Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  Norman pushed me in my chest, and tried to see what my problem was. Then Yob came in and was like, “He’s drunk, he’s only 15, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.” So for the rest of the night, I was going up to Yob like, “Yo, you got your knife on you? I wanna fuck that dude up!” I’m going up to strangers like, “Yo, do you have a knife I can borrow? Does anybody have a knife? I’m going to stab this motherfucker!”

  Finally, I made it home. But yeah, I got my ass kicked royally that night. I’ve only had my ass really kicked a handful of times and that was one of them.

  I’m ashamed for having been that person, and for having known and been around people like that. But that’s the problem when you’re a kid on the streets—you can’t always choose the situations you’re in. You’re living here and there, and you sometimes wind up around some really fucked-up people. Those were the first times I was involved in acts of violence that I knew were wrong. But as a kid, I didn’t always know what to do. Back then, you didn’t really question how shit started. You just watched your friends’ backs. To me that was the code of the street.

  I had talks with those assholes about it, ’cause the shit just didn’t make sense to me. I would tell them, “I don’t mind a good fight as much as anyone else, but beating up somebody just for no reason, that shit is just wrong.” And those guys were like, “No man, it’s just a beating. That’s what you do, you give out beatings—we’re Skin-heads!” And they totally tried to brainwash me into that insanity.

  Of course, I have paid for that throughout the course of my life, time and time again. I have suffered some serious ass-beatings myself, getting jumped for no reason. And you know what? That’s karma. Bad things come back to bad people. I know a lot of the shit I’ve done in my life was caused in part by my influences and my surroundings, but you can’t blame everything on everyone else—even though you may want to.

  I’m a changed person in a lot of ways. As I’ve said, I was 15 years old at the time. As ashamed as I am to talk about it, when most people are 15, they aren’t exposed to the shit that I was exposed to. So I’ve got to excuse myself a little, although not too much, and hope that God can forgive me.

  Things eventually and inevitably went bad with those two assholes. Orbit tried to make moves on the girl I was with on the sneak tip. She was not having it, so he got pissed. So they were like “Fuck this kid,” and got it in for me one of the nights they were trippin’ on acid. My number came up. It could have been anyone staying there, and I got stomped out by both of them and another guy. I received a serious ass-stomping from the three of them with steel-toed boots. I basically curled up into a ball, covered my face, balls, and stomach as best I could—tried not to get stomped anywhere that mattered—and hoped the storm would blow over. When they were done beating me, they were like, “We’re going to the store. You better be gone when we get back.”

  I scrambled, packed up my shit, and got out on the streets. Some Good Samaritan in a car picked me up and drove me to a hospital because I was completely covered in blood and my face was swollen. They put me in the hospital pretty badly. It was also the same week I got my chest tattooed with The Devil grabbing the world. I got it done by a tattoo artist in Québec named Norman DeMeers. It was actually my third tattoo.

  I remember seeing Yob and Orbit on the street one night a few days after I got it. My face was still a fuckin’ mess. They were like, “Hey, what’s up?” Acting like nothing happened. I was like, “Man, you guys are fucked up.” And they’re like, “Oh man, you’re still mad about that? Come on man, you guys can come by the house.” I was pissed, but I kept my space. I wasn’t ready to fight those guys; I was alone and I just had my chest tattooed. It was still healing, and so was my face. After that I didn’t see those guys again for a while.

  A few months later, I would cross paths again with Orbit in New York, but that’s another story. So in 1983, I finally returned to NYC. But as it turns out, it was not the same place I remembered. When I came back from Canada, it was almost like I had blinked for a second and the Skinhead scene had blown up.

  Chapter Seven

  PART 1: CRO-MAG — SKINHEAD — BREAK OUT — NOW!

  CRO-MAGS, BY JOSEPH HENDERSON

  Before I get started about the Cro-Mags, let me just say, I do have a lot of good memories of all those guys. I had good times with all of them. I mean, how can you spend years around people, making music, touring, and growing up together, if you truly hated the motherfuckers?

  Everyone can now play all self-righteous and point fingers. The fact is that all of us were freaks. John and me were some raw motherfuckers, while Parris was more on the down-low about it, but everyone in that band had issues.

  If I had it my way, the band would have never broken up. It’s really too bad that a band that had as much influence couldn’t get our shit together and put the past in its place. But old beefs die hard, and people don’t want to let go. Sometimes anger is all you’re left with.

  A band isn’t made up by one or even two people, it’s made up by a group of people playing together, and the chemistry they create together.

  Like I said, I tried putting a band together before I hitched out to California; I came up with the name Cro-Mags in 1981 hanging out with my friend Mugger who roadied for Black Flag. They had just done some gigs and they were auditioning Henry Rollins around that time at 171A. We were hanging out at a friend’s who lived down the block from my mom’s on 12th Street, where a band from L.A. called UXA was also staying. Black Flag left town soon after that, so Mugger and me never did start that band together.

  I started writing songs and jamming with guys like Dave Stein, the guitarist from Even Worse, Dave Hahn, the drummer from the Mad, and John Berry. We even did one gig at Danceteria with John on vocals, opening up for the Stimulators. We did Black Flag’s “Nervous Breakdown,” Dead Boys’ “Ain’t Nothing To Do,” and a few originals. I also jammed with other guys while trying to put the band together, including one or two times with Louie Rivera from Antidote, and John Bloodclot for a quick minute.

  I used to practice at 171A when I was trying to get the band together. I jammed there with the Bad Brains, who lived there at the time. I was on drums when they wrote “We Will Not.” A lot of jam sessions went down there.

  John lived there on and off also. Louie crashed at 171A, and this other guy Tomas; a lot of people stayed there. It was Jerry Williams and Scott Jarvis who ran the place. And right outside of 171A, next to the front door and under the metal cellar doors in the sidewalk and down the steps in the basement, was Rat Cage Records. Rat Cage was the hangout where everyone could go and listen to new records.

  People forget that you couldn’t get these records in most places; you pretty much had to be into the music to even know how to find the stuff. Dave Parsons at Rat Cage turned me on to a lot of good music, not just Hardcore but jazz and other cool shit. He was very into Motörhead, and he turned me on to Venom’s first single the week it came out. He also sold skateboards and acid. He used to have a fanzine back in the Max’s days called Mouth of the Rat. At one point he started dressing in drag, which was funny especially since he was married. We had all known him for years and he’d never worn a dress, then one day he was in a dress and makeup. He’d be skateboarding down the street in his dress and his combat boots. Everyone was cool with him even though it got a bit strange toward the end, to say the least—great artist and photographer. He eventually moved to Switzerland and supported himself as a Charlie Chaplin impersonator, got himself a sex change, and died of cancer.

  It was around that time when I really started to learn how to play bass from Darryl of the Bad Brains, with power chords and all that Motörhead-style picking. Darryl helped break down a lot of that for me, back when I was first switching from drums to bass. Shit, I remember one time the Stimulators jamming at 171A with Rat Scabies of the Damned, a lot of good times. But anyway, nothing really panned out for the Cro-Mags—yet.

  I met Parris Mitchell Mayhe
w around that time, through my crazy-ass Skinhead friend Paul Dordal, back in like 1980. Paul introduced him to me as “Kevin,” and that’s how we all knew him when we started playing together. He never told me his name was Parris. I didn’t find that out ’til The Age of Quarrel cassette came out, and I saw it in the credits. Paul wrote a lot of lyrics on the first Murphy’s Law album. He told me, “Yeah, this kid Kevin, he ain’t a Skinhead, but he can play guitar! He’s really good, he can play Rush songs and shit.” Well, I didn’t give a fuck about Rush, but I was having little luck finding people on the scene to play with who were any good, or who could cut it. So I figured, “Hey, if he can play Rush songs, he’ll be able to play my stuff with no problem!”

  As it turned out, Parris used to go to Max’s and he was a huge Stimulators fan, as well as of the Bad Brains, Motörhead, Sex Pistols, and other stuff I was into. I think he was pretty excited about playing with me, ’cause he’d seen the Stimulators many times. We became friends and started talking about jamming, and planning to do a band together.

  We had little in common in terms of our lives. I was living in and out of squats on the Lower East Side, getting high and eating acid like it was candy. He lived with his mom on the Upper East Side and didn’t do drugs. I was a dropout. He was in high school. I was always in fights. He was never in fights. One night we were all sitting in the Park Inn drinking pitchers of beer, and me and Paul were telling him about a robbery we had tried to commit earlier in the evening, and years later Parris told me he was thinking to himself “What am I getting myself into?” But I think he liked my brashness and craziness, at least back then he did, and on music we clicked. We were both good artists, we were both into different kinds of music, and we were both serious about playing our instruments.

  Me and Parris and me would always hang out at the Park Inn, and sit at our table in the back getting hammered with our friends and all the regulars and local freaks. The place was always packed. “Ike the Dyke,” this old black ex-con former pimp, loved fuckin’ with people who’d walk in. His line was, “I catch you in jail, I’ll make you my girl, candy hips.” He’d hit on people’s girlfriends right in front of them even though he was mad old. Then he’d look them dead in the eye and say, “What, punk, don’t you fear me boy?” He’d get right up in their faces and start yellin’ “Don’t you know niggas carry knives boy!” He’d pull out his 007 folding knife all crazy: “I’ll cut you boy.” But it would always end with “You know I’m just fuckin’ with you boy. You know I love you, candy hips”—always smackin’ everybody on the ass when they’d walk by. “Candy hips” was about all you could understand from him half the time; the rest was just mumbling sounds and shit-talk.

  One time, Eric Casanova went after Ike with a knife for talkin’ shit ’cause he didn’t know I knew him. The place erupted in a half-second, but ended as quick when the bartender, Aid McSpade, this really cool dreadlock Vietnam veteran who played guitar in the New York Niggers, came flying over the bar and yoked Eric by his neck and dragged him up, then out the door sayin’ “You fucked up tonight boy. Go home and sleep it off.” Eric was completely shitfaced, and Aid looked out for all of us, so it was no big deal. Eric was so bombed that I think he fell asleep on the steps next door.

  Usually, if there was a fight in or around the Park Inn, it was pretty bad ’cause shit would go on and on. The cops wouldn’t come, plus everyone from the block and/or in the park would get involved ’cause it was on Avenue A. There was a lot of action on that strip ’cause there was literally no police presence. The streets were wild, and they were ours.

  We’d be drinking all night, even though we were just little kids, talkin’ about our band and shit. I’d stay at Parris’ house uptown with his mom, and when I’d be staying with my aunt, he would come over and jam with me there. When I was living in squats. I’d call him up and hum him riffs over the phone or leave them on his answering machine.

  Eric Casanova joined the band. We did our first two shows with him. Eric was only like 15 when he got his girlfriend pregnant and left to try and do the right thing. That’s when John Joseph joined. Those early days were the best, that’s all I can say—crazy but fun. Fortunately, there are some photos from those days.

  Before we even really got the band off the ground, when we were still just in the planning stages, Parris asked me if he could do a school project about me. He wanted to follow me around with a video camera and shoot a short film about me for a class he was doing. He asked me, if he bought me a bottle of whatever I wanted to drink, could he just follow me around with a camera for the day.

  I wanted a bottle of Bushmills Irish Whisky. So he bought me a big-ass bottle and started filming me. It was me young as hell on the old Lower East Side, hangin’ on St. Marks and in Tompkins Square Park, all wild and shit, my head shaved, already tattooed down. I remember in it, I ran into some old friends, some of whom are now dead. Parris always said he was gonna give me a copy, but of course he never did. Years later, I would beg him for that shit—he always held it over my head.

  AT CBGB, BY ALEXANDER HALLAG

  When we finally started playing and writing together, there was instant chemistry. But we were having no luck finding other players. And before anything really happened with the band, I wound up heading out to Cali and then to Canada. When I came back to New York after all that madness, I really wanted to get a band going.

  It was around that time I did solo recordings of “Don’t Tread On Me,” “Wake Up,” “Dead End Kids,” and “Why Don’t You,” which Denise helped produce. Soon after that, I started jamming with Parris again. But we still couldn’t find the right players. So in the meantime me and John—who was fresh out of the Hare Krishnas—formed a band for a quick minute called M.O.I. (Mode of Ignorance). John had been in a band called Bloodclot with some of the guys who hung out with the Bad Brains—and did sound for them. It was Alvin Robertson on drums, Jerry Williams on guitar, and Ted “Popa Chubby” Horowitz on bass. John also roadied for a little while for the Bad Brains.

  The band Bloodclot didn’t last long, but the name sure did—for a lot of reasons. M.O.I. was John on vocals, me on drums, Nunzio, the guitarist from Antidote on bass, and Doug Holland on guitar. Doug was still in Kraut at the time, and ’cause Doug worked at A7, he had keys, so he used to let us practice there during the day on the club’s gear. He also let Raybeez practice there when he and Vinnie Stigma were putting Agnostic Front together.

  Doug quit after maybe our third gig and Nunzio switched to guitar, and this kid Elroy, or “Ill-Roy” as we called him, got on bass. M.O.I. didn’t last long. We only did a handful of shows, and then John split town to go back into the Hare Krishnas.

  John wrote lyrics like, “In a bar or butcher shop/Eating flesh and drinking pop/Can’t take it no longer/Mode of ignorance gets stronger.” Doug would always look at me and start laughing and say, “Drinking pop?!” He also had this one song “Six Ounces Less,” about the weight of the female brain; it was so sexist and fucked-up. It was stupid, but he was funny and none of us took him or it very seriously. M.O.I. sounded like a D.C. Hardcore band, but with a New York vibe, like Void and Faith meets Agnostic Front: real fast two-minute songs, with slow breakdowns at the end.

  When I got back to New York, I was still going nuts on the streets, and getting in lots of trouble. Parris and me hadn’t yet fully gotten our shit together. I was still kind of wilding too much. By that point, I had tattoos on my chest, my arms, and my head. I had the devil grabbing the world on my chest, a skull on the back of my head, a skull dagger and top hat that I got from Bob Roberts when he was on 23rd and 3rd Avenue, back when I was 14. I had the letters spelling “Skinhead” written across my knuckles with stars over them, ’cause the last thing you’d see were “stars” when I hit you—get it? I was living the ultraviolent lifestyle.

  From what little I can remember and from what people tell me, I was a fucked-up little bastard. I was a glue-huffing-dust-smoking-drug-taking-fighting-all-the-time nut.
If you read A Clockwork Orange, Alex is only in his early teens in it. And here I was, basically the same age.

  I was always armed. As a kid I’d been jumped so many times in the ’hood, I didn’t give a fuck about fighting more than one person—you just take one out quick and then go for the other one. Weapons and/or surroundings always helped and are always there. When I say “surroundings,” I mean, weapons are everywhere, you just have to have the eye to see ’em. Like a garbage can, a bottle, a brick or a piece of rock; you can roll up a newspaper, fold it enough times and make a “millwall brick.” I didn’t care about jumping on people. If someone was beefing with me or my friends, to me it was one-on-one/all-on-one!

  HARLEY AND DARRYL JENIFER, BY KAREN O’SULLIVAN

  That’s how I was living. A lot from that period I don’t remember very well; it was just a lot of getting high and street fighting. I was completely belligerent. I really had nowhere constructive to put my energy until I got the band going. And a lot of that bad karma kept following me from the early ’80s ’til way into my Best Wishes Krishna consciousness days. Even when me and my friends were no longer seeking out trouble, it seemed to find us.