Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  But yeah, it was a pivotal time for music, and bands that were happening around that time were setting the standard for what would become Hardcore. Black Flag had recently played in town with Dez Cadena singing. It was around this time that I came up with the idea for the Cro-Mags. I was so inspired by all the intense new music. I came up with the name while hanging out with a friend from L.A. that everyone called Mugger, who roadied for Black Flag. We were at a friend’s house on 12th Street and Avenue A, where UXA was staying, down the block from my mom’s apartment. Mugger and me wanted to start a band—or at least we were talking about it. He suggested we called the band the Cave Men, and then the Ape Men, the Neanderthals, and so on, ’cause we both had shaved heads and both looked very caveman-ish. I came up with the Cro-Mags, and that was that. I thought it symbolized modern man as a modern primitive. Black Flag split back to the West Coast and that was that. But the name stuck.

  I was on a mission. I was gonna start my own band, and I had the name. While I was trying to put together a working line-up of the Cro-Mags, me and Roger from Agnostic Front started calling ourselves “Cro-Mag Skins.” When I’d get really drunk at shows, I used to run around with “Cro-Mag” written in marker on my forehead. Jimmy Gestapo still has pictures of that shit. Roger nearly wound up as the Cro-Mags’ singer, and I gotta say, looking back, I wish he had. But I guess it all happens for a reason—instead of one great New York band, we got two.

  Before long, everyone knew of the Cro-Mags, even though they didn’t know what it was—a gang, a graffiti crew, or a band. I wrote that shit every-fuckin’-where—all over town, at all the clubs, up and down St. Marks, the LES, and Uptown. At that point, I don’t think Jimmy had shaved his head yet—probably ’cause his dad would have killed him if he did. And if you knew Jimmy’s dad, you didn’t want to piss that man off in any way. He was a scary motherfucker to have as a dad. I remember one time, Jimmy’s dad almost smacked me for cursing in front of him at the table. Jimmy was like, “Bro, are you crazy? I thought my dad was gonna kill you! I saw him give you ‘the look.’”

  I used to crash at Jimmy’s folks’ house in Astoria. We’d ride the train in the next day to play chess, and drink Southern Comfort on the ride. That was our ritual when I crashed there. By the time we’d get into the city, we’d be shitfaced, and would have forgotten all about the chess game!

  Me and Jimmy started Murphy’s Law together. Jimmy’s like, “Dude, I got a band. We’ve got practice!” It was their first practice. I was like, “Oh yeah? Let me come down.” It was Jimmy, Uncle Al, Adam Mucci and some kid on drums, and I was like, “Jimmy, I’ll smoke this motherfucker, are you kidding me?” So I got on the drums and ripped the shit up. Afterwards, they were like, “You’re in.” So we were sitting at Uncle Al’s a few days later, trying to think of a name. He had a poster on his wall that said, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, Murphy’s Law.” So I was like, “Yo, we should call the band Murphy’s Law!” It was instant.

  We didn’t have any songs or anything. It was New Year’s 1980, and MDC was playing at this place, the Loft. A bunch of bands were playing. Me and Jimmy were zooted out of our minds on mountains of blow from Dave A7, ’cause it was New Year’s. We were dusted and trippin’ our balls off, and at one point, we were like, “Let’s go up there and play!” We went up and basically took the stage over from MDC. We started playing, and made songs up on the spot. Some of the songs that wound up on the first album were sort of conceived in that mess. I don’t remember much of the performance, except afterwards someone coming up to me and going, “Man, that was the greatest shit I ever saw in my life—look, I broke my arm!” That was the beginning of Murphy’s Law.

  We had a reggae song, “Who’s Got the Bong?” and part of the ritual was everybody would bring weed—spliffs pre-rolled and bongs—and during that song, everyone would crack out the weed. So there was no human way you could be in the club and not walk out stoned. If you were straight edge, you were fuckin’ doomed. Chris Charucki, who later sang for Cause for Alarm, would be running around onstage, dosing everybody with acid. Half of the time, we’d already be tripping when we started the show. So he’d be dripping liquid acid into our eyeballs. I’d be up onstage drumming, with liquid acid running down my face as if I was crying. My friend Eric and Chris would be wiping it off my cheeks and licking their hands to get the residual acid.

  One night we did a gig at Rock Hotel, I dressed like David Lee Roth; before we went on some of my friends almost jumped me, because they didn’t recognize me! At that same gig, Warhol was there on the balcony getting harassed by me on the mic and several Hardcore kids in the crowd. Jimmy dedicated “Wild Thing” to his stripper girlfriend. She stripped down to her G-string, in front of this sold-out crowd of mostly fucked-up-on-acid-drunken-tripping-messes, and she basically lap-danced the shit out of him—all over the stage, all over the club. It started a ritual that continued for years afterwards: during “Wild Thing,” she’d go up there onstage and strip.

  Murphy’s Law was madness when we started. It was total savagery. There’d be kegs, bongs, and Jimmy’s half-naked girlfriend onstage! It was always more about the party than it was about writing songs, or really even being a band. Every night, we’d be doing this one song, “Fun”—and I hated that song. I’d get sick of playing it, and sooner or later, I would get up and knock over all the fuckin’ drums and walk off the stage. That’s how the Cavity Creeps formed, which was basically Murphy’s Law’s roadies and friends picking up the instruments and making noise. So you’d have a bunch of tripping idiots onstage, none of who were musicians, all making noise. So you can only imagine that this shit would be atrocious!

  I played with Murphy’s Law during a two-year period, and I was always trying to quit so I could form my own band. I was a musician, and I was serious about wanting to play. Jimmy is a great entertainer and one of the best front men around, but as a band, they were into goofing around, and I wanted to write some hard shit. Every time I’d quit the band, Jimmy would be like, “I just booked another week’s worth of shows. Come on man, you’ve got to do this!” So it just went on and on, until eventually they got Petey Hines on drums, who kicked ass.

  Another important musical discovery for me around this time was Motörhead. I was fortunate enough to see their first New York show at Irving Plaza. There were only two hundred people there, but they kicked so much ass. I was there with Darryl from the Bad Brains; Darryl and Nick Marden were the first cats to turn me on to Motörhead.

  I actually wound up meeting Lemmy and Phil Taylor that weekend, and hung out with them at the Mudd Club. I was this young kid, and there I was doing mad rails of crystal meth with Phil and Lemmy! The funny thing was, back then nobody knew who the fuck they were over here. Nobody was paying much mind.

  I told Lemmy, “I just started a band called the Cro-Mags.” Meanwhile, I didn’t have a full band, and I barely even had songs yet. But I was a huge fuckin’ Motörhead fan. I said, “I’d love to gig with you guys. How can I get on tour with you?” He told me, “Well, the first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to get a record deal. Then, you’ve got to get a record out. If everything goes good, get it to our manager. That’s how you get on tour with us.” Little did I know that years later, the Cro-Mags would actually go on tour with Motörhead!

  I think Phil dug me ’cause I was a Skinhead and back in the day, he was too. He was telling me all kinds of funny stories about old-school Skinhead shit, how they used to go to shows and not even go inside. They’d just hang out front and beat people up.

  At the bar, I wound up picking up this new wave chick. I took her outside and found an unlocked car in a parking lot right around the corner from the club and “got to know her a little better.” Then I went back upstairs to the bar and continued where I left off with Phil and Lemmy. Phil asked me what happened to the girl, and I stuck my fingers under his nose and said, “Smell my fingers!” He laughed and bought me a drink. I think they were kind of impressed—I
mean, after all, I was only like 13 or 14. I went to their hotel the next day: the Iroquois, this grimy hotel that all the English bands would stay at when they came to the States. Phil came down and gave me a little care package of speed.

  There was a lot going on in NYC and on the LES back then. On Avenue A there was our club: A7, on Avenue A and 7th Street. It was two small rooms connected; there was a couch and a bar in the back, and a tiny little stage in the corner that was like six inches off the floor. It was real small, and we would jam a fuckin’ ton of people in there. Doug Holland was the bartender, and he got Raybeez and Jimmy G jobs working the door; there was this crazy black dude Dave, a total cokehead, who ran the joint.

  I was such a mess back then that even on nights when there was no one at A7 except for Doug and maybe one or two people, I used to end up on that couch in the back of that club, passed out, usually with a pool of vomit between my legs. Doug hated it because he’d be working the bar, and he’d have to clean it up at the end of the night, and send me home or bring me back to his place on 3rd Street to crash. Man, A7 was a fuckin’ trip.

  Across the street there was the Park Inn, where a lot of us would hang and get drunk, even though we were all minors. Tompkins Square Park was right there, and there would always be a small handful of us out every night. Me, Eric, Little Chris—we were on Avenue A and 8th, or in the park, every single night, all year ’round. 171A on Avenue A was a rehearsal studio and four-track recording studio where the Bad Brains’ ROIR cassette was done. They had gigs there as well. It was a great place; a lot of really cool shit happened there. Jerry Williams and Scott Jarvis who ran the joint always let a bunch of people live there, including the Bad Brains. Rat Cage Records was down in the basement.

  Back then, there were big shows at different places. Irving Plaza, the original Ritz on 12th Street, Rock Hotel, Great Gildersleeves, etc. Everybody came through town. Me, Jimmy, Watson, Eric, Diego, Paul—all the fuckin’ lunatics—we pretty much dominated all the shows in the pit. Even the big shows, there was always a crew. Hell, I remember bands that we had a beef with, or that talked shit from the stage, that wound up getting beat down right there onstage! On weekends and in the summertime you could get anywhere from 50 to two hundred kids just running wild all up and down St. Marks Place, in the park, up and down Avenue A, and down to B. In the winter, we’d break up park benches and burn them in garbage cans to stay warm. There were always people huffin’ glue, trippin’, drinkin’, smokin’ dust or weed or whatever else anyone could scrounge up.

  It was still completely lawless down there, but it was really busy. There were a few other clubs and bars in that area as well as all the drug spots, so it was pretty jumping. It was still a very bad neighborhood, so you definitely were taking your chances. There were tons of gangs and drugs and crime. We were way outnumbered when it came down to it, and the Hardcore kids and Skins would get jumped a lot.

  On the other side of Tompkins Square Park, on 9th Street and Avenue C, we had C-Squat. Then we had Apartment X down on Norfolk Street, where there was always a ton of kids staying. We had a few people who had their shit together enough to have their own apartments that were like crash pads, like the old drummer from Cause for Alarm had a place on 2nd and Avenue C that housed a bunch of us.

  C-Squat was one of the many early-’80s squats on the Lower East Side, but this one was mainly taken over by Skinheads and Hardcore kids—along with “chaos punks,” not really “peace punks.” Back then, there was a real distinction in New York between the two. The chaos punks used to hang out more with the Skinheads; the peace punks were into Crass, and into getting together and being like hippies with mohawks. The other guys were more into slam dancing, getting fucked up and into fights, more like the Exploited.

  Me and John Joseph lived in one apartment in this burned-out building. There was an old Puerto Rican dope dealer on one floor, who had been there from the start; we were never really able to get rid of him, ’cause he had a lot of pull in the neighborhood. The building was really gutted—you basically had to find a door and attach it to the doorframe, and hold it up with chains to keep people outta there when you weren’t around. It was a half-demolished building, but somehow, in everybody’s minds, we were gonna live there, fix the place up, and eventually get control of it. That was the mentality back then. The Lower East Side was a very different place. So yeah, Skinheads were living in that building. Raybeez lived there a long time. For the most part, it was “party central.”

  When we moved in, the building didn’t have anything—no windows, missing stair steps. We’d be stepping over openings in the staircase, walking on the metal frames where there used to be steps. There were no lights, so depending on how fucked up you were, it would be a treacherous trip to your apartment. And the one that me and John lived in, the walls were down to just the wood framing. You could see into the other rooms. We had blankets we stole and mattresses that we found on the street that weren’t too filthy. We used to bathe in the fire hydrants with buckets in our shorts, even in the fuckin’ winter with ice on the ground. People thought we were nuts. The shit was as real as you could get.

  Apt. X was nuts, too. It was a building’s basement turned into an apartment. It had all the pipes from the building running over our heads. It was completely illegal; it violated like every building code. There were so many people living in there. Mattresses everywhere, sheets hanging up as wall dividers, a bunk bed in the living room—if you can call it a living room. It was a fuckin’ cave/dungeon, a grey cellar with Hardcore kids everywhere. Little Chris and me always crashed there, Steve Poss lived there, Rob Kabula and the rest of them. One time, John was trying to sleep on the bottom bunk, and the top bunk collapsed on top of him! Raybeez, Kabula, and like three other motherfuckers were up there smokin’ dust, and they were so high that they didn’t realize that he was under them when it collapsed! He was all screaming at them trying to climb out of the wreckage. It was funny as hell.

  Another time, they were fucking with John and burned all his Hare Krishna books and pamphlets. He freaked the fuck out. John was a fucking nut. Some chick who stayed there for a minute had this really expensive furry cat. And one night, John shaved its head with clippers! We were really stoned and laughing, and he was like, “Yo, wouldn’t it be funny if she came back and her cat was all bald and skinny and shit?” I mean, this cat was mad fluffy, in fact, I think that was its name. Anyway, he only got the cat’s head shaved, ’cause the fur got caught in the clippers. The cat had no claws so it couldn’t do much.

  We were living some urban Road Warrior reality. This chick Nancy had a car. We’d be high as hell on acid, mescaline, and whatever, and drive real fast up and down Houston Street and Avenue A, “surfing” on the hood. If we’d see a cop car in the distance, she’d slow down and we’d hop off real quickly. Nancy eventually became an ambulance driver.

  One night, I remember hanging out on Avenue A by Tompkins Square Park. We were drinking beer, smokin’ joints, and huffin’ glue, and this guy walked through the crowd—no one really noticed him, but I couldn’t help but notice there was blood all over his hands. I was so used to seeing crazy shit, it didn’t really faze me. About 40 minutes later, we realized that this fuckin’ wino that had been sitting on the same bench with us all night long, who looked like he was asleep, had his head on his chest because his throat had been sliced from ear to ear! That also tells you about what the neighborhood was like.

  Another time, we had a fight with a bunch of Puerto Rican dudes in Tompkins Square Park. We started getting the better of them, and we began chasing these dudes down Avenue B, toward the projects. I’m hauling ass, and I’m ahead of the pack. We get to the projects, and we’re screaming mad shit and throwing bottles. All of a sudden, lights start going on, doors start opening, guys start coming out, and shit starts crashing next to me. I turned around and realized all of my friends had stopped running a while back! There were only two or three of us, where there had been ten or more. It was like r
ight out of the movies: all of a sudden you’re running for your fucking life, being chased by dudes with fuckin’ pit bulls and golf clubs.

  Almost every night was some sort of high-action drama on the LES back then. Because I didn’t go to school, I was out all night long. I could go on and on with stories about fights and crazy shit from that neighborhood back then. Every night, someone got fucked up. In my neighborhood, we all knew the folklore of the neighborhood gangs, and what gangs ran which blocks.

  One of the neighborhood hitmen was a dude known as “Pig Man.” He was Pig Man because he wore a pig mask when he’d pull up alongside people in his blue Nova and blow ’em away with a shotgun! This guy was infamous; he was the boogieman of the neighborhood, except he was real.

  During my “wilding days,” there was a time when I was targeting a lot of the people that hung out at trendy clubs like the Pyramid. One night, I beat up someone who was friends of one of the owners of one of the clubs around there. I never really got the exact lowdown on what happened, but I heard that about $2,000–3,000 was paid to put a hit on me, because back then, things like that got done pretty cheap.

  It didn’t help that the local Puerto Ricans were getting pissed because me and my friends were fucking up a lot of their coke business, since a lot of the club fags were buying coke from all the little coke and dope spots around there that were run by the local gangs and we were scaring off their customers. So they put a hit on me through Pig Man. There were instances where Pig Man pulled up next to some Skinheads who were walking down the street—in his blue Nova, with his pig mask on—and aimed a shotgun at them. He drove alongside them, and then just drove off when he realized it wasn’t me, or he was sending a message. There were a few instances like that, and one time, at the squat where I was living, someone got grabbed and dragged into an alcove with a knife to their throat, and asked, “Which apartment is Harley in?” During that same week, someone kicked in the door at a Skinhead apartment on Stanton Street, put a shotgun and a .38 snub nose to someone’s head, and was like, “Where’s Harley?”