Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  When I was young, I was always on the prowl. If I wasn’t fighting, I was fucking or getting high or trying to do one of the above. I’d be on tour hunting, on Avenue A hunting, at the clubs hunting. Besides making music, those were my main pastimes.

  But during those years there were a few significant relationships that stood out. When I was like 14, I started going out with this super-hot 17-year-old everybody wanted to get with. I took her cherry on her 17th birthday. When we broke up I was all fucked up. That was right before I hitchhiked to Cali; it may even have been part of the reason why. I can’t remember anymore. And there was the chick I went to Canada with when I was 15; she was 18. But my first real knock-me-on-my-ass-love was the one who is tattooed on my arm, Kitty. I was like 18 and she was maybe 16. I met her in Washington Square Park. She was a West Side punk. There used to be a rift between the East Side and West Side punks; we kind of ended that. It was the Skinhead punk rock teen romance, and I was about as in love as you can be at that age. We were just kids. It was Age of Quarrel days. The first show I took her to was when the Cro-Mags played with the Bad Brains at the Rock Hotel on Jane Street.

  Then there was the second “big one.” That lasted from the late ’80s into the ’90s. We loved each other a lot, but we had a lot of problems. When I met her, I wasn’t doing drugs, but she was struggling with a dope problem.

  My main problem was that I was one of the “cool guys” on the scene and I was in a band, so I was fucking chicks left and right, and I guess I was kind of high on myself; looking back now I can admit it. She went out with one of the Dead Boys’ roadies when she was like 14 or 15 and that’s what got her all fucked up on drugs. The heroin scene in NYC was really ugly back then; she lived in squats like me. We had both been through a lot very young. We both lost our childhoods.

  After we broke up, she had a kid with some crackhead. She continued with her drug use and I cleaned up and wound up taking care of her kid after rescuing the kid from a crackhouse. I took care of her for over two years until her grandmother stepped in, and at that point I knew it was time for me to let go.

  Without the feeling of being needed, I didn’t feel I had much purpose in my life, and I started falling back into fuck-up mode. I was seeing several different chicks around that time; one of them flew me to Amsterdam where I went completely bananas for a while. I wasn’t using hard drugs like heroin or crystal meth anymore, but I was back in party mode: ecstasy, Special K, hookers, sluts, drinking, and smoking.

  That’s when I first started working on this book. This girl flew me to Europe, and I was staying in a hotel in the red light district in Amsterdam. The working title was “The Longest Suicide Note Ever Written.” I was trying to document the madness from as far back as I could remember—until the end. The story was of my life as an insane suicidal joyride, of rock ‘n’ roll depravity and demise until the final crash-and-burn. It was gonna be the book that all the great fuck-ups never got to write ’cause they died first. So I began working on it. I figured the end would have to come sooner than later. But I was wrong.

  Just after that, I hooked up with the mother of my sons. We were doing lots of club drugs like E, but not the hard shit I had been fuckin’ with before. I remember one weekend in Amsterdam with her, I did like 16 hits of E and her little ass did 19, and we never left the room—we just fucked for the whole weekend.

  I had known her and her family a few years. They were from a little town in upstate New York. I was friends with her brothers. They were both Cro-Mags fans. One of them was in a band.

  I remember her brother asked me if it was all right for him to give her my number, that she had asked him for it, and I said sure. One day she came down to visit me, and then I started going up to see her. I’d go up and stay with her for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Finally, she came to the city for good, and moved in.

  We went on some crazy trips to Amsterdam and other places. I took her all over the world with me on tour. She was with us when Parris, Rocky George, and Ryan Krieger and me went out on the Samsara tour of the States, as well as the final few Cro-Mags tours. I can’t even tell you how crazy we were getting over there in Europe and Amsterdam, it’s almost shameful. I don’t want my kids to know how nuts me and their mother were, but let’s just say we had a great time.

  Before me, she had hung with a lot of criminals and scumbags like I had; she had lots of friends in jail. She’d been involved with dealing and so on: comin’ to the city, troopin’ shit from Hunts Point in the Bronx back upstate and movin’ it. So I guess it was some kind of a step in the right direction for both of us. We were both getting away from some of the bad elements we had been around.

  Looking back on it now, in some ways maybe we were too much alike, especially back then. She was 100% all the way, almost worse than I am—love, hate, or anything else.

  And it was difficult at times, ’cause like me, she had a short fuse and a bad temper. She was young and jealous and pretty much ready to scrap with anyone at any given time. There were times she was ready to fight girls who were backstage or at a club—girls that were friends of the other band members, ’cause they were “hookers,” as she called them. I used to get into beefs with her publicly over chicks all the time, even ones I had nothing to do with, or ones I had known years before we met. It was a little ridiculous at times. But at the time, I took it as her love for me.

  We were a hard couple—hard on each other and hard to deal with. We loved hard, we fought hard, and ultimately the whole shit just got too fuckin’ hard and ugly. Sometimes it was like the fuckin’ UFC in our house. But I do believe that we loved each other, and for most of the years that we were together, things were good—crazy but good.

  We smuggled shit across virtually every state in the U.S. and every border in Europe, smuggled in and out of the U.S. We grew weed together; we brought in all the most popular seeds and strains from Amsterdam. And you can thank us for some of the best kinds of bud that circulated NYC in the early ’00s. We brought back a ton of E from Holland and sold most of it to her friends, and made a killing. I fought side-by-side with her when two-hundred-pound men would’ve run. She had been arrested for flipping on cops when they were arresting me—just goin’ completely and totally ghetto nuts on them.

  I remember one time I was upstate. I was out for a ride with an idiot friend of ours, and we got pulled over. He had no license on him, so they got him out of the car, and he had some pills on him. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the back seat, and I had almost one hundred hits of E in my pocket that I brought back from Amsterdam and like two grams of weed!

  I knew I didn’t have time to hide both, so I took the E out of my pocket and put it inside my sock. The weed stank real strong, so I knew they’d find that. So I said, “Fuck it, I’ll use it as a decoy.” They pulled me out, and this fuckin’ female cop, who was a total bitch, dug her hand in my pocket and found the weed. She started slamming me against the car, cuffs me, and throws me in the car without doing a thorough search. Right then, my girl happens to be coming down the street. She sees this and comes running over—and starts flippin’ on the cops. I was in the car, and they had my idiot friend. I was the car like fuckin’ “Harley Houdini.” I had my hands cuffed behind my back, so I pulled my feet up through my hands, so my hands were in front of me. I got the E out of my shoe, stashed it under part of the seat. I had my arm wedged up under the shit, and tried to push the E as far up behind the seat as I could.

  Meanwhile, they were out there arguing, and my girlfriend was flippin’. The cops were trying to control her and calm her down, and they had this idiot over the hood of the other car cuffed, while they went through his pills. No one noticed me in the car squirmin’ around, trying to stash this shit, except for her—she totally saw it. At that point, I put my sock and shoe back on, trying not to get noticed while I’m like Houdini pulling my legs back over the handcuffs, to get my hands behind me again, so they don’t notice.

  So finally they got me to this little b
itty precinct. By then, they had arrested her too, for disorderly conduct. Meanwhile, I had almost one hundred hits of E stashed in the cop car, and I was trying to play it cool, like it’s no big deal—“Yeah, it’s cool, you only got me for a bit of weed, I ain’t sweatin’ it.” Meanwhile, I was shitting bricks, thinking that when they searched this fucking cop car they were gonna find that shit, and I’m fucked! So they took me in. They had me handcuffed to a wall, and she was in a different room, cuffed.

  All I could hear was her screaming at the cops, talking mad shit. I was yelling, “Shut the fuck up, you’re just gonna make it worse!” So I was still stressing, but I didn’t want to show it. This one fuckin’ dick cop strip-searched me, totally being a typical pig-fuck power-tripping, all trying to intimidate me. But I wasn’t giving him any satisfaction. I was talking shit right back to him. Then they got another call, so the cop that arrested me ran out and took the car with them. I was lucky as fuck!

  Usually, protocol requires a thorough search of the vehicle, but it was this shitty holding tank in a little precinct somewhere outside of Troy. There were no other squad cars there at the time, so this cop ran out, and took the car and the evidence with her. Who knows who eventually got busted for that shit. I’m sure someone must have eventually. So they only had me for a little bit of weed. I spent the night in jail, and I got out the next day.

  But yeah, she was crazy. Maybe that was part of what I liked about her. But that’s just how it was, if it was “on.” I saw her hit people with big-ass Mag flashlights, beer mugs, and brass knuckles. When shit started going bad with Parris, she saw it coming before I even had a clue.

  After we finished tracking the songs for Revenge and before it was released, we had the chance to do a short tour with this band Earth Crisis. It wasn’t paying much, but it was a chance to get our feet wet with Rocky so we said, “Fuck it, let’s do it.” Dave DiCenso who drummed on Revenge and who toured with us as White Devil with Bobby Hambel from Biohazard was not available to tour. So we wound up recruiting Ryan Krieger, who was suggested to us by our old friend Billy Milano of SOD/MOD. Ryan was a sick drummer, and has since recorded and toured with me many times.

  We still weren’t sure about a name for the group. At that time we’d pretty much decided not to go out as the Cro-Mags, and “White Devil” had too much of a negative vibe. So we went out as “Samsara,” which was one of the names we’d been considering. I liked the meaning—Samsara means “the eternal cycle of birth, old age, disease, death, and rebirth”—but I didn’t like the name. We were opening shows and we weren’t getting paid much ’cause we weren’t being billed as the Cro-Mags. But we just wanted to play.

  At the beginning of the tour, Earth Crisis were like, “Oh man, you guys are the best! If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t even be playing this type of music. Cro-Mags were such a huge influence…”

  They were one of those “vegan-Hardcore bands,” and they were giving me mad props for turning them on to vegetarianism. So at first, they started off being really respectful of us and of the Cro-Mags. They were all up Rocky’s ass for his Suicidal-ness, too. I wasn’t trippin’ or lettin’ it swell me up. I really didn’t mind opening up for them, it was all good.

  I thought they were cool at first, and the first couple days we were hanging. It seemed like we got along, but as soon as the tour got going, they launched into a whole different vibe, this “Now, you know we’re not breaking down our drums or amps or anything else for you, right?” All stone-faced, and shit like, “you guys ain’t the Cro-Mags anymore, we’re headlining.” Meanwhile, we were playing stages that weren’t very big. It was kinda outta left field. It was like, that’s the kinda shit you get from rock star bands, it’s not what you’re supposed to get from Hardcore bands—and especially not at small shows. And especially not when it’s with people that just gave you all this horseshit about how much they love you, and wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing if it wasn’t for you. You’d expect a little bit of respect, at the least.

  Whatever, it was no big fuckin’ deal. It’s not the first time I’ve experienced that type of bullshit from other fake-ass motherfuckers. They get a little bit of juice and they think they’re hot shit. They’ll blow smoke up your ass privately one second, and then treat you like you’re some bum the next second. But things just kept happening on that little-ass tour.

  One night, their drummer got in some shit with some dude at a show. The guy was about to fuck him up, so I grabbed him and escorted him out before he fucked up the drummer or got jumped by the bouncers. The fuckin’ dude then drove by the place, and threw something at what he thought was Earth Crisis’ van, as he screamed, “Fuck Earth Crisis!” But it was our van, and he broke the window. But they just loaded up their gear and split. It was like, “I just jumped in a fight for you motherfuckers, and that’s how you’re going to act?” Not even a “Yo, sorry about the window.” Nothing. So I developed a sort of dislike toward them. Then, a couple of times they showed up at shows and didn’t want to play ’cause there wasn’t a big turnout—but they still wanted to get paid. Just rock star shit that you’re really not supposed to see on a Hardcore level.

  Then one night, our merch money disappeared when their merch guy was watching our shit. It was just bullshit. He cried his fuckin’ way out of it, and I wanted to kill him. After shit like that I was like, “Yo, fuck these guys.” I’d piss in their ice buckets and coolers every night in their dressing room before they’d get there, where all their drinks and food were stored. So all night long, they’d be reaching into a bucket full of my piss! I’d dry the fuckin’ sweat off my balls and out of the crack of my ass after my sound check and set those towels with their stage towels, and fold them back up neat again. I’d be watching them wiping their faces with their towels onstage all night, laughing: “Fuck you!” Anyway, I really didn’t give a fuck again once it was over. It was old news to me.

  After that little bullshit tour, we changed our name back to the Cro-Mags for the simple reason that no matter where we played, people would scream, “Cro-Mags! Cro-Mags! Cro-Mags!” at us as soon as we’d walk out onstage. It was obvious, we were Cro-Mags for life, no matter what. And people wanted to hear that music. We could play completely different music with a different name, and people will still want to hear the Cro-Mags’ songs when they come to see us. And we were the main writers of the music—I did write a good majority of the lyrics—so it didn’t really make sense to sell ourselves short or try to change the name. The way I saw it, bands lose members, families lose members, and you don’t change your name; that’s who you are. So we changed our name back to the Cro-Mags. We self-released Revenge; we put it out as “Cro-Mags Recordings,” and piggybacked it with Before the Quarrel.

  I was particularly proud of the production on Revenge. It was the first time we ever had a real budget, or spent lots of time working on something—and I thought Parris and myself were at our best, Dave was flawless, and Rocky’s leads were amazing. But before King Records ever got up and running, the label folded, so that’s why we wound up releasing the album. At that point, they had financed the album, and bought us recording gear, and even a van. But at the end of it, all we were left with were our masters, ’cause the label folded. I keep saying “folded,” but really, it never happened at all. But we were lucky enough to be in possession of the masters and all our new gear when that happened. We also printed up the original cassette on CD, the one we had done when John first joined the band, which was Before the Quarrel.

  So we did the tour under the name Samsara, and then changed our name back to the Cro-Mags. As soon as we changed our name back, we started getting some pretty hot gigs. People didn’t care that John wasn’t in the band—it was the two main songwriters and the lead guitarist from Suicidal. We were doing big-ass festivals, and playing all the big stages with Slayer and other big bands. It was all pretty impressive, considering that we released the thing ourselves. We did some cool Woodstock-type shit over in Europe. One time we
played at this one festival with Destiny’s Child on one stage, and Iron Maiden on another. There was a Death Metal stage. We were on the Hardcore/Punk stage, and there was also a huge circus tent with a fuckin’ rave going on. The shit was nuts.

  At one point, Ryan Krieger was unavailable to tour, so we got Garry “G-Man” Sullivan, who was recommended by our old friend Alvin Robertson. Garry was another kick-ass drummer who’s played with just about everyone. We got right back out on tour. We went to Europe and did festivals. It was going well for a second. Then we did Europe again with Parris, G-Man, Rocky and me. Then we did another European trip with Ryan, Rocky, and me, and then one last tour with G-Man, me, Parris, and Rocky. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.

  I gotta say, Parris was doing a lot of the legwork, and for that he deserves a lot of credit—making calls, and keeping track of shit. These were jobs he really shouldn’t have been doing, but no one else was doing them, and we—especially he—didn’t trust anybody after everything we’d been through with Chris Williamson and everything else. And as he felt more and more in control of shit, I guess it went to his head. It started to make him a bit nuts—and he broke under the stress. First, he was like, “Man, I just want to play music, I don’t want to think about all this other shit.” But we both knew I could never do that admin shit. It seemed like a good thing at first, but in the long run it would prove not to be a good thing at all.

  The first of many things he did wrong was he didn’t put a picture with Rocky on the CD cover; he even went as far as photoshopping Rocky out of the picture that was used. Here was a guy who sold more records than either of us, and Parris left him off the cover? I never got it. At one point, he said something along the lines of, “It’s our band—he’s just a guest player.” That was just some ego thing that made no sense to me. I guess Parris didn’t want to be overshadowed by someone he felt hadn’t contributed as much or something. But it was a dumb decision.