By Eric Johnson

Inexplicably, Americans have always been held spellbound by daredevils…high wire walkers, men going over Niagara Falls in barrels, and Robert Craig “Evel” Knievel jumping portly motorcycles over double-decker busses, shark tanks and AMC Pacers.  Then there is Brandon and Preston Landers and their Monster Energy-backed Ball of Steel stunt show. Just back from Donington Park, England and performing their high jinks magic before the masses at the fabled three-day, early summer hard rock music festival known as The Download Festival, the two brothers — along with fellow team members Daniel Gonzales, Beau Gonzales and Malachi Walker — are about to “barnstorm” America as part of the 2008 Vans Warped Tour. Their role in this rock and roll circus? Whipping motorcycles around inside a 14-foot in diameter, 5,500-pound ball of steel. Makes your head want to spin, huh?

 Johnny, being the father of the Landers brothers as well as the mastermind behind the “Ball of Steel” operation, can you tell us how it all came to life?

 We call it the Ball Stunt show and that stands for Ball of Steel Stunts. It all started off with racing. I had all my kids roadracing when they were five years old.  One year we went to Daytona to race and while we there, we saw a motorcycle steel globe. A Mexican family was riding motorcycles in it and it was a real funky little show, but the boys were really mesmerized by the thing. They were well on their way to being professional roadracers — just like their older brother [Ryan] — but saw this ball and it really turned them on; they wanted to watch every show there was. It was funny and right from there they started bugging me immediately about building one of these things. So I knew some people at Daytona for years that hired acts like that so I said to them, “Hey, how would you like to have two real little guys in a ball with a good show?” They said, “Are you talking about your boys? If so, yeah, we’ll take them instantly.”

 So then what did you do?

 I got back and I started working on a steel ball without them knowing it. I actually built it as a joke. I was going to put it in the backyard and watch everybody crash, but that’s how it got started. Once they saw it, they actually just lived in the thing everyday after school. They just wanted to ride in the ball. So their first paid show was exactly one year later at Daytona Bike Week.

Just how did you go about building a steel ball for your two boys to ride motorcycles in?

 I built it really differently. You know, we’re not circus people. Circus balls are different. They are smaller and they are not fabricated professionally. I built a 14-footer. The way it’s made, it’s still the only one like it in the world. Nobody has made one like it yet. It comes in four pieces: two bottom halves and two top halves and you put them together. So once they got going, they were the youngest ones in the Guinness Book of World Records to ever ride in a ball of steel and we hold a speed record in a 14-foot globe at 51 miles per hour. Like I said before, we’re not circus people, we’re motorcycle people, so we treated all of this with motorcycles and not a circus act. We were into extreme sports and that’s what we did, and as the show grew and went along, we just kept adding things.

 How old were your boys when this show got off the ground?

Preston was nine and Brandon was 10. When we went to Daytona for the first time, they could rip in the ball even then. They were just wide open and it was an amazing thing.

 I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume riding two motorcycles together in a steel ball at 50 miles per hour took a little bit of practice…

 They both were very proficient by themselves but the time came when it was time to put them in together. I got in the ball with them and showed them how to time each other, you know? It took quite a while because you have to get everything: nausea, the G forces, learning how to vert, learning how to stop — there are just so many factors that are involved in going round and round. I started with Preston on my right and Brandon on my left and it’s still that way today. I had to teach them how to count it all off, “One! Two! Three!”

 And then you guys started touring…

Yes. That’s where you see what you see today. We choreographed the stuff and put the show together and it just kept growing and growing with pyrotechnics and fog machines and then we added freestyle. It’s grown so much over the years. I never thought it would get to the point that it has.

 How did you meet Monster Energy? The Ball of Steel show was one of the very first properties Monster Energy decided to sponsor…

We had done the Warped Tour in 1999 and they wanted us to come back. A person from the Warped Tour said this guy named Kurt Baush from Monster wanted to talk to us about sponsoring us for the Warped Tour and then I met Robert Scott from Monster. So they talked to us and said, “Hey, we want you guys to represent us through the Warped Tour and we’re going to pay you $500 a month.” So I talked to the boys about it and I said, “This could be good for you guys. I know it’s not a whole lot now, but it could be great.” Five hundred dollars to them was like, “We’re hitting the big time!” I mean, they were still little boys at the time. So the Monster people were just so supportive of us and then the kids at the Warped Tour just went crazy over the drink. We’d be busting the show off and rocking the house and I would just run out there and pour Monster down them kid’s necks. I’d just pour it over the fence. They loved it! We all had a ball with it. When we first met Monster, it was all so new that I thought it was going to be a three-month situation and then they’d drop us and that would be it, but that wasn’t the case. Monster became a phenomenon and we were just lucky enough to be with them at the start.

 Less than two weeks ago, your boys and the Ball of Steel tour went to England for the Download festival. How did that go?

 They said The Download was book wild! They said it was crazy! It was the biggest single show in our history. Sunday there were upwards of 20,000 people around the fence. It was culture shock to them, but they loved it. Preston said it was just completely wild. They had a hell of a time, bro. They just had a big time.

 Monster Energy had to be happy…

They really were. Monster is our family. We owe everything to them. All the growth, all the things they’ve done for us, all the things they’ve bought those boys has just been unreal, but we’ve also showed our loyalty to them. You have to have loyalty. If you don’t have loyalty, you’re not much of a man. In all honesty, Monster has been so good to us… Joe Parsons, Mark Hall, and Sam Pontrelli… When a company like that calls you family, it really makes you feel good.