At one point, a lot of people’s shit started getting stolen. There was a Spanish dude named Angel who lived there, and one night Raybeez and a few others busted him. Well, that dude got beat down in the hall of the building with baseball bats by four dudes that were high on dust; it was bad. The only light in the hall was from a penlight someone had! Imagine that: in the dark, with a penlight, a bunch of dudes stomping that motherfucker and beating him with a bat in a staircase of a squat—fucking crazy.
That building was a mess; it could be a book in and of itself. There was this lunatic old homeless dude named Three Star and his hillbilly wife who wound up there for a minute right before it burned down. They used to steal dogs. He had like four dogs at one point; he was like in his 40s. John beat his ass one time; it was one of the only fights I ever saw John have. He was beating the guy’s ass, dragging him through the water running from the fire hydrant. I was laughing, saying, “John, you want me to throw him some soap while you got him in there? Let me get the Dr. Bronner’s for you.” His wife was all screaming at John, and John’s all “If you don’t shut the fuck up bitch, I’m gonna keep fucking up your husband.” It was hysterical; that whole place was pure fucking madness.
So, by this time in early ’84, the Cro-Mags had formed, and I had become a vegetarian, influenced by the Bad Brains, but also by John and by Vinnie Signorelli, who was later the drummer for the Unsane. Vinnie worked at a vegetarian restaurant on 9th Street and 1st Avenue. Between him and the Hare Krishnas giving out free food, that’s how we’d survive—that and stealing. Vinnie used to feed John and me out the back window; he fed a lot of the Hardcore community that were vegetarian. He’d been a Hare Krishna when he was younger, and he felt it was good to help turn people on to vegetarianism as well as the philosophy. Of course, he was right; Vinnie was a big part of that, and people don’t even know. He was a very cool guy and inspiring. Even after he quit that place, he handed that “job” down to everybody that came after him. Me and John ate out of that restaurant for free through generations of employees! Every new person that became the chef knew that they were supposed to take care of John and me. I think John still gets free food there.
I had been a vegetarian for a while when I was like six or seven, but it didn’t last long ’cause I was the only vegetarian in my family. The Bad Brains also had a big influence on me getting into it too, and not just me, but within the scene. They were turning a lot of people on to it, ’cause they were eating “Ital” food as the Rastas call it: eating only natural foods, no “spike.” So I was into vegetarianism, but it took me a while to get into Krishna.
At first, John and me used to go to the trucks where they served free food in Tompkins Square Park. A lot of Hardcore kids did. I mean, I was living in a squat, I was vegetarian, and I had no money, and here was free vegetarian food. They also had a few preaching centers, one on the West Side, that me and John used to go to, to eat. But still, it took me a while to give a fuck about what they were saying. I was there for the free food. I wasn’t looking for religion; I was just hungry and trying to survive. We would always show up late. John would tell us when the good time was to just get the food—after the reading and preaching and everything. But over time, I really started to get into the philosophy.
In the beginning, people didn’t take John and Krishna seriously. It was kind of something the Hardcore scene laughed at. But as my friends and me started getting into Krishna, it started to change. We weren’t as calm as Tomas or even John at that point; we were still kind of stuck in Skinhead mode. So when people started testing us, thinking that we were getting soft or something, people started getting dropped. Me, Bleu, Stig, Squint, and the rest had no problem fucking people up when they fucked with us—and a few of the new Skinhead crew did just that. We almost beat a few of them to death. Some of the worst fuck-ups started taking our back, and eventually, all the new-jacks started to fear the “Krishna Skins.” Ain’t that funny? And then people started respecting it, trying to be like us and going to the temple. Everybody’s a fuckin’ wannabe.
I remember the first time I put on Hare Krishna neck beads. It was at Gita Nagari and I was with Stig. We took a bus ride up there from the Hare Krishna temple in Brooklyn; it was this little Krishna farm community. We went up there for some festival, probably late ’84/early ’85. We stayed in this big-ass circus tent with all these devotees. We were up at like 5:30 in the morning, bathing in cold water under the stars and meditating. They had all these kids running around lots of land with cows and all that. It was so peaceful—it was one of the first times I felt peace in as long as I could remember. I was used to the LES: crazy thugs, drugs, and all that shit. And I’ll tell you, it really was a big deal for me to put those beads on. I knew I’d be making a statement and a lot of my old friends were gonna talk shit. But it just felt right, so I didn’t care. I knew this would change my life forever. And ultimately, it changed the direction of the Cro-Mags.
I didn’t realize the impact it would have on NYHC. When I was like 14 or 15, I was one of the only people on the New York scene covered in tattoos. Stigma had a few from back in the day, Roger had a little one, and John had a couple from when he was in the Navy, but other than that, no one really had them. We had a Skinhead friend, Elio, who started doing tattoos; he did us and a bunch of other people on the scene. Then me, Roger, Vinnie and some of us also went to Mike Perfetto’s in Brooklyn. I even started doing tattoos for a while. I did like three on John Bloodclot, some of our roadies, and a few people I knew. I did a lot of the Skinheads—I did a couple of really good ones but man, I did a few that were fucking horrible! Fortunately that didn’t last long, ’cause my tattoo gear got robbed! This kid Chris, he was all fucked up on drugs and robbed my gear, and he sold it to another guy, Marshall. Yeah, that was a funny story.
John, me, Louie Rivera, John’s brother Eugene, and my friend Richie Stig went to this motherfucker’s house. Stig was friends with the guy. So me and John talked him into knocking on the door, and hid on either side of the door. Stig knocked, Marshall looked through the peephole, and opened the door. John and me kicked the door in and we all bum-rushed through the door—inside there was a whole fuckin’ room full of people doing blow. I grabbed the motherfucker by his throat and pinned him against the wall and said, “Where’s my shit, motherfucker?!” He’s like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I looked around—not only were those assholes doing blow, but the guy’s got kids there. Louie’s like, “Damn, you’re doing drugs right in front of your kid?” I said, “Y’know what, motherfucker? I’m not going to beat your ass in front of your kids.”
So I dragged him into the kitchen. Meanwhile, one of them ran to grab the phone to call the cops. John ripped the phone out of the wall and threw it at one of them—Navy Dave, I think—and just missed his head as the fuckin’ phone exploded against the wall. We had the whole room in check. I dragged Marshall into the kitchen by his throat. The whole time I was looking around because I knew he had a gun somewhere in the house, and I didn’t know where he kept it. We got into the kitchen, and the first thing I saw was a rolling pin. So I grabbed the rolling pin, raised it over my head, and was ready to start smashing his fuckin’ head in with it. I was like, “Motherfucker, I’m going to give you ’til three. Where’s my shit?! One, two…” “Here it is, here it is!” and he went and got me all my tattoo equipment.
So we split and got into my boy Stig’s car. This was near Central Park. We pulled out on the west side of the park to head downtown, but it was the day before Thanksgiving. So they’re blowing up all the fuckin’ balloons for the parade. We got stuck in traffic, Rich was driving, John was next to him, and I was sitting in the back with all this tattoo shit on my lap in between John’s brother Eugene and Louie. All of a sudden, I see a cop talk into his walkie-talkie. He turns, looks at our car, and points at us. Now you figure, the street is lined with cops, ’cause they’re all setting up for the parade. So within a matter of seconds, it looked like the B
lues Brothers movie—the car was surrounded by 50–100 cops! They all got the call at once: “There’s been a home invasion, assault, robbery.” And then there we are, right in the middle of them. They pull us out of the car. This is when we were all vegetarians, so Marshall and those assholes are out on the street going “That’s them! I eat meat! I eat meat!” So we got locked up.
John’s nickname was Squid. The Bad Brains gave him that one, because he used to be in the Navy. But a “squid” is actually a UDT SEAL, so that’s how John started his whole “I was a Navy SEAL” rap. So we get locked up, and one of our boys was like, “Yo, Squid.” And one of the cops came in who happened to have been in the Navy, and he was like, “Which one of you is a Squid?” We were like, “Oh shit…” ’cause John was AWOL. His brother was in the Navy too, so Eugene said, “Uh, I was, officer.” And he started grilling him about a bunch of military shit that only a military person would know. Eugene had got out of the military properly, so he was cool. But they were going to arrest us all for that assault, so Stig and me immediately jumped up and said, “No, man, it was us, we did it.” We took the rap, ’cause we knew that if they fingerprinted John, he’d go down. But because it was Thanksgiving weekend, we didn’t get to see the judge for about a week.
We ended up spending eight days bouncing from cell to cell, precinct to precinct. What they did was keep us in a cell until right before it was time to feed us, and then they’d move us. And then they’d keep us in the fuckin’ truck handcuffed to everybody, until right after they feed everybody who’s in there, and then they’d bring us in. So they were basically torturing us for days.
We didn’t eat the ham in the sandwiches they eventually gave us, so there Stig and I were, trading the ham sandwiches for cheese sandwiches with other cats in the cells. And we were trading the cheese because it had rennet in it, which is an enzyme from a cow’s stomach. We were really serious about our vegetarianism, so we would trade the cheese for some sugar, so we could put it in our tea, which was horrible.
So we were living off bread from the cheese sandwiches and tea. It had been a few days and nights, and at one point they had like 30 of us in a big holding cell, and this one dude cracked out some weed! He only had like a little bitty pin joint, but everyone was like, “Oh shit!” So they lit it up. Me and Stig were standing at the other end of the cell, and within about 40 seconds, you could hear the cops coming. They were like, “Who the fuck is smoking weed?!” Like four of them came in and went, “Hold out your hands!” So they lined everyone up. “Let me smell your fingers!” They started smelling everyone’s fingers to see who was smoking. They got to one guy who had been puffing and they smelled it, and boom—body shot, right in the solar plexus! He dropped to the floor and they dragged him out.
As they worked their way around the cell to get to me and Stig, I’m like, “Fucking pigs,” and I stuck my hands down my pants and rubbed my hands all up and down my nut sack, so when they got to me and smelled my fingers, all they smelled was ball sack sweat! Mind you, we hadn’t bathed in days! You shoulda seen the look on that pig’s face when he smelled my fingers! Fuck him.
One of those nights, everybody was in their individual cells and everyone was pissed off—hungry, irritated, just mad at the world—and getting ready to go to Rikers Island. So everyone was talking shit. There was one Puerto Rican guy talking mad shit: “Yo, when we get out to Rikers, my brother’s already out there, we’re gonna be fucking shit up! All you niggas better know, don’t fuck with me!” And everybody’s like, “Shut the fuck up!” Everybody was getting ready for Rikers, so everybody was being a dick, letting everyone know not to fuck with them.
Every now and then, the cops would come by and say “Shut the fuck up!” and start slamming their sticks on the cell doors. We were in cells with no bars, so we couldn’t see each other, we could only hear each other screaming and talking shit. At one point, the cops started getting real pissed. They started talking mad shit to the inmates, and cats were talking shit back to the cops. Then, out of nowhere, the whole fucking row of cells started singing, “We will, we will rock you!”—in defiance of the cops. It was awesome. For a minute, there was unity. Nobody knew each other, but everybody starting singing it, just to piss off the cops. No one knew the words except for that part, but all of a sudden this one metalhead white boy started rapping the lyrics. I got goose bumps—all of a sudden, we all united through this fuckin’ song, and then this timid white boy who hadn’t said shit the whole time, starts, “Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise…”—it was just beautiful! It was one of those moments when you were just like, “Fuck authority.”
Eventually, we went before the judge. We didn’t have any major priors, so they let us go. The only people who didn’t start talking shit were all my craziest, illest Skinhead friends from back in the day, cats like Dagger and Spike, who came to New York around that time. Dagger fucked up anyone who talked shit about me; same with Bags. All the most violent ones still had my back ’cause they were my boys. But the rest of the NYHC scene pretty much started talking shit when I got into Krishna consciousness. All the fake Skinheads thought I was getting soft or something, and even motherfuckers I didn’t know—’til I put a bunch of them in the hospital.
I kept hearing about this one Skinhead named JP that had supposedly kicked my ass. It was all over the place: “Yeah, I heard that JP kicked Harley’s ass!” Meanwhile, I didn’t know who the fuck JP was. When he was finally pointed out to me by this kid Yoko I knew, I was like, “That motherfucker!” I got pissed and started walking up to him. I said, “Hey JP, lets go for a walk.” He started saying some shit about not going anywhere with me, and before he got it all out of his mouth, I started punching him, then I head-butted him in his face. That’s what really fucked him up. He bent over wobbling, holding his face, with blood dripping through his fingers, both his hands over his mouth. I started picking shots and kicking him in the head and face at will. It went on for a while, right in the middle of the park, in the middle of the day. I had this big, pointy ring John gave me with a big silver lion’s head on it, so whenever I punched his bald head, it would just bubble up and blood would start running out of it. Yeah, I fucked him up good; turns out I knocked out eight of his front teeth, his top four fronts and then his bottom four with the head-butt. It all happened right in broad daylight. You could never do that shit now.
After I fucked him up, I split for a while. When I came back, I walked up and the motherfucker was sitting there on a bench with his back turned to me and he was telling someone he’d been jumped by eight Puerto Ricans. I was like, “What, motherfucker?!” I was gonna fuck him up again. I grabbed him by what was left of his toothless face and instead of punching it with my fist, I looked him up and down and said, “Take off your boots,” ’cause that’s how we used to do shit. I took my punch knife and cut them off him. All these Puerto Rican dudes were laughing their asses off. The funny shit was I didn’t wear leather anymore as I was already vegetarian, but I guess it was an old habit. So I held them up and said, “Who wants these?” Some chick said, “He stole them from my friend.” So I gave them to her and said, “Here, give them back.” Some comical shit all of it was.
So after I beat down a lot of the new-jack Skinheads for talking shit, quite a few people started following John and me down that Krishna path. “Krishna-core” and “Krishna Skins,” that shit is laughable to me now. Those were terms given to us by the other idiots on the scene; we didn’t come up with such dumb shit.
So, when John and me both got into Krishna consciousness, the devotees embraced what we were doing, because we were turning on a lot of Hardcore kids to it. They didn’t say “Renounce Hardcore.” They said, “Go out and preach Krishna consciousness,” and that made total sense to me. I don’t think Parris knew what to make of it; a lot of people didn’t. But for a minute, it seemed like half the New York scene thought about moving into the temple. Of course I’m exaggerating, but a lot of people started getting into it.
One night, me, Bloodclot, Watson, Crazy Dave, Todd Youth, and Louie, all ate a shitload of mushrooms. We freaked out, and decided everything was bullshit—that everything we were into and all the Hardcore shit and the material world was all an illusion—and we had to all move into the temple that night! So we all did, except for Louie. Well, that didn’t last long. Bloodclot, who was always moving in and out of the temple, left that same night. So did Todd. They both snuck out separately at different times. Todd left when he saw they had no toilet paper in the bathrooms. They just had a little thing of water. He was like, “Fuck that, I ain’t wiping my ass with my fingers!”
A few weeks after that, I went looking for John, and found him at the squat—sitting in our old pad, smoking a spliff, and listening to the Bad Brains. I went off on him, telling him, “Man, what happened to Krishna consciousness, dude? You still stuck on your false ego trip, bro?” He got all pissed. Eventually, I started to question if I was there for the right reasons. I had a meeting with the devotees and the temple President. They told me I would do more good for the spreading of the philosophy and the movement if I stayed out in the world, playing music and spreading the word. God gave me the gift of music for a reason, and that it was a blessing and that I should use it—that I would do more for the movement that way than by standing on a street corner handing out books. So with that in mind, I listened and left.
Hard-Core: Life of My Own Page 18
