentieth century who was recognisable by his first name without any need for further expansion or explanation. Yet how he came to have one of the most recognised stage names in showbiz is not quite so simple, and it is quite possible that the origins of it were hazy even to the man himself, given, as he was, to repeating tales with such frequency that, true or false, he certainly seemed to believe in them himself.
The most commonly repeated anecdote of how Bobby Knievel became Evel Knievel is the jail-cell theory, which holds that Bobby was being held in a Butte police cell overnight along with a man called William Knoffel. According to the legend, a police officer quipped that he had better double the guard because he was housing both ‘Awful’ Knoffel and ‘Evil’ Knievel on the same night. Contemporary newspaper reports prove that a William Knoffel did exist, and Butte police officer Morris Mulchahy has actually testified to this version of events in the documentary Evel Knievel: The Last of the Gladiators.
The problem with this theory is that Evel himself later claimed he was nicknamed ‘Evil’ at a much younger age. In Evel Ways: The Attitude of Evel Knievel, he
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