Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  Even though I am now in a very different place in my life, I am a sentimental fool, and there has always been a part of me that still has attachment to my past, my old friends and what it all represented to me.

  That brings me to where I am now, and to one of the most highly publicized events in my life and in New York Hardcore history: Stabbing Slashing Biting at the CBGB Webster Hall Fest!!!

  After years of playing as Harley’s War, years of Bloodclot touring as some version of the Cro-Mags, and after receiving countless e-mails, letters and requests from fans begging us to put the band back together, I made attempts to do so. And of course all attempts were shot down.

  I thought that if I saw John in person, I might be able to talk to him without the phone calls or e-mails or other people’s influence. I thought if we saw each other face to face there would still be something there from all those years of having been friends, and that maybe we could talk to Parris and Doug. I mean, the fans wanted it, and deep down I wanted it; my kids would have loved to see it. And like I said, I guess I am a sentimental fool. I always believed that it could happen.

  As it turned out, the so-called Cro-Mags were playing in NYC at the so-called “CBGB” fest; the line-up featured them with Sick of It All and a bunch of other bands at the old Ritz (a place I had played many times back in the day), now known as Webster Hall. The CBGB fest was there and at several other clubs all over the city. It was a big event spanning several days.

  Initially I had no intention or interest in going. They had played New York before and I hadn’t gone. But this time I was a little curious.

  I would get e-mails saying something like, “Just show up and bring your bass, what are they gonna do, say no to you jumpin’ up and playin’ with your band?” People kept encouraging me to do it, and well, I guess it got to me. And on top of it, my kids wanted to go.

  Then, I got a call from Steven Blush and Paul Rachman, the writers and directors of the movie American Hardcore. They invited me to one of the days of the fest when they were showing movies relating to CBGB and/or punk and Hardcore music.

  It happened to be the day before “Cro-Mags” were supposed to play. I went to the film part of the festival where they were showing the American Hardcore movie. They thought it would be a good idea to have somebody there who was in the film. I was taking my kids to Jiu-Jitsu as usual, and I had to teach class, so we stopped by on the way to help introduce the film. It went well—a lot of press asking questions and so on.

  While I was there I spoke to Louise, Hilly’s booker at CBGB. I hadn’t seen her in a long time; it was good to see her, and we were talking about life, the old days, and how much has changed. We both have kids now, and I was telling her how my sons really wanted to see the “Cro-Mags” because it’s their father’s old band. So I asked her if she could hook me up with laminates so my kids could see the band and maybe some other bands, and she said absolutely. She gave me three passes and I asked if she could give me a fourth one if I decided to bring anyone else. She said sure and she gave me four VIP passes.

  Of course we spoke about the Cro-Mags and I said, “You know, it’s really a shame that John and me can’t sort things out because it would be really awesome if we could,” and she was like, “Yeah, I know.” I said, “You know, it would be great if I could even jump up and do a few songs, just so my kids could see it and see what their dad was a part of,” and she said, “If you want, I’ll give John a call right now,” and I said, “Yeah, that would be great.” So she did, but he didn’t answer. But she texted me before the movie screening and said that she spoke to John, and “John says no way.”

  I knew John a long time, and I know how he can change his mind about things real quick, so I still thought something good could come of it. Besides that, I had just signed a deal for my own music, and I thought that between doing the American Hardcore movie press event and then possibly getting onstage with them, even just for a few songs, would be a step in the right direction, in a positive direction—defusing some of the negativity between John and me that had been building up over the years.

  That next day, July 6, I went to the Academy, taught my classes and a private class. I left and started walking downtown. I wasn’t sure what time the show started or if I’d actually go. I called a few people to try and find out what time they were going on. I even called Louise. When I found out it was an early show, I realized I had no time to go get my kids and bring them, so I decided to keep walking downtown and check out the scene to see how many people were there. But I still wasn’t sure I’d go in. I even called a friend and asked if he’d come to the show and to bring a bass, just in case I got to jump up and play.

  So I went. We had sold out that place several times in the old days, and I was curious to see what kind of crowd was coming. And I guess part of my ego was hoping that there would be a lot of well-wishers and supporters rooting for us to make something happen as the old band. I was hoping it would be a positive thing.

  As it turned out, I thank God my kids weren’t there.

  I had those four laminates with me, so I started walking around to the people on the line, saying, “Yo, I got these laminates, anyone want to grab one? I’ll give you one for 20 bucks.” I don’t wanna say I was scalping them, but I guess I was. I figured I only needed one, so why just give ’em away when people were paying money to get in. After a minute or two I stopped ’cause it was a little embarrassing, selling fucking passes like a scalper in front of a show, especially a show my old band was playing.

  During that moment, when I was walking around in front, several people said what’s up to me; I shook a few people’s hands, it was all chill. I sure as shit wasn’t acting like the madman they said I was in the press.

  So I went up the stairs, through the front door. I showed my pass, and they waved me through the line. The guys at the door made me open my Gi bag which had all my Jiu-Jitsu stuff from the Academy and they dug through it to make sure I didn’t have whatever it is they were looking for. They patted my pockets like they do to everybody else and I walked in and it was kind of nostalgic in a way, walking through those doors and up that old staircase that I used to walk up all those years ago. It was like a flashback and I guess I kinda got sucked into that moment.

  I walked upstairs to the first floor where the dance floor was and the big mosh pit and all that crap. I didn’t really want to waste any time walking around there because I don’t really give a fuck about mosh pits or want to mingle. I was there to see John and Mackie and I also thought there could be some people there that I didn’t get along with.

  So I went up the stairs and I showed my laminate, and I walked through. I was walking around and I looked over the edge to the dance floor just to see how big the crowd was, and I looked at the stage and the music was loud and I was feeling nostalgic and it was kind of cool.

  I sat down. I was just looking around and this one guy with skulls tattooed all around his neck, “Rat Bones,” came up to me. I had known him for years; he’d always been a huge Cro-Mags fan, pretty much an on-again-off-again crackhead but a pretty harmless guy. He came up, gave me a hug and said, “Bro, you know I always had love for you.”

  At that point, I saw Frank McGowan, Jr., John’s nephew, and he kind of looked at me like he always does, all big and goofy. He grinned, and we pounded each other and he was like “Yo, what’s up Harley.” And then he walked over to the bouncer who was near the dressing room area and whispered something in his ear; the bouncer approached me. I couldn’t really hear what he was saying underneath the volume of the music and I’m also half deaf from all the years in front of amplifiers, so I thought he said, “Empty the bag, empty the bag.” I thought, “Didn’t I just do this shit downstairs?’ and I started pulling stuff out. But he said, “No, no, take the bag, take the bag.” So now thinking back, that’s probably what he was saying at first anyway: “Take the bag and go.”

  So I remember thinking to myself, “Damn, Frank, you’re making me leave
the fuckin’ VIP area, who the fuck are you? You’re John’s fuckin’ nephew.” I’d known his punk ass since he was like four or five years old, are you fuckin’ kidding? To me it was a joke. I laughed, took my bag and started walking away. Then this Chinese kid called Gook comes out and walks past me straight up to the bouncer and whispers something in his ear. The bouncer turns to me and says, “Yo, it’s cool, it’s cool, it’s cool.”

  I’d known that kid vaguely for a few years. He’s from some other city. I met him on tour when he was in whatever band he was in and he’d always shown me respect. He came up to me, gave me a pound and a hug, and said, “Yo bro, this shit has been going on for too long, we gotta squash this shit. Come backstage with me, we gotta talk to John and put an end to this shit.” And so we started walking toward the dressing room.

  I was actually looking forward to seeing John and talking to him before they went on. I wasn’t even thinking that something was wrong.

  As soon as I walked in, I literally walked into the room, took two steps, the door shut and I got punched from behind. Out of the corner of my eye I could see it was some big dude with tattoos; it was like baaam.

  He hit me hard. I saw a bit of a flash bulb like you see when you get hit out of nowhere and you don’t expect it and then it was a rain of fists and kicks that were just coming from every direction of the room. And this was a small room, it’s a dressing room, and I started falling forward. I fell onto the couch and rolled to my back and started throwing up kicks, just instinctively to get people off me. I was getting jumped by at least four or five guys, probably more. There was a bunch of people in the room; I think I counted seven or eight although I couldn’t really count in all the chaos.

  I did not know that the Chinese kid was one of the guys hitting me. I did not know that the other punk-ass who came up to me earlier, “Rat Bones,” was one of the guys hitting me. I only know it now ’cause I injured them both and they had Orders of Protection against me after I was arrested and then they sued me. I didn’t know they were even in it. I thought it was just a bunch of motherfuckers jumping me.

  At that point, I reached into my pocket. I had a little knife. I pulled it out, and it still had its sheath on, so I just tried to punch the first person that was in front of me to get them the fuck off me.

  Everybody started screaming. I saw the door of the dressing room open and I started yelling “Security! Security!” and I then I saw somebody pull the door shut. And I thought to myself, “Fuck, these dudes, their intention is to fuck me up, they don’t want no one to see it, they’re trying to beat the shit out of me!”

  And I have seen all these fucking dudes, in a pack, kicking people to the point where their brains don’t fuckin’ work. I knew right then and there that if I didn’t get the fuck out of that situation I was not going to make it home in one piece.

  So I started flailing the knife as furiously as I could, just to get myself the fuck out of that situation and toward the door. Everybody’s screaming, “He’s got a knife, he’s got a knife” and I don’t even know who it was or how they ended up in my face; I guess it was when they were lunging at my arm when I bit whoever it was in the face. I tore a nice big piece out of his cheek. I fucked up that kid who came up to me earlier, “Rat Bones,” which I find disturbing now because he came up to me at the beginning of the evening saying, “You know I love you bro,” and I was always cool to him.

  They might think it’s more “gangster” to get set up by a so-called friend, someone you know or whatever, but I think it’s weak. They’ve been watching too many fuckin’ mob movies, sniffin’ too much blow, thinking they’re some wannabe Scarface/Godfather bullshit. To me that’s some real punk-ass shit. And I didn’t know that Chinese kid “Gook” was in the mix either. He was the one that had come up to me with this fake love, bringing me backstage; total fuckin’ pussies—and that’s why they needed to jump me. God knows they couldn’t handle that shit one-on-one.

  It’s funny, according to the press, one of the guys that I fucked up, the Chinese kid Gook, was supposedly in the Cro-Mags. They said he was playing bass, or so they claimed after it went down. But as I found out a few months later from Mackie the drummer, he wasn’t really playing with the band; Craig from Sick of It All was playing. They just hyped it up like that for the press, to make it sound like I went after band members—it was all a set-up to make it look like I started it. And fucking John knew.

  It was obvious that it was a set-up. When I saw that door get pulled shut, I was fighting for my life. These guys wanted to kick the shit out of me, stomp me out, and no one would see it. There would be no witnesses and that would be that.

  But that shit was not going down.

  I bit that one guy in the face. I just tore his fuckin’ cheek open right below his eye. He was screaming. Blood was running down his face. I bit someone’s wrist as they were trying to get the knife out of my hand—I didn’t just bite it, I tried to tear a piece out.

  That’s when the bouncers broke into the room. At this point I was on the bottom of a pile trying to stab and kick up and everybody started trying to grab my hand; they’re like “Give me the knife, give me the knife, I’m security.” I ended up getting dragged out onto the balcony, getting kicked.

  I got one good kick right in my face and I’m surprised it didn’t knock my teeth out. One dude screamed, “Get on your stomach, get on your stomach, put your hands out in front of you!” And this one big guy stepped on my back with both of his feet, and another guy was looking in my face and squeezing my throat. I don’t know who the fuck was who. One guy looked at me and said, “Motherfucker I’ll fucking kill you. I will kick you in your fucking face until you are dead motherfucker if you don’t stop moving!”

  I saw Pete from Sick of It All in the crowd of people next to us, with a freaked-out look on his face. He was gesturing with his hands for me to calm down and stop resisting. He kept mouthing the words, “Harley chill, Harley stop please, chill Harley.”

  That’s when one guy said, “Put your hands out in front of you!” I asked, “Are you a cop?” and he was like “Yeah.” So I said, “Show me your badge!” and at just that point the boys in blue came running up the stairs. I was like, “Fine, I’m not moving anymore, cuff me.” I stuck my hands out in front of me, face down on the floor.

  I still didn’t know that I’d been stabbed. I got 40 stitches in my leg. Thank God it was in my leg. The cops cuffed me, turned me over, and that’s when I saw the wound in my leg—it was grotesque. The blood was bubbling out of it, the fascia and tendons were literally hanging out of my leg; that’s why people started saying that it was a compound fracture. The cops cuffed me, put me on a chair, carried me down the stairs and put me in an ambulance. It wasn’t until I got cleaned up in the ambulance that they realized it was a stab wound.

  There had always been tension at my shows and fights with assholes, whether it was in New York or other cities on tour—people getting jumped and shit like that. It’s been happening since the ’80s.

  Over the years, as shows got bigger, it got worse. As the scene started being more about crews and tough-guy imagery than about music and bands, Hardcore kids getting jumped by other Hardcore kids and fights became more commonplace.

  Back in 2007, some of these assholes had jumped a guy in the crowd at a Harley’s War show at Continental on St. Marks Place. It was actually the guitarist from one of the opening bands called EGH. I stopped them from pummeling the guy. I called them all out, and I remember them looking at me and looking at each other and looking at their one main guy who was there. He was some total new jack. It was a total stand-off; they didn’t know whether to jump me or not, but then they backed off and split.

  That put me at odds with a lot of these assholes. These guys are just one of the many Hardcore crews that popped up over the last 20 or so years. Most of them are nothing but nutless fucks when you catch them alone; I have seen it so many times.

  I used to be friends with guys who started
a lot of those crews. They were fans of the band and used to look up to us and me and bands like Agnostic Front. I knew a lot of ’em since they first found their way down to the Lower East Side and discovered Hardcore.

  But after that shit went down at Continental, they made it very obvious that they were no longer down with me. And because most of ’em were Cro-Mags fans, they were now supporters of Bloodclot and whatever bullshit Cro-Mags band he’d gig with.

  Not long after that gig, I put out the Harley’s War Hardcore All Stars CD. It came out in Japan and eventually in the States. It had a song on it called “LES OG”—Lower East Side Original Gangsta. I made a video too, filmed by B-boy legend Pop Master Fable. We shot it at that underground fight club in the Bronx. Lyrically it was a play on the whole gangsta wannabe shit that the Hardcore scene had turned into.

  When that song and that video came out, that was the final rift between me and the NYHC wannabe thugs. They took it as a direct jab at them, which it wasn’t. But I guess when you sniff enough coke and look for beef hard enough, you’ll find it. The irony is, in a lot of ways me and my friends started that NYHC thug shit.

  I’m not proud of my own mindless stupid violence, but it is what it is. I can’t go back and undo it. But I’m trying to move forward, and the difference between me and this new-jack shit is I didn’t need a whole fuckin’ crew to hold my own; I never did. I did what I did and that was that. If I fucked someone up or did whatever “wrong” shit I did, I didn’t need a crew behind me to have the balls to do it. And when I was young, I might’ve had beef with most of the world, but I didn’t prey on other Hardcore kids; that’s just not how it was.

  After that CD came out, some of these assholes put out a song where they made threats to me. I paid it no mind ’cause people are always gonna use your name if you’re anybody with any kind of a reputation or if you have credibility, to try and legitimize themselves.

  Them going after me or giving me any kind of shit—as someone who helped create their scene and put it on the fuckin’ map—is as ridiculous as them going after the Bad Brains or members of Black Flag, or like me going after members of the Clash or the Sex Pistols or Black Sabbath ’cause they don’t agree with me or don’t like me.