Mr Hickey describes himself as a Knievel fan, and when he was looking for a new idea for a show he discovered that there was a new museum exhibition in the USA about Evel Knievel, so he contacted Kelly Knievel, Evel’s eldest son.
The tour has travelled from Newcastle in the UK, to London and on to Italy, and after Dublin it will return to the UK, followed by France, Spain, Germany and Italy again.
“The feedback has been really fantastic. It is quite surprising the number of fans who remember all of the original jumps and all the minor details - it’s fascinating,” said Hickey.
With respect to Evel’s old bikes, Mr Hickey said: “He used a Harley 750. There was never a bike less suitable to do the job that he was using it for, but it does show what a courageous guy he was,” said Mr Hickey.
I had the opportunity to speak to Evel’s eldest son Kelly, and he told me about his father, life in the Knievel household growing up, and how the exhibition came to be.
The show got started a couple of years ago when the Harley Davidson Motorbike Museum contacted Kelly with respect to putting on an exhibition for the museum opening in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“For their first exhibition they [Harley Davidson] decided they wanted to do something really special … so they came to me and they proposed the ‘True Evel: The Amazing Story of Evel Knievel’ to be the first exhibit at the new Harley-Davidson museum.”
Kelly said that the organisers came to Las Vegas and Montana to get the exhibit items together. “They collected all of my Dad’s things - I own all of my Dad’s memorabilia,” said Kelly. “The museum helped restore some of the pieces and also did some research on some of the items, and all the work culminated in the exhibition that ran last summer at the museum.
“It was so successful and done so professionally and was so well received,” said Kelly. Around the same time, a UK promoter contacted Kelly and was interested in taking the exhibition to Europe.
“They had come over to Milwaukee and they had seen the exhibition; they wanted to take the exhibition throughout Europe, and I thought it was a really great idea - for people who never had a chance before to see all my Dad’s memorabilia pieces.”
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Kelly explains that many fans have never seen any of these pieces before, especially in Europe.
Kelly said he has been in the UK and Ireland a few times as well as in other parts of Europe, and he has been taken aback at how popular his father was - he did not expect him to be so popular outside of the United States.
“I guess I just didn’t realise the reputation of my dad over in Europe … it makes me really proud to see what a hero he is to people over there, he represents the American wild west, a rags to riches story … a courageous person, and that makes our family proud,” said Kelly.
Kelly and the family were born and raised in a small town in Montana called Butte. “My Dad’s grandparents on his mother’s side came straight from Ireland and they worked in the mines in Montana in the 1920s,” explained Kelly.
“Their last name was Keough, so my Dad is half Irish. That’s why he has a real streak of independence about him, and as a father (when I was) growing up, he was Evel Knievel at the breakfast table,” said Kelly.
“He was no different in his real life than he was at home, and he just had a large appetite for life and part of that appetite was this person called Evel Knievel ... and that was who he was.”
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The highs and lows
“He was a human being like everyone else … when he was becoming Evel Knievel, he didn’t have any ad agencies or handlers or marketing people or managers or anything like that - it was just him,” explained Kelly.
The Knievel family weren’t well off when Kelly was growing up. He said his dad had to work hard to look after them. “His first jump was in 1966, and by 1974 he was one of the most famous people in the world … for a human being to be able to achieve that, you know a human being is going to make mistakes, they are going to have ups and downs along the way.”
Kelly believes that one of the endearing characteristics of his father was the fact that he did have some downs, but that he did not let them keep him down. Kelly believes that his dad wasn’t concerned with the lows: he was concerned with brushing himself off and getting back on his bike, which also represented his attitude to life, and business too.
“The most important thing is, ‘I’m going to get back on my feet: I’ve got the character and determination and the personality to better myself, and I’m going to be successful again’, and I think that’s the main message that kids and family are going to get from the exhibition,” said Kelly.
“They are going to see a lot about the man’s personality. They will understand that this guy was more than just a motorcycle jumper in a red, white and blue cape. He was a remarkable person that was able, through the sheer force of his personality and hard work, to make something of himself … I think that’s a really important message for people to understand and teach their kids.”
