Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  We were so broke on tour, I don’t know how we did it. It was a very different world. We didn’t have ATM cards, no cell phones, no GPS. John and me were out of control with the shoplifting, ’cause we had no money. We literally had pocket change between shows until we’d get to the club and got the buy-out money from the clubs for food, unless they were cooking for us or buying us a pizza. But me and John didn’t have a place to live half the time. So at least when we were on tour we knew we’d get a hotel room with a shower, and a few bucks for food. But we were so broke, so we’d steal at truck stops and shit.

  But John would take shit to a whole other level. One time, we were at a restaurant and we had our buy-outs from the club. We went to eat at this place nearby that the club had recommended. So John finished before the rest of us and split in a hurry. We didn’t think anything of it; we paid, left and started casually walking back to the club. All of a sudden, the waitress came running up screaming, “You motherfuckers! Give me back my fucking tips!” And we were like, “What are you talking about?” She was screaming at us, and she was pissed. She was like, “One of you motherfuckers stole my tips off that table next to yours. I don’t make shit working here; one table left me a good tip and one of you fuckers stole it!” We looked at each other like, “That motherfucker!” I was so pissed at John. We were so embarrassed—I went off on him when I got to the club. He just stood there not saying shit, looking stupid. Twenty minutes later, it was back to burning spliffs and preaching Krishna. It was ridiculous—but it was all part of his wacky personality.

  Besides little bullshit like that, he was my boy—and we really had a great time. He was a funny motherfucker and we were friends. I mean, who doesn’t have at least one friend that they’ve known forever who even though you know they are a dick, they are still likable. They make you laugh, and it’s like you almost can’t believe what they do.

  On tour in support of The Age of Quarrel, we played with a lot of metal bands when all the “crossover” started—even stupid shit like Lizzy Borden, bands with huge castles set up onstage for drum risers and props. Our crowd would come and terrorize the shit out of theirs. It was funny some of the bands we would play with. But our first big break came touring with Motörhead on their Orgasmatron tour. That was cool as hell, and a big thrill for me. I loved Motörhead since I was like 14. I watched every set they played on that tour, and every sound check as well. I think my ears are still ringing from that shit 30 years later.

  We used to gig a lot with Carnivore. That shit was hysterical ’cause they’d be out there in fur, throwing meat at the crowd; me and John were both vegetarian, so we were not down with that, but it was funny. Actually, at one point Pete Steele shaved his head. I remember him showing up at CBs with his head shaved, his jeans rolled up, and big-ass combat boots. He looked like a total skinhead, but he soon grew his hair back. I was always cool with Pete; I liked him a lot.

  When we initially started going out with metal bands, there was always lots of drama, fights and chaos. I remember when Pete was in the band we played with Helloween or some shit, and it was a fuckin’ comedy. That was in Minneapolis, I believe, and we were big there as far as Hardcore. We were supposed to be headlining, so the majority of the place was Skinheads and Hardcore kids. It was our gig; there was no question about it. We showed up and the whole stage is a fuckin’ castle! The drums are set up on top of it, and we’re like, “What the fuck!” So anyway, we show up for our sound check, and we all have our heads shaved and tattoos; we have no stage props. But these guys got their fuckin’ 12-foot boa constrictor, and their mother’s their manager, and she’s being a real fuckin’ douche-bag—she’s acting like, “Who the fuck are these bald-headed dudes? They’re opening for us!” We were like, “Fuck this.”

  So there was a Laundromat/bar across the street from this place that also used to have concerts. We were like, “Fuck this, our contract says you still have to pay us whether we play or not. We’ll play across the street for free, you’ll still have to pay us, and everybody that came to see us will go across the street!” We called our manager and he looked over contracts. They finally came to terms: “Technically, it was a co-headlining bill.”

  They wanted us to set up in front of this castle, ’cause it was already set up, which left us with no room. Now, if you’ve seen John and me play, we were all over the place onstage, and running into each other. There wasn’t a big enough stage for us. And these guys wanted us to set up in front of Castle Grayskull! It was fuckin’ pitiful. So, I started doing spinning back kicks at the walls of the castle, trying to take the shit apart. We had to play with Pete on their drum riser, and I couldn’t see him. It was fuckin’ hilarious. He was scared of heights, so he hated it. And the best part of it was after we played, pretty much everybody left. There was like one row of people standing in front of the stage for them.

  One thing about that night was there were a lot of Skinheads; they dominated the show. They were huge fans of ours and they were there to kick some ass. I remember looking out at the crowd and seeing a longhaired dude get beat up. After he got beat up, this one Skinhead kicked him in the face, and made sure to lift him up by his hair and look him dead in his face. I could see his lips move, and he said, “I did that!” As much as you don’t see anything from the stage ’cause you’re so wrapped up in your playing, you still see a lot of things in the crowd. I don’t think people in the audience realize how much you observe and how many things catch your attention. That was one of those things that bothered me; it was fuckin’ disturbing. Especially because back then, people had a lot of ideas about what they thought the Cro-Mags represented or were about. It did start to bother me that people were doing these things at our shows. It got to a point where we’d always have to stop during songs to stop shit happening in the crowd. It wasn’t like that in the beginning.

  It’s hard ’cause you don’t want to turn against your fans, or make it seem like you’re turning against them. But when they’re emulating you or “honoring” you in some way you don’t want, it’s just so not cool. With the Cro-Mags, there were so many mixed signals coming from that band: a Hardcore band with a Skinhead past, and then to top it off, Neo-Hindu beliefs. It was a strange mix. And being one of the first Hardcore bands to cross over into the metal world made for a big mess, and led to a confused fan base.

  We gigged with Venom a few times here in the States, and once in Europe. But the first two with them were in The Age of Quarrel days. The first night in Chicago was one of my best memories I have of a gig. We were getting ready to go on, and the show was packed with metalheads. The paper had described us as “Skinheads gone heavy metal mad.” So we were getting ready to go on, and the crowd already hated us. We walked out onstage, and the whole place starts chanting, “Skinheads suck! Skinheads suck!” I walked out, plugged in, and my bass wasn’t working. “Skinheads suck! Skinheads suck!” turned into “What the fuck! What the fuck?” Finally, Cronos loaned me his bass, and we start with “We Gotta Know.” We blazed through the song, and then the next one, with all the energy and aggression we had, right back at them. They didn’t know what the fuck hit them. When we ended, it was almost totally silent; they were dumbfounded.

  We busted straight into “World Peace,” “Show You No Mercy,” and a few more, and the crowd started turning into a head-banging frenzy of freaks with their fists in the air. A few people were giving us the finger in the front row, so I knee-slid across the stage to this guy, and punched him dead in the face! Blood started gushing out of his nose, and I kept playing. He did it again, and this time John got him. The guy went from giving us the finger to giving us a thumbs-up. By the time we stopped long enough between the songs for them to react, we had totally won over the most hostile crowd. We had turned the place upside down.

  Sometimes, when we’d do shows near the city, Chris Williamson would come along for the ride. Other times, he might use our gig money to fly himself to our shows. It’s no wonder we never got paid. We’d be i
n the van, and Chris and John would be getting into it about Krishna consciousness; it was fucking hilarious. He’d be ripping into John, and John would be trying to debate with him about all kinds of stuff from the scriptures. And Chris would just tear into him. It always ended with John saying, “You’re a demon, you’re just a fucking demon. He’s fuckin’ Hiranyakashipu” (the demon killed by Narasimha on the cover of Best Wishes). Chris would always be like, “C’mon Harley, you’re not buying into this, are you? I mean, I give you more credit than that. John I can understand, but you?” The rest of the guys would be giggling or smirking or straight-up laughing. As much as everybody fucked with each other, some of those van rides were hilarious.

  We did some crazy gigs in Los Angeles. Our first two times there, Skinheads dominated the shows. It’s funny ’cause at the beginning of the first show some Sui tried to hard-rock me before we went on. I just laughed. The first thing I said when I got on-stage was, “I’d like to dedicate this gig to the L.A. Skinheads,” so of course, the Skinheads went apeshit. It was some real violent, crazy shows. But the third time, people were getting stabbed and shit. The shows at Fender’s Ballroom were really crazy. All the Skinheads would come out to see us, and gangs like the Suicidals would come out. Inevitably, there would be these massive fights between the two. Then on top of it, you’d get the Nazi Skinheads, the anti-Nazi Skinheads. Crews like SHARP, “Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice,” and the LADS, “Los Angeles Death Squad.” There were so many gangs. Almost every time we’d play in L.A., there was a riot.

  Greg Hetson from the Circle Jerks was at one of our shows in L.A. At first, there were several fights. We were up in the balcony, and he was like, “Oh, that’s nothing. This is L.A., it happens all the time.” But within another 15 minutes, he was like, “Dude, I’ve never seen no shit like this before!” Our shows had a tendency to bring out so many warring factions.

  At that same show, there was one huge Indian in the middle of the dance floor, knocking motherfuckers out left and right. He was going nuts, screaming, “Fuck you! I’m an Indian!” It was great; he was big like Chuck Billy of Testament or Chief from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. By the time we went on, half the crowd had been thrown out. There were fights breaking out everywhere, and bouncers would try to run over and stop them. They’d break out somewhere else, and then the bouncers would get caught in the middle of them, with fights going on all around them. They started getting fucked up, too.

  By the time we came on, there was a massive wall of huge bouncers in red shirts standing in front of us across the stage. You couldn’t even see the band through them! While we were playing, fights were still breaking out. There were still a few people in front of the pit trying to enjoy the show without getting dragged into a fight or hit by a fist or a chair. It was crazy as fuck. I don’t remember how many songs we did before they turned the house lights on and chased everyone out, but it wasn’t many. Outside, there were riot cops, helicopters, the whole shit.

  There were a few other cities that were crazy for us, like Detroit and Chicago. I think it had to do with the fact that New York was the first city in the States to have a real Skinhead scene, and we represented New York at its “hardest.” Some of the bad rep—maybe even a lot of it—was deserved, but a lot of it was exaggerated hype and bullshit. And that shit would follow us, and attract that type of energy, even though by The Age of Quarrel John and me were getting into Krishna consciousness. But my friends and me were known for fucking people up, and I guess that reputation and karma carried over into the reputation of the band.

  Photographer Stacia Timonere remembers a show in Chicago: “The buzz was out not to miss this show and no one was disappointed. There was a lot of tension with some of the Skinheads at that time. They wanted to make punk about hate and most people in Chicago don’t buy that stuff. I was expecting a fight, but I never thought the band would start it. I remember seeing Harley clock this guy with a follow-up from John, and I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen a band beat up their fans.’ It was like, ‘Shut up and listen!’ Then they rocked so hard, the tension eased, and there was some kind of unity. Cro-Mags set it straight that night.”

  Sure, I’ve got a lot of great stories about those tours, but anyone who was part of it back then will tell you that there wasn’t any money in it. We’d go on tour, come back, and there’d be no money. I remember one time we pulled up to Avenue A and Houston Street in the middle of the night at the end of the tour, and Chris would be like, “Well, there’s the subway!” I’d be like, “What?! I just drove all fucking night, and now you’re gonna tell me to get my bags and bass and jump on the train?” Needless to say, we started hating him pretty early on.

  So, we had that tour with Motörhead all lined up, and Mackie quit right before it began. He was smart enough to know Chris was going to dick us over like he always tried to do when it came to money. After we did the GBH tour and didn’t see any money, I guess he knew better. So we were getting ready for our first “big break” Motörhead tour and he wouldn’t pick up his phone, wouldn’t return calls, and made himself unreachable. That’s when I approached Petey Hines from Murphy’s Law. I told Jimmy Gestapo, “Bro, if it’s all right with you, I need to borrow your drummer.” I had no intention of getting him to quit Murphy’s Law. I was just like, “Dude, you’re the only drummer I know in town that’s good enough to pull this off. If you bail me out here, I’ll be eternally in your debt!” And Petey came out, and really pulled it off with just days of preparation. He was great.

  The first show on that Motörhead tour was at the Orange County Pavilion. Megadeth was on that tour for a couple of shows. Motörhead’s stage was set up and Megadeth’s shit was in front of that. We had to set up our drums on the side of the stage, facing sideways. We just had the front of the stage to run around. We could barely hear ’cause we had no monitors but Petey saved the day. Even that show, with all those issues, was pretty great.

  We did that tour in a van that was so run-down, dirty, and mangled. It was a 1969 Ford Econoline van our manager Chris bought from a plumbing company called Kendick in California, without ever looking at it. It said “Kendick” in big letters on the front and back; we wrote “We ‘Kendick’ U and WE Will” on it with a black marker in big letters. There was one row of seats in the back, so you had this empty space with a rusty floor for our gear and bags, and for our roadie Bleu, who could kick just about anybody’s ass, but he always huddled up in a ball on the most uncomfortable spot on the floor ’cause he didn’t want to take up space from the band members.

  The Kendick van was in the “We Gotta Know” video, in the scene where we’re all sitting in a van. Kendick started breaking down everywhere. We had no air conditioning, and there was an unbearable heat wave when we were in the desert in Texas. The engine was one of those ones that’s inside of the van, with a cover over it. It was having problems, and it kept overheating so we had to drive with the cover off ’cause it kept breaking down. So the motor was exposed inside the vehicle, it was already hot, and only got hotter and louder. Then finally we broke down again, for the last time. We were done. We were in the middle of nowhere—Ozona, Texas, heading toward Corpus Christi. We thumbed a ride, and this Jeep pulled over with two Texas hippie-type dudes; one of them looked like a midget Willie Nelson! So, I shit you not: we cut the seatbelts out and tied our front bumper to their rear bumper and had them tow us like two hundred miles through the desert. The shit was insane.

  We pulled into Ozona, pulled up to a red light, and John went up to a Mexican dude and asked, “You know where I can get any weed?” And the dude was like, “Well, I don’t, but my brother does. He’s a cop but he’s cool though, he smokes.” By that point, I was shaking my head in disbelief. I was saying to John, “Are you crazy? You can’t be pulling this kind of shit in a place like this.” He was giggling his ass off, spit flying everywhere. I looked at them and said, “I’m gonna walk into that store over there. When I come out, all y’all motherfuckers are g
onna be handcuffed together.” John was like, “Yo, I’m gonna get some killer shit. This dude’s a cop, so you know he’s got good shit!” I’m shaking my head like “This fuckin’ guy can’t be serious.”

  The night before, we were in some cheap-ass shitty hotel. Doug found a baggie of powder in the hotel room. Fake coke, it was talcum powder or some shit. So Doug, instead of leaving it, took it with him. When I asked him why, he said, “Maybe I can trade it for something with someone,” and put it in his wallet. So, in Ozona, I go into the store, and sure enough, I come out, and those motherfuckers were cuffed together!

  Those cops were total redneck cowboy fucks. They all had big white cowboy hats, custom engraved pistol grips, and pump-action shotguns. John looked up at me with a stupid look, grinned and went, “Guess what, Harley? You were right!” And the cops were like, “Are you with these boys?” So they handcuff me too. The only person who didn’t get cuffed was Parris, I guess ’cause he looked like a big kid who didn’t really belong with us riff-raff. One of them smiled and yelled, “Get some rope, we gonna have a lynching party! We got ourselves some Yankees!” and they all started laughing.

  As it turned out, while I was in the store, John was going back and forth with this dude about his brother the cop who smokes weed who’s cool like that. Dude, we’re in a small town and we’re the only rock ‘n’ roll motherfuckers, and we’re from New York. So this dude is saying to John, “No, I don’t want any money, I just want to trade something for it. You guys ain’t got nothing to trade?” They’re trying to entrap this stupid motherfucker’s ass. So John and Doug are up trying to trade the fake coke for weed.