Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  One of my first drunken experiences was around that Free School period. It was at a party at this commune, where most of the teachers from my school lived. I was around eight or nine, and I think it was on New Year’s. I got so fuckin’ hammered on Jägermeister, I pretty much wreaked havoc on the entire commune! I got drunk with some of the older kids; most of them were like, “Don’t give him any,” and a couple kids were like, “Yeah, give him some!” So they filled me up a mug and I pounded it like it was juice. Well, I went completely mad once the shit hit me. I knocked over this chick’s glass animal collection display case and dresser onto myself, and I threw up all over her room, all over the floor and the bed. The kids tried to put me in bed, but I climbed out the window, and was stumbling through the commune. I remember this kid was running toward me, I fell, and he tripped over my leg and knocked his teeth out. He was on the floor crying and bleeding. They dragged me back to the house, put me back to bed, and I climbed out of the window again.

  At that point, I found my way to where the firework display was getting ready to go off. Well, my drunken ass went wandering through the rocket display set-up, and I got them caught around my ankles. I started tripping, I knocked all of them over, and they started shooting into the crowd! This chick’s pants caught on fire—she had to strip down to her underwear in the snow. Then, my stepfather showed up, and he was pissed. He wanted to know who got me drunk, and he was ready to fuckin’ kill them. All these kids that were the ones were shitting their pants. He scooped me up, threw me on his motorcycle, tied his belt around me, and did his best to hold on to me while we rode home. It was just a mess. There I was, this little longhaired hippie kid all fucked-up drunk on my stepdad’s bike driving home from the party.

  They tried sending me to another school for a little while, because they thought that my academic skills were being neglected, and only my creative skills were being addressed. They felt the staff was a little bit too loose. Their attitude was “well, if a kid doesn’t wanna learn, then how can we force him?” The staff tried to cater to the interests of the kids not just academically but artistically and musically; the problem was my only real interests were music and art. But that doesn’t always work in real life.

  So they tried putting me in another school that had more discipline. It was so strict at the other school—it was an “old-school” Scandinavian school, really rigid. And here I was, a hippie kid, long hair, freaky clothes, and it sucked for me… the kids started fucking with me. I used to get fucked with at lunchtime in the yard and laughed at in class. That’s when it started to really sink in that we weren’t like all the other “normal families,” we were different. I didn’t really get it ’til that point, ’cause most of the people we hung with were like us “hippie freaks” and “counterculture” types. That’s when my whole school-cutting shit started, ’cause I would cut school from there, go back to the hippie school, and hang out with my friends out in the yard.

  Friskolen was in Stavtrup, way out in the country, so we’d run around in the fuckin’ woods, run around in the fields, go nuts—it was great. We used to have “Viking battles” with wooden swords and shields that we made in woodshop, and rock fights. Every day, kids would wind up in the school nurse’s office! I missed that place when I left—that was the last of my schooling ’til I moved back to the States.

  I lived in Morocco for a short time; we went there twice. Both times, we stayed in the same actual village in Ourika Valley, at the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Both times we stayed for less than a year, but it was long enough for us to become regular local residents in the little area. The village was literally a dirt road running up to the mountains, and there were four houses along the side of this road, one of which was ours. And then there were maybe 20–30 houses scattered throughout the hills, near that road. They were stone houses, and the living rooms had no roofs, so you could sit in the open air and have your dinner. Most of the people that lived in the mountains there were called Berbers. We lived between two places called Arbalou and Setti Fatma. There was a guy named Muhammad who lived in Setti Fatma, who was a good friend of ours. He was our guide when we went all the way up to the top of the Atlas Mountains.

  I saw caves and awesome carvings in stone that were hundreds of years old. A few miles from where we lived, there was a market-place in Arbalou, where every other week, all the people from all the different villages would come and bring their goods for sale. We were the only people in the village with a vehicle; it was a little orange minivan-truck-type vehicle that we had bought second-hand from the Danish Postal Service. We also had a van that we bought from them that broke down, which is how we got to Morocco the other time. So anyway, we would drive people from the village. There would be “standing room only” in our little minivan; we’d have all the people from our village crammed in our vehicle, going to the market. And you’d have motherfuckers coming back with goats’ heads and shit. The only store in our village was a mile down the dirt road, and it was this little stone shop with all kinds of goods.

  I have a lot of memories from that time—memories that most people’s imaginations could never grasp. We used to go to Marrakesh. I remember one time there was this huge festival, and these nomadic Bedouins would come down on their horses, and these guys had these crazy fucking rifles that looked like pirate rifles—like old sabers and turbans. I mean it looked like you were stepping back to Aladdin’s time! Being there was really culturally mind-altering, to see that type of shit at such a young age.

  While I was there with my mother and stepfather I wrote a few short stories that eventually got published, entitled Stories & Illustrations by Harley. One had just illustrations and the other one had a little bit of written stuff. One story was loosely written about this guy who lived in our village, but from there I took it to its own place where his mule and a bee were interacting; it was kind of funny. I wrote it when I was seven, I think in ’74. Those trips to Morocco were great. I remember my folks smuggled a bunch of hash back to Denmark, a pretty decent-size amount, and Spanish rum or some shit in these extra plastic gasoline tanks my dad had. They had a major fuckin’ party when we got back to Denmark—and that shit was nuts.

  As I mentioned earlier, my mother was a friend of Allen Ginsberg, and for whatever reason, Ginsberg liked my book and he wrote the introduction. A company in Europe called Charlatan Press published it. They were friends of ours in Europe, who had a printing press. I might have been nine when it came out. But anyway, we used to go back and forth from Europe to the States all the time, just my mom and me.

  I remember during one of my visits to New York while staying on 12th Street, Allen was very into Buddhism. He had Buddhist paintings all over his walls. One of my best Allen moments was with him trying to teach me how to meditate. We were sitting in the yoga position where you have your legs crossed, and he was trying to explain how to meditate on nothing. We were sitting there and chanting “Ohm.” He would tell me, “Try to clear your mind of all thoughts. If you catch yourself thinking, try to think of yourself in a silent movie—stop yourself from thinking and just clear your mind.” It was kind of hard for me to grasp at that point in my life, but it was a very cool Allen moment. Now, I can understand what he meant more. I should mention that Allen was the first person to chant the Hare Krishna mantra in the United States, before Prabhupada ever came here; most people don’t know this. He’d met Prabhupada on one of his trips to India.

  My aunt was friendly with a lot of pretty heavy people too. I met Bob Dylan through her when I was really young. I actually have a guitar he bought her, a really beautiful Les Paul. She toured with him on the Rolling Thunder Revue Tour. She played and jammed with a lot of really cool people, like Link Wray and others. She told me about a jam session she had with Iggy Pop back in the day at a party playing “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Imagine that shit!

  Dylan came to one of my rehearsals, when I was working on preproduction for a solo recording in 1982. There was a big framed picture o
f him on the wall in the studio lounge along with other music legends, so the guy at the desk just about shit himself when he walked in and asked for me and Denise. It was funny to have Bob Dylan at my practice, me this little Skinhead. We were hanging out and talking, and he picked up my aunt Denise’s MXR distortion pedal and asked “What’s this?” Denise tells him, “It’s a distortion box.” He was confused—“a what?” he says.

  Denise has always had a really strong personality. And she could really play. I’ll never forget her on that black Les Paul rocking out at Max’s Kansas City and all the clubs. She and Stimulators’ bassist Anne Gustavsson were really something. Those were formative years for me, playing with them, and I learned almost everything I know about being a bandleader from her, both good and bad.

  So my mom and me moved back to Denmark, and that’s where I discovered punk rock. My mom went to London with a friend in ’77. While she was there, she went into a record store and asked, “What are the kids listening to these days? I want to get it for my son.” Well, she came home with the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, which had just been released, and a few others. She got me the first Damned album, Damned Damned Damned, and a few Stiff Records 45s like Wreckless Eric, Nick Lowe, and Ian Dury.

  Well… that was that.

  The next things I got my hands on were the Clash’s first album, the Dead Boys’ Young, Loud, and Snotty, Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias’ Snuff Rock—a fuckin’ classic!—and then the Ramones. From there, I just tried to get my hands on anything I could. I was lovin’ it. I’m hearing this nihilistic, chaotic insanity. Guys named Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten, with fuckin’ spiky hair and dog chains—it was great. It was awesome because you gotta understand, punk rock was very alien to what was mainstream back then, especially in Scandinavia, where they were into ABBA, and then on the other end of the Danish music spectrum, you had Gasolin’, who were the big Danish freak-rock-stoner band of the day.

  Until that point, I hung with all these little hippie kids. I had long-ass hair, so we were already little freaks. We’d walk around the streets, and people would give us looks and trip out on us. Our parents and teachers had long hair and beards and shit like that. But then, punk rock came about, and this was more appropriate for me. It wasn’t all “peace and love.” It was just more me. The music was raw, and the imagery and the craziness appealed to me. It was energetic, and a big factor for me was that you didn’t have to aspire to be like Jimi Hendrix, you didn’t have to be Carlos Santana, Mahavishnu, or whatever. It wasn’t about technical skills or technique as much as it was about having fun. And you can do that with four notes. It was definitely a revolution—or a revelation—for me.

  The Sex Pistols fucked it all up for me! I went to my first punk gig in Denmark—I saw Lost Kids, the Sods, the Brats, No Knocks, and a few other bands. The Brats actually featured a then-unknown, Rene Krolmark, later known as “Hank Shermann”—one of the founding members of the Danish metal band Mercyful Fate. It was great! The singer from the Sods had half an arm, and he would beat the mic stand with the stump and go off. They were awesome. I actually have a few pictures of me at that gig, stage diving and shit… stage diving in the ’70s.

  I was in my first punk band, Little Big Boss, that same year with these two French guys, who were in their early 20s. We did one tour: We played at a big anarchist festival, and at this one really big New Year’s punk bash in Copenhagen, again with the Brats and the Sods, who were two of the biggest punk bands in Copenhagen at the time. And that was that; we fell apart after our first tour. I also went to England in 1978. I was hanging with Rat Scabies and his friends when he had a band, the White Cats. It was after the Damned had broken up for a little while, I think after “Neat Neat Neat.” My Aunt Denise played with them for a while—she and this guy Kelvin Blacklock. He was an old friend of Mick Jones—I think he mighta been in one of the first Clash line-ups, or London SS.

  But yeah, Rat, his roadies, my mom, etc. used to sneak me into their shows in London. Early ’78 in London, that was when I really saw some of the sickest shit. I was probably the youngest kid to ever get into or go to shows back then. I was younger than that kid Dee Generate from Eater, remember them? They had a great song called “Thinking of the USA.” But yeah man, that was really back in the day.

  It was a great experience, but after living in Europe for many years, I guess my mom felt out of her element and missed home. When it came down to it, my mom was a New Yorker, and Europe was not quick enough speed-wise for her. She never learned Danish. I did. Eventually my mom and stepdad split up, and after bouncing back and forth between New York City and Europe from 1972–78, we returned to the States for good in ’79.

  Whenever we’d come to the States, I split the visits between my grandparents in Queens and the Lower East Side at 437 East 12th Street. I remember being back in New York City in 1973, 1975, and 1977. 1973 was the first time I went to CBGB. I saw a group called the Werewolves. I also remember the massive garbage strike during the summer of 1975 that practically crippled the city. I remember piles of garbage piled like seven feet tall. The whole fuckin’ city stank. It was nuts. And of course, I remember the Blackout of ’77, as well as the .44 caliber killer, Son of Sam, who at the time was killing people all over the city, and right in Forest Hills, which is right near my grandparents. So of course the three girls—my mom and her sisters—were scared shitless, as was the whole city at the time.

  New York was just crazy back then—it seemed like people got pushed in front of trains all the time, almost as if it was the thing to do if you were a crazy psychopath. It was just a whole other place. After that trip to London in ’79, we returned to New York City for good.

  Chapter Two

  PART 1: NYC — “HOWL” “LOW-LIFE” “HITMEN” AND “HELL” ON EAST 12TH

  HARLEY AND ANDY WARHOL, JOE STRUMMER, BY MARCIA RESNICK

  It was 1979. I had been bouncing back and forth between Europe and NYC. But this time I was really back for good. My grandparents lived in Queens, and my Aunt Denise lived on the Lower East Side. She had a band called the Stimulators. She was all into punk, while my other aunt, Jean, lived in Queens with my grandparents. Aunt Jean spoke more Spanish than the other two, and hung out with a lot of the crazy Spanish dudes from her school and neighborhood, jewel thieves and shit. These guys were nuts; they’d do shit like go into stores in the Queens Center Mall on Queens Boulevard, and just walk out with whole racks of clothes and shit! The chicks behind the counter would be like, “What are you doing?” They’d be like, “Shut the fuck up bitch! What the fuck are you gonna do?”—and just walk the fuck out. They knew what time the guards changed shifts.

  I remember she used to bring some of those guys to Stimulators shows back when we used to play with the Mad and the Bad Brains. They always had fun—they never started any shit. They were mad cool. They’d always steal bottles of booze from behind the bars. One time, they even stole a 15-foot brass banister from the One Under Club… I don’t know what the fuck for. That was back when Hoffman Park on Queens Boulevard was known as “Dust-head Park.” I remember back in the day her and all her friends would move all the couches out of the way in the living room, so they could practice all their disco dance moves for the dance contests at the clubs. It was still like Saturday Night Fever all the way.

  When my mom and me got back, we stayed in Queens with my grandparents. But we soon moved in with Denise on the Lower East Side: East 12th Street. The Lower East Side—“the LES”—was mostly a total fuckin’ Puerto Rican ghetto back then. East of First Avenue was where it started—it was kind of like everything east of First Avenue from like Avenue A, B, and C. The further east you got, the iller it was. Above 14th Street you had Stuy Town—that was kind of the border where it started to get a little better. And as you went further down it got heavier. The only way to get a feel of what I’m talking about is to look at some old footage of the LES in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Half the buildings were burnt down, and there
were vacant lots that used to have buildings in them. It was really a run-down place. And that’s where we ultimately wound up moving. We lived in a building with Allen Ginsberg, Richard Hell and one of the chicks from the Runaways. It was like the only building on the block with white people in it—mostly freaks, artists, writers, Punk Rockers, and poets. There were also a couple of Spanish families in the building; one lady, Susie, was real nice. Her son was a gang-banger and a real scumbag. Her other son was already in jail for murder, and the one I knew soon wound up in jail for murder as well.

  “It was a rough neighborhood but there was a lot of good people there and a lot of good things too, but it was a dangerous place” — Rose Feliu, my Mom

  12th Street and Avenue A—my block—was run by one of the local Puerto Rican gangs, the Hitmen. When you walked down my block, or anywhere in my neighborhood, all you heard was salsa and merengue—strictly Spanish music. And all the signs were in Spanish. At night, all the old-school cats from the block would be singing doo-wop and Motown classics, complete with all the harmonies and shit. You’d hear gunshots in the distance and roosters crowing at sunset, ’cause they used to do a lot of cockfighting in the neighborhood, as well as a lot of dogfighting.

  Back then, they used to fight English bull terriers in basements all over the neighborhood, and they all had them; they were mean fucking dogs. The Puerto Ricans on my block weren’t up on American pit bulls yet, but within a few years, every-fuckin’-body in the neighborhood had a pit bull. There was a legendary dog on my block named One-Eyed Kong. He lost his eye in a fight with his brother who died in that fight. And there was another badass little brindle pit on my block called Amadeus. He was small but he used to destroy all the big dogs. They used to fight him all the time in the basement of the building next to mine. He was real friendly and nice… but put him in a corner facing a dog and it was on!