Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  “Oi!” was a term created by the press, specifically journalist Garry Bushell. In some ways, Cockney Rejects may have been the first Oi! band. They had so many singalongs: “Running down the back streets, Oi! Oi! Oi!” All their songs were street-type hooligan anthems, such as “Fighting in the Street” or “Sitting in a Cell with You.” But they were also quite funny, like “Where the Hell is Babylon?” They even covered Motörhead.

  Roi Pearce of the Last Resort and Micky Fitz of the Business both told me that Cockney Rejects was the band that made them start their bands. They said if Stinky Turner could do it, they could too; he was just a fucking kid! Cockney Rejects was a great fucking band. And just for the record, they were not right-wing or racist. In fact, they mockingly referred to the British Movement as the “German Movement.” Turner’s autobiography, Cockney Reject, describes an incident where the bandmembers and their supporters had a massive fight against British Movement members at one of the Rejects’ early concerts.

  So when “White Power” came out, that changed everything. Bands like the Last Resort, another one of my favorites from that era, started coming out with extremely violent, Skinhead-type lyrics about fighting. The Rejects had football hooligan-type lyrics, but now bands were singing songs about straight-up Skinhead violence.

  Oi! music caught on and the Skinhead scene started to grow, and with it, a lot of racist Skinhead music. Many of the bands really sucked—it became less and less about the music, and more and more about the imagery, the violence, the politics and the ignorance. The media loved it and fed into it, and me, being a street kid always into fighting and huffin’ glue and drinkin’, I could relate to the street-fighting aspects, and I loved it.

  The change in the music influenced my lyrics in a sense. But the fact is, I wrote about my life: hard times, street justice, survival on the streets, show no mercy, etc. But over time it became a fashion statement on the NYHC scene. People that weren’t even hard would try to act tough and sing about Skinhead fighting. Meanwhile, they weren’t living it. They never had a real fight or had to steal food; they had never lived the life I was living.

  In 1982 I returned to New York from the West Coast. When I left, there were hardly any Skinheads at all, maybe a dozen—just a few friends of mine. But when I returned, it was as if Skinheads had taken over; there were tons of new kids I didn’t know hanging out. I called them textbook skins ’cause they were all good at dressing the part but they had no heart. They were full-on Skinheads with bomber jackets starting trouble and raising hell on Avenue A and St. Marks Place. But when shit would go down with the locals, most of them would either run away or get their asses kicked. They’d go back to wherever they came from until the next weekend, and then it would all start again.

  CRO-MAGS, BY JOSEPH HENDERSON

  The Bad Brains did two back-to-back shows at CBs for Christmas that year. Shit was already getting stupid; motherfuckers were practically knocking the band off the stage, even during the Reggae songs. Motherfuckin’ new jacks were more interested in being onstage with their friends than they were in the music. Some total “Hey, look at us” Romper-Room shit. I mean sure, looking back, those days were great compared to now, but to me that was the beginning of the downhill slide; everyone was trying too hard to be “hard.”

  Around that time, I went to Canada, “The Great White North.” I met this punk rock chick Manon; she and a girlfriend Lucy had hitchhiked to New York, and were checking out the scene. I was like 15 and she was 18. We started going out. I lived with her for a while at different squats, and wound up hitchhiking to Canada with her one day on a whim.

  I remember walking down the highway in the snow getting rides from truck drivers, and when we got to the Canadian border, they denied me entry. And they were not letting her back into the States either. They told her she had to return to Canada, on the Canadian side of the border where I was getting rejected. On that little stretch of highway between the two borders, there’s probably about a few hundred feet between the two checkpoints. That’s where vehicles go from the American checkpoint side to the Canadian checkpoint side. So, as I was hugging her goodbye and she was crying, I told her real quietly, “Just start going toward Montréal. When you get to the first truck stop on the way there, wait for me, I’ll meet you there.” So I took my bags, and started walking back toward the American side of the checkpoint. And as I walked, I sort of veered slightly toward the edge of the highway, where the fences are. But I was doing it real casually, and everybody was so preoccupied, they weren’t really paying attention.

  Right as an 18-wheeler passed me, I threw my bag and myself over the fence: just up the side of the fence and over, comman-do-style. I grabbed my bag, got real low, and started running—straight into the woods, parallel to where I was, to get distance between me and the checkpoint. For some reason, I had it in my head that if I stayed real low to the ground, if they had radar, then they wouldn’t pick me up. I ran as fast as I could, probably a good half a mile deep into the woods, took a left, which was toward Canada, and kept running. I hustled through a stream, and ran until I was very confident that I was deep into Canada, and that I was nowhere near the border. Then I banged another left, to get back to where I figured the highway was, because that was the direction I came from. I got to a little fence, climbed over, and sure enough, there was the highway a little ways down. I started walking down the highway, found a sign that said “Montréal,” walked in that direction, and saw a truck stop not too far up ahead. I went in, and she was sitting there reading a paper. She looked up, and there I was in Canada.

  When we first got there, we stayed at these squats that were really rehearsal studios, but people used to rent the studios and live in them. They were called the Locales. This was in Québec, not too far from St. Catherine.

  HARLEY, BY KAREN O’SULLIVAN

  I met a guy called Yob, a Skinhead who was best friends with a guy that Manon used to go out with called Orbit, as well as this fucked-up kickboxer Bruno. I started hanging out with those guys, and they turned out to be extremely psychotic, violent Skinheads. People whose idea of “going out” would be “Let’s go out and fuck people up.” It wasn’t “Let’s go out and have a few drinks,” it was “Let’s go out and hospitalize people and steal shit.” There I was, 15 years old, and I was hanging out with violent cats in their early 20s.

  We wound up moving in with those guys. It was a very fucked-up situation. On one hand, those guys were fucked-up and we knew it, but at the same time, we looked up to some of those cats because they were a bit older, and were into the same music as we were. They were covered in crazy tattoos on their arms, heads, and necks. They were hardasses and they fought a lot. But there was also a really sadistic side to them that I wasn’t down with. Eventually it started to come out in me too, as if I was being pulled into it. I think it was egged on by them, and by my upbringing, but I ain’t blaming no one else.

  I eventually learned what cowards they were. They would turn on anybody, even each other. Their message to me was: “The strong survive, the weak do not.” They were into all kinds of satanic shit, The Satanic Bible, Nazi shit, and crazy amounts of porn.

  They were some crazy fucks, but we did have a lot of fun. These guys more or less indoctrinated me into the world of A Clockwork Orange-style violence, as if it was an integral part of Skinhead culture. Up until that point, Skinheads and Oi! music were just extensions of punk rock; in my mind, Skinheads were just the harder punk rockers with a different look. But these dudes took it to another level.

  In the apartment where we lived, they’d take on a tenant, usually a friend or someone off the scene, and after stealing their rent money, they’d kick the piss out of them and throw them out. Seriously violently boot-stomp the shit out of them. You don’t typically do that to friends! It’s just not normal. But that was the rule of that house. That was normal.

  In Montréal, there were two Skinhead gangs. You had your French-Canadian Skinheads, I think they were the ND
G Skins; and then you had all your English-type Skinheads who were not down with the French. The guys I hung out with were the English-speaking dudes, who would scrap with the French ones. But because Yob and Orbit were such ill motherfuckers, pretty much everyone hated and feared them. These guys would take tacks off golf shoes, that are basically like nails, and put them in the lace holes of their boots, down in the bottom few lace holes so they’d have anywhere from four to six little spikes coming out of their steel-toed boots. So picture: you’re getting kicked full-force with a steel-toed boot with fuckin’ spikes coming out of the lace holes.

  Some of the worst things I truly regret as far as beatings I have given to people happened around that time. We were taking a lot of acid and a lot of mescaline. It really was like A Clockwork Orange, when they’d sit around doing psychedelics all night at the Korova Milk Bar, and then they’d go out and fight. That was more or less the life we were living.

  The worst number of beatings I gave out in one night was in New York, not long after that Canada trip: I put 19 people in an ICU in one evening. It’s weird, I know, because I talk about these things so casually, but it’s so distant to me at this point, it’s like another time, another place. It’s so fucked up, I can’t believe it was me. I do have a lot of regrets about the early part of my life. But those guys were fuckin’ savages. All those dudes did was work out all day, stretch, spar, eat acid, and prepare for the fights and beatings that would take place later in the evening.

  We’d practice kicks. We used to love grabbing people by their hoods or jackets or hair and kick them in the face, so we always practiced those kicks; it was like our signature move. One time, Yob, Orbit, and Bruno started a fight on the street, and this one dude started fucking them all up. They picked a fight with the wrong guy. He was with his girlfriend; it was just extra wrong. I didn’t even know it was coming. This guy basically turned around and picked Bruno up off the ground, slammed him into the concrete, and started beating the shit out of him. Yob and Orbit grabbed the guy, tried to hit him, and he just reached over his shoulders and slammed them to the ground, too. This was a really big man; I don’t know what these dudes were thinking. One of them had a little club that rolled out of his pocket. I was watching two of them get pounded, and the other one was going, “Harley, give me the club!” Because they were supposed to be my friends, I grabbed the club and I cracked the guy a bunch of times. My adrenaline was pumping.

  I feel really fuckin’ horrible when I think back on it, I always have. He rolled off of them and yelled to his woman, “Go get my brother!” So these guys took off running down the block like the cowards that they were, laughing the whole time, going “all right Harley, did you guys see him, good job.” And me being a kid tripping my face off with nowhere else to go, ran right along with them. What the fuck was I supposed to do? It was a bad scene.

  Another time, we were riding the bus, going to a club. Yob’s girlfriend liked some dude’s earring, a dagger-type earring, and the guy was with his girlfriend. They were rock ’n’ roll or new wave types. So when they got off the bus, we got off the bus. Yob and Orbit walked up to the dude, and high-kicked him across his face. It turned into an assault. That dude got stomped out over a fuckin’ earring, while his girlfriend stood there in shock.

  Afterwards, we all walked away laughing. But that was nothing; it was common to say, “Whoever knocks somebody out first tonight gets a six-pack!” I remember one time they said that shit in a cab, and Bruno said, “Pull over,” got out, punched some old dude in the face, and got back in the cab. That was really where I got “desensitized.” And it’s where I saw white boys who were as ill as the dust-smokin’, glue-huffin’ Puerto Ricans from my block on the LES; the same dudes I had witnessed assault my aunt and other women, shoot at each other, and beat people with golf clubs. And all of a sudden, I saw a bunch of motherfuckers who were acting like that, but more sadistic. The only difference is that they were into the same type of music I was into, they were white boys, had their heads shaved, and looked like me and all my friends. But they were all completely psycho.

  I don’t know if anyone’s ever heard of a Satanic Nazi Skinhead, or if there even is such a term, but that’s what these dudes were! Orbit had a big-ass pentagram tattooed on his chest, Yob had a giant swastika on his forearm, a big spider web running down his neck, a skull with a knife through it on the top of his head; his head and eyebrows were shaved. His bedroom was painted black with a big red pentagram painted over his bed, and there were pictures of Hitler everywhere. But as insane as they looked, they looked cool in a crazy way—and if you were a Hardcore kid and you didn’t know what kind of sick fucks they were, you might be impressed. They were very fashion-conscious, always had their boots super shiny, the right Skinhead jacket, pants and shirt, the whole nine. But if you got to know them, you’d know they were just dangerous, psychotic fucks.

  Like I said, I lived in this apartment with them. I don’t remember if there were neighbors upstairs, but it was like a two-family type house. I mean, shit, I don’t know how we got away with half the shit we did there. When you think of Canada, you think of a nice place with nice people, but these were some violent, crazy fucks! We’d be getting into fights in these nice, quiet neighborhoods. It’s really got to make you wonder why we never got caught. But then again, there weren’t cops anywhere. If you called the cops, it took them a half-hour to get there. Those dudes used to kill stray cats and dogs, and they’d kill rats in the alleys with hockey sticks and play “rat hockey.”

  I remember the first time I saw them kick a friend of theirs out of the apartment. It was when this guy Griffin and his girlfriend moved in. This was a guy they knew for years. It was then I realized these guys had no fuckin’ remorse. They moved him in, collected the rent, and waited ’til he got all settled. Then one night, we were all high on acid, and they just stood up and said, “He’s got to go!” I guess they’d been planning it but I didn’t know anything. They were like, “Harley, go knock on his door.” I went and knocked, and they were standing on either side of the door, and Griffin was like, “What’s up guys?” And I’ll never forget it, ’cause there was this big Skinhead dude with a griffin tattooed on his neck, standing there in leather underwear! And his girlfriend was lying naked in bed with the blanket pulled up to her neck, looking a little concerned. They started beating his ass mercilessly.

  Now mind you, we used to wear rings that had spikes in them, like little half-inch nail-type things that you’d barely notice. A jeweler friend of theirs used to custom-make them for us and they would rip someone’s face as soon as you punched them. So that Griffin literally got the shit beat out of him in front of his girl. They didn’t do anything to her. They told her, “Get dressed, we want you both out of here right now!” She got dressed while her boyfriend was getting fucked up, and they kicked them out. They told him to take what he could carry and leave, “but,” they said, “not your Doc Martens—they’re staying here!” That was the thing back then, stealing people’s boots.

  At one point, Yob and Orbit wanted to start a band with me. I was gonna play bass, Orbit was going to be the guitarist, and Yob was going to be the singer. They wanted to call it The Last Reich. The idea, musically, was to create a Skinhead version of something that sounded like Discharge. They loved Discharge. They would tune out all the lyrics that were about peace and anarchy, and just focus on lines like “The blood runs red!” and “The nightmare continues!”—all the one-liners that described visions of destruction and violence. That was when I wrote the music to the song “Everybody’s Gonna Die.”

  The Exploited was one of the first shows I went to in Canada. It was me, Yob, the chick I was with, and this one other cat who was nowhere nearly as psycho a Skinhead, but trying to be “hard” nonetheless. So we went to see the Exploited, and we got into like two or three fights on the way to the gig. That’s just how it was with those motherfuckers.

  Anyway, we were at the show, and no one in Canada had ever seen
slam dancing; they were not up on it at all. It was still a fairly new phenomenon, even in the States. And I was drunk as a motherfucker by the time the band went on. I had on a ski mask, so no one knew who the fuck I was. There was a group of NDG Skinheads, and I was “New York” all the way. So I was slam dancing, takin’ motherfuckers’ heads off, doing spinning back fists. I’d creep up to the side of the stage where nobody could see me, and I’d go running across the stage and just dive into this pretty much standstill crowd. I’d spread my arms out all the way and take down four or five people with me, get up, and start goin’ apeshit. So in my ski mask, trench coat, and boots, no one knew who this motherfucker was, and everybody was getting real aggravated, because they’d never seen shit like that before.

  Then I did it again. I dove right into the mob of French Skinheads. The main dude of the group was named Norman. He was an older Skinhead and covered in tattoos. I actually landed on Norman the first time, and all these motherfuckers started looking at me all hard. I think a couple of them were ready to jump on me, but Norman held one of them back while he was looking at me all pissed and like “who the fuck is this guy.” And then I stage dived another time! At that point, I was purposely antagonizing them, because I was drunk, and I was like, “Fuck these motherfuckers!” I landed on them again, and that time I landed on the biggest dude of the bunch, who was probably in his early 20s. I don’t remember his name, but I remember his reputation; he never lost a fight. He pushed me. I got up, and I was like, “What’s up?!” We didn’t even get to exchange more than two words—he didn’t speak English anyway—and he blasted me.

  I don’t remember much except that he really fucked me up. He out-boxed the shit out of my drunk ass. I never stood a chance, he was way bigger and stronger. Within two or three shots, he opened up my eyebrow, and blood was gushing down my face. I got back up and I was like, “What’s up motherfucker?!” He looked at me like “Are you crazy?” I went after him again, so he busted me up again, and opened up my other eyebrow. So at that point, I’ve got blood pouring down both of my eyebrows. I still have the fucking scars over 30 years later! So I was still talking mad shit, I just totally didn’t give a fuck. So he was ready to fuck me up again, but at that point Norman puts his hand on him to hold him back, while all the younger ones were ready to jump on me.