Evel Never Dies

Album: Stoners Rule (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is a tribute to Evel Knievel, the famous daredevil who captivated crowds in the '60s and '70s with his motorcycle jumps. He died in 2007 at 69, but as this song proves, his memory lives on.
  • Stöner is comprised of Nick Oliveri and Brant Bjork, founding members of the band Kyuss. Oliveri later joined another Kyuss founder, Josh Homme, in Queens Of The Stone Age.

    They put Stöner together after the pandemic took hold in 2021. They did some jamming via livestream and started writing songs together, taking care not to overcomplicate.

    "We wanted to stay really focused on keeping it simple, our version of the Ramones," Oliveri said in a Songfacts interview. "Not Ramones style, but the idea of, '1-2-3-4! Let's get it on and let's play.' So verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, out kind of thing."

    "He had some parts on most of the songs, and I came in with an old tune I had that we jammed when we were kids," he added. "This riff I had, we ended up calling it 'Evel Never Dies' – the Evel Knievel song. I didn't know what to do with the song because I always thought it was kind of silly, but Brant goes, 'I like it! It's good.' So it worked. And that's how we did Stöners Rule – we threw it together in a short period of time, and Brant had most of the ideas."
  • Considering his iconic status, it's surprising Evel Knievel isn't mentioned in more songs. In the 2010s, he started showing up in songs by rappers who weren't alive when he was performing his famous stunts. A few mentions we found:

    "Magic" by B.o.B ("I break all the rules like Evel Knievel")

    "Living Better Now" by Jamie Foxx ("Pull up in Pakistan like I'm Evel Knievel")

    "Runaway" by J. Cole ("Seen evil that not even Knievel know"

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