The Real Story Behind The Hells Angels Going After Evel Knievel

It’s January 23, 1970, and the atmosphere inside the Bay Area’s Cow Palace venue is extremely tense. The hotshot daredevil Evel Knievel is about to make a massive, life-threatening jump on his motorcycle, but that’s not the only source of anxiety tonight. In the crowd are some Hells Angels who despise Knievel and would love nothing more than to see him get hurt. The night is teetering on a knife-edge as a drunken announcer takes to the microphone to address the crowd. What this person says next sends the Hells Angels into a fury, and absolute pandemonium ensues. Yep, the wheels are in motion now. And this night is doomed to be remembered for all the wrong reasons.

Fierce Feud

Well before the events of this fateful night, the Hells Angels and Knievel had developed a fierce hatred of one another. The stuntman used to characterize the gang as motorcycling’s “dark side,” which obviously didn’t sit too well with them. So, when they eventually met one another it was always going to be hostile.

Cow Palace Incident

Yet the chaos on that night in 1970 was far more intense than you might have expected. Certainly, the public had increasingly come to associate the Hells Angels with acts of violence around this time. But if the drunken announcer had just kept his mouth shut, then things inside Cow Palace may have worked out differently.

A Violent Turn

Alas, that’s not what happened. The announcer reportedly grabbed the mic and mouthed off – seemingly unaware of the tension bubbling away throughout the venue. And these words did not go down well! Accounts of what exactly happened next get a little hazy from this point on, but we can say for sure that things took a violent turn.

Landing The Stunt

How exactly things turned so nasty isn’t clear. Some people say the Hells Angels started it, while others claim that Knievel himself was responsible. What we do know is that the stuntman actually completed his huge jump without injuring himself. Though it was only after that dangerous moment that things really went south.

One Hell Of A Rumble

While accounts differ, there’s one thing that everyone agrees on: things spiralled out of control. It was a night that would stick with everyone who was there – including Knievel himself. Two decades after it occurred, in fact, someone brought up the Bay Area in conversation with him. According to The Six Fifty website, Knievel smiled and said, “We had one hell of a rumble up there in that Cow Palace once.”

The Elvis Of Stuntmen

The infamous daredevil certainly had a special knack for placing himself in dangerous situations. Originally from Butte, Montana, Robert Craig Knievel would grow up to become the world’s most famous stunt performer. And why not? A man dressed like Elvis who partakes in death-defying exploits tends to stick in people’s minds!

Breakthrough Move

In his younger days, Knievel had been trying to make it as a pro motorcycle racer. But The Six Fifty notes that another path presented itself to him when he tried to garner some attention by jumping his bike over a box of snakes. He failed – smashing into the container and unleashing the reptiles. Nevertheless, the disastrous move was undoubtedly entertaining.

Not So Smooth

Knievel had inadvertently become a stuntman – thanks largely to both his nerve and ineptness. The talent started doing bigger and bolder stunts, but he would often fail to land properly. Really, that was part of his charm. You really had no idea if Knievel was going to make it or not!

Caesars Palace Stunt

Though did you know that it was actually a disastrous stunt that catapulted Knievel into stardom? Yes, outside of Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace Hotel, the daredevil tried to make a jump of more than 140 feet in length. Yet he failed spectacularly and ended up with multiple fractures throughout his body. It was all captured on camera, and the grizzly footage proved to be a source of immense fascination with audiences.

Drawing In The Crowd

This failed stunt in Vegas provided Knievel with a degree of notoriety and fame. So, his arrival to the Bay Area in January 1970 ended up attracting quite the crowd. According to The Six Fifty, around 10,000 people showed up to the Cow Palace to watch him perform. 

Bringing Down The Sport

But Knievel wasn’t the only one cultivating his infamous reputation during this time. The Hells Angels were making headlines, too. People all over America had come to perceive this motorcycle gang as a bunch of criminals. And Knievel specifically had been incensed by them. In his opinion, the gang was ruining the reputation of motorcyclists.

Harsh Words

The 2016 BBC documentary Being Evel Knievel recorded some of the stuntman’s brutal words about the Hells Angels that he made at the time. The motorcyclist certainly didn’t mince his words, either. Knievel said, “These guys are dogs. They belong in penitentiaries. They’re murderers, thieves, they’re drug dealers.”

Troubled History

The Hells Angels are, indeed, a notorious group with a history stretching back decades to post-war America. The gang was founded in California in 1948, which was a time when motorbikes were particularly cheap. Many veterans also yearned for adventure following the relative calm which emerged after the global conflict, and the group offered just that.

Growing The Gang

Over time, the Hells Angels expanded their membership and attracted people throughout the United States and even the wider world. The group was famous with folk seemingly fascinated by the gang’s perceived status as unruly outlaws. The image of a Hells Angel riding his Harley-Davidson had somehow become an unexpected icon of popular culture.

Heavy In Crime

Still, there was a very real criminal element to the Hells Angels. While the group did undertake in charitable works, many of its members were arrested over the years for a range of crimes. These offenses were often related to narcotics, but in extreme cases they revolved around homicide and other violent crimes.

Plot Against Jagger

There have even been allegations that the Hells Angels once planned to murder the Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. This was apparently down to him speaking out against the gang in the wake of the Altamont Speedway disaster of December 1969. The Hells Angels had been hired to provide security for the gig, but it ended up becoming a deadly riot.

Tense Audience

The tragic event tarnished the Hells Angels’ reputation more than ever before. This happened just a month before Evel Knievel was set to perform at the Cow Palace. So, when members of the group showed up to watch the stuntman, it made things pretty tense.

Deadly Performance

The sheer audacity of Knievel’s planned stunt should have been the only terrifying thing playing on people’s minds that night, though. After all, it was going to involve the daredevil rocketing up an absurdly big ramp on his motorcycle. From there, he would launch into the air and fly over 11 vehicles lined up beneath him.

Shabby Set Up

And the ramp itself wasn’t exactly the type of structure that would’ve put the audience at ease. It looked pretty shabby – not something that most people would feel safe driving a motorcycle across. But Evel Knievel wasn’t fazed by it, and that’s exactly why thousands of spectators had come to see him.

Added Risk

The jump was huge, but it was definitely within Knievel’s capabilities. Though the real danger came from the fact that it was going to take place indoors. The vehicles that had been lined up were also all different sizes. Basically, the stuntman wasn’t making things any easier for himself!

Stirring Up Trouble

And things soon went from bad to worse. Before the jump took place, a number of Hells Angels announced their presence with some unruly behavior. Now the night had taken on an entirely different sort of edge – especially in light of how much Knievel and the bike gang hated each other.

Setting Himself Apart

Evel author Leigh Montville has written of the stuntman’s fraught relationship with the Hells Angels. He remarked, “[They] had never had good thoughts about each other. Knievel always took great pains to say he dressed in white leather, not black, because he did not want to be associated with the Angels and gangs and the dark side of motorcycling. The Angels always took great umbrage at those remarks.”

Drunk Announcer

The atmosphere must have been palpable, then, when it became clear that there were Hells Angels inside the Cow Palace that night. Yet maybe things would’ve worked out okay had it not have been for the announcer. According to The Six Fifty, the man was drunk, and he made the situation a million times worse than it needed to be.

Unexpected Turn

Gene Sullivan was one person who witnessed that fateful night unfold with his own eyes. He was a professional bodyguard and had gone to the Cow Palace with his reporter father to watch the daredevil perform his big jump. But things probably didn’t play out in the way he’d initially imagined they would.

Inciting The Angels

In 2015 Sullivan spoke to Vice about what happened. He said, “The announcer was half-in-the-bag that night and said, ‘If Evel Knievel makes this jump, he’ll set the Hells Angels back 100 years... Obviously, they were in the crowd, and that’s not the right thing to say.” Indeed, it wasn’t.

Mixed Accounts

From that point on, events began to heat up. There’s no definitive account of what happened, with some stories differing from others. There are those who say something was thrown at Knievel – perhaps a bottle or even a wrench. Others say that nothing was thrown, but that the stuntman was verbally insulted by the Hells Angels.

Both To Blame

Rick Priolo was working in security at the Cow Palace that night and has suggested that both sides were to blame. He told The Six Fifty, “From where I was standing, I could see the Hells Angels screaming at him and calling him all kinds of names... I do remember him flipping them off as he drove by one time...”

Landing The Jump

Regardless of the finer details, it seems safe to say that the atmosphere had turned sour. But that didn’t faze Knievel, who simply revved his engine and rocketed up the ramp. Despite everything, he managed to land his jump without incident. Knievel then disappeared from sight – leaving the crowd to go wild.

Drive By Punch

The night could have ended right there, but Knievel unfortunately wasn’t finished. According to The Six Fifty, he re-emerged back into the arena following his triumph, and then things spiralled out of control. Knievel rode over to the Hells Angels in the crowd and punched one of them. Journalist Joel Selvin told the website, “He didn’t even get off his bike. He just pounded the guy from the side of the arena.”

Motivated Move

Knievel has his own version of what happened, as he recounted in that interview from the BBC documentary. According to him, he was provoked. The star claimed, “One of the Hells Angels threw a tire iron at me and a piece of steel of some kind... I always wanted to punch one of them anyway, so I revved my motorcycle up and I threw it into a slide and I knocked this guy...”

Defending Their Own

The thing is, though, the Hells Angels really don’t like it when one of their own is attacked. And if one member is caught up in a conflict, everyone else is obliged to step in and help them out. So, you can imagine how quickly things got out of hand after Knievel hit one of the members.

Rescued By The Crowd

Security operative Priolo remembers this moment of chaos well. He told The Six Fifty, “[The Hells Angels] were trying to kick [Knievel] in the head, so I got over him and started swinging this tiny baton I had to try to keep them off of him. What really saved him was that the people in the crowd came to his rescue.”

Pure Pandemonium

Knievel was in some bother, but it seems his fans were willing to help him out. Many of them, in fact, swarmed on the Hells Angels and a huge clash erupted. Montville told The Six Fifty, “A donnybrook developed, something out of a Wild West Saloon.” The night had clearly descended into pure pandemonium.

Mob Takeover

Things got really dangerous, then, as some of the fighters started to brandish big planks of wood. It was a horrendous scene, but one that saw fans gain the upper hand. Witness Jim Svedise told the aforementioned website, “It was like watching a movie... The Hells Angels didn’t stand a chance in hell.”

150 Against 12

In a report the next day, the San Mateo Times newspaper claimed that over 150 people had assembled to fight the Hells Angels, who numbered only 12. Naturally, the bikers ended the night in a pretty bad condition. Two of them were apparently even sent to hospital following the terrible brawl.

Tanking Their Reputation

News of this feud quickly spread, which only added to people’s negative opinion of the Hells Angels. The disaster at Altamont had occurred only a month before, so this really added fuel to the fire. One witness told the San Mateo Times, “The Angels ruined the scene at Altamont and they ruined things again tonight. They’re a bunch of phonies.”

Safely Escaped

According to Gene Sullivan, Knievel had been removed from the fight before things really turned ugly. But the stuntman was later still worried about the gang, so he hired Sullivan to act as his bodyguard. Sullivan told Vice, “After the Hells Angels deal, [Knievel] was concerned that they would go after him. But we never had any encounters with them after that.”

Returning To Cow Palace

Knievel had been lucky to escape that night in the Cow Palace without serious injury. But, of course, he was never daunted by such concerns. That’s perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Knievel returned to the venue two years later for another stunt. This time, no fights broke out – though he failed to make his landing.

Lasting Legacy

Witness Kevin James Kenny recalled to The Six Fifty, “[Knievel] must have broke half the bones in his body.” It had been a terrible, nasty landing, but that didn’t exactly matter to his image. That was part of the peculiar appeal of Evel Knievel – a stuntman who very well might fail. So, despite both his disastrous performances at the Cow Palace, he nonetheless became a sensation throughout the ’70s. And his reputation for bravery and madness still lives on today.