Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  Ryan moved out West and was replaced by Garry Sullivan. Rocky George was still in NYC playing with me. We had just done a few Cro-Mags shows with John and Doug, with Garry on drums, and Rocky stayed around to do the recording with me, and some Harley’s War gigs. But I knew Rocky was gonna split soon. I was just happy I played with him as much as I did, ’cause he is one of my favorite guitarists. In 2002, I had the honor of having Darryl Jenifer from the Bad Brains playing bass with me for a few gigs, and I just held down the vocals. That came about ’cause one day I was thinking, “If I could ever replace myself on bass, who would it be?” and Darryl immediately popped to mind. I gave him a call and asked him if he was down to do a few shows just for fun, and he was. So we did, and that shit was great—we even did a few Bad Brains songs.

  This was when John Bloodclot and me weren’t at each other’s throats. We had just done those shows with the Bad Brains and he wasn’t out pimping his fake Cro-Mags shit yet. So he came up onstage at those shows at the end of the set that Harley’s War did with Darryl. I got on the bass and we did a bunch of The Age of Quarrel stuff. Those shows were great. Of course I knew playing with Darryl wasn’t gonna be a full-time thing either. I just wanted to have some fun and play with some other cats that I respected. It was meant to be a good-time project.

  I did a few gigs with just Darryl, Jay Vento, and Garry Sullivan. Then I briefly got that asshole A.J. from Leeway, or, that “scrawny, bald-headed motherfucker” as John called him. But when that happened, Jay bowed out; he wasn’t feelin’ A.J.—and looking back, “I hear ya.” This was around the time that the whole new schism with John happened.

  It was around this time that we booked the baby shower gig. It was gonna be big; it was at CBGBs with Cro-Mags, Harley’s War, Candiria, Merauder, and a shitload of other bands. Rocky moved back to L.A., and Doug had opted out of doing any more Cro-Mags shows—but they were both gonna do that show. Rocky flew into town; he was working on the Harley’s War recording with me.

  HARLEY, PERSONAL COLLECTION

  I didn’t want to go on John’s Cro-Mags tour; I wanted to stick around for the pregnancy. So John pulled the plug on the baby shower gig without telling me. He called CBs and told them that the show was cancelled. So Harley’s War played the gig at the Continental with Candiria, Merauder, and All Boro Kings—with Sean Kilkenny and some of the guys from Dog Eat Dog—and a bunch of other bands, instead.

  That was the final straw for me. John went out and did his fake Cro-Mags, and I said “Fuck it,” and kept gigging locally. In early 2003, I released the first Harley’s War CD, Hardcore All Stars/Cro-Mag. It featured the tracks I’d recorded at the Institute of Audio Research, and it included the Cro-Mags solo recordings I did as a kid in 1982/1983, plus some Stimulators stuff. I pressed the CD myself. I saved up money from making VHS Cro-Mags videos of old gigs and selling them at shows. I’d be sitting there at the table, cutting out the covers that I had just printed at Kinko’s, and putting them in the boxes. If that ain’t Hardcore, I don’t know what is. I made enough money selling those VHS tapes to print my first 1,000 CDs, which I sold right away, out of the box. So I printed another 2,000, and then another 2,000, and sold like 5,000 copies right away. I did pretty fucking well doing it out of my apartment, by myself with no label. The shit was totally DIY—and I still sold more CDs than Both Worlds or Bloodclot did with a real label behind them.

  From there, Harley’s War just kept morphing into different lineups as different cats got involved. I kept gigging around the New York area. I didn’t want to go on tour while my girlfriend was pregnant, but whenever I’d book a gig or two, I’d just call my boys, and see who was down. If one guy couldn’t do a gig—most of them were in other bands as well—I’d just call another friend of mine to jump in and take their spot.

  Around that time, this guy from the Netherlands called “Onno Cro-Mag,” an old Skinhead who’d helped promote some of our shows when I had been there with Parris, was working on an Oi! tribute compilation CD with Roger Miret. So I went into the studio and recorded two of my favorite Oi! songs: “Bad Man” by the Cockney Rejects and “Freedom” by the Last Resort.

  I’ve had most of the best players on the NYHC scene play with Harley’s War. I’ve had Eric Arce, now with the Misfits, on drums. I also played with another monster drummer, Walter Ryan, Maximum Penalty guitarist Joe Affe, and like I said, Rocky George, Jay Vento, Gabby Abularach, A.J. played a few gigs with me; also Eddie Ortiz, Joseph James and Steve Gallo from Agnostic Front and Inhuman, Vinnie Stigma even jumped up onstage with us, and of course Sean Kilkenny, who has been my “go-to guy” for years. Will “Cave Man” Dahl played guitar with me and recorded with me in the studio; he’s a great player and engineer. I’ve gone out with so many different guys; I even had Jorge from Merauder singing with me for a few shows. We played everything from Hardcore shows to big metal festivals to little bitty gigs in the woods in front of handfuls of people in the dark.

  That one time in the pitch-black woods, they had to use a car with the headlights on to light the stage and dance floor. As it got darker, we couldn’t see shit. I started yellin’ for my boy, Tank. I’m like, “Yo, Tank, where you at?” He’s like, “I’m right here.” He was standing next to me and I couldn’t see him! We played and we had a blast. Of course the kid who booked the “show” tried to dick out on the money. I dragged him to an ATM and made him empty his account, and that was that. As Sean Kilkenny said: “Harley always made sure you got paid. He never once promised something he could not deliver.”

  We did Europe, Scandinavia and Japan; we flew to fucking Norway for two days and did a two-day festival with GBH and came home. Sean Kilkenny: “Harley called me one day to ask what I was doing next weekend. I said, ‘Nothing, why?’ He said, ‘We’re going to Norway!’ And off we went. We were only there for a few days; after the last show I left without my guitar. Nobody realized my guitar was there. Somehow, some way, a year and a half later, this guy shows up in Europe at a Dog Eat Dog show with my guitar! He said, ‘This is from Harley and Ottar!’ I couldn’t believe it! But Harley came through again.”

  We played at CBGB so many times. I miss that place; it was like my home, my fuckin’ living room for most of my entire life. We did the last Hardcore matinee there with bands from Agnostic Front to Sick of It All to Murphy’s Law to Madball. It was insane! That was really a “goodbye to NYHC” in a lot of ways for me, the ending of an era. I actually gigged there a few times in the last few weeks of the club. The Stimulators did a reunion and played with the Dead Boys, and a week later with our old friends, the Bad Brains. I may have been the only person to play there three times in that last month of CBs.

  The truth is, I don’t have much in common with the new kids hanging out, besides that love for the music. They come from a different world than me. I don’t know much about what’s going on anymore; and that’s cool. I think my kids know more about it than I do—they’ve grown up on music. I remember walking my son to school one day when he was five. It was 8:30 in the morning, and he looked up at me and goes, “Dad, Tony’s really special.” I looked at him and go, “Tony who?” He looks at me in all seriousness, and goes, “Tony from Black Sabbath!” I thought that was great.

  But after I had my kids, it was like “pow”—the one kid in ’02 and then “pow” again in ’05. I was faced with the fact that while I was making okay money—I mean, it definitely pays better than it used to—it doesn’t have any real kind of security, and it’s always feast or famine. You go on tour, you make a little money, and then you rough it in between. Rock ‘n’ roll, and Hardcore in particular, doesn’t always pay the bills, and when you have kids, you gotta make sure there’s food in the fridge.

  Because of the first pressings of the Harley’s War CD, I had a little to float off of. My kids’ mother decided she wanted to go back to school so she could get a job, and that was fair. So I took off two years from playing gigs—and it really was the best gig I could’ve had. Those were some of the h
appiest times of my life, being with my kids all the time. I loved it. But it put a damper on the gigging and touring. Sometimes you have to prioritize, and I have no regrets. At that point I became the kids’ primary caregiver, looking after the kids every day.

  In 2007 Harley’s War made it to Japan. It was kind of bittersweet because that was something the Cro-Mags never did. And it was always a dream of mine. I had always wanted the Cro-Mags to be the first NYHC band to make it to Japan.

  I’ve been to Japan three times. We’ve done the Magma Fest, a big Hardcore/Punk event, sponsored by Magma and Measure, a Japanese Hardcore/Punk label. It was us, Murphy’s Law, Sick of It All, Madball, Hazen Street, H2O, Underdog, and a few other bands. It was like New York Hardcore took over Japan for a week! There were two stages, two huge skate ramps with pro skaters from all over the world doing tricks, big inflatable balloon dinosaurs, and Godzilla-type monsters—like a Warped Tour-type vibe. I got paid more to do a single show there than I’d ever been paid before. They must have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. If that plane went down, more than half the NYHC scene would’ve died!

  I remember Jimmy from Murphy’s Law and me almost got into it on that trip. Everyone thought that we were gonna fight in the airport. It was funny. I’ve known Jimmy most of my life—neither of us are known for taking shit, and we both have bad tempers. When we first got to Japan he started flippin’ that H2O, Madball and some other bands were acting like “rock stars,” and somehow started yelling at me. Well, next thing you know, like half the NYHC scene was standing there nervously while we were flippin’ on each other.

  HARLEY, PERSONAL COLLECTION

  At one point, I was chillin’ over there with the old Cro-Mags drummer Mackie, who was with Hazen Street. I think we were in Okinawa, and he was all, “Man, it’s too bad you and John can’t work things out, man.” I agreed with him. He was all, “We were some bad motherfuckers.” I’m like, “It took you that long to figure that shit out?” And we both laughed. I gotta say it was good to see him and to hear that from him after all these years.

  When we weren’t gigging, me, Sean, and Russell and Matt from Underdog all went out swimming in the ocean in Okinawa. Like dummies, we were diving off the big cement breakers set up to stop big waves. We were diving into water known to be infested with not just sharks and poisonous fish, but deadly jellyfish, sea snakes, and all kinds of other shit that can kill you. Meanwhile, the beaches are all fenced off to keep all the dangerous shit away from swimmers!

  There was a little drama at the end of the trip with the bands and money, but everything got resolved. I had no complaints. It was just that they were a new company and this was a huge event for them to try to pull off the first time around. But really, it was historic.

  Then I recorded some new material and shot a video at an underground fight club in the Bronx. The CD itself didn’t wind up coming out until after our next trip to Japan, but the video did. It was at the Underground Combat League (UCL), directed by B-boy legend Pop Master Fable. I lost the fight, but the video came out good.

  After it was recorded, I went back to Japan, and then the CD and DVD came out in the States and Europe. So I had these new tracks, but due to some mishaps with the engineer, I didn’t have enough material to release a full-length CD. So I released the new material along with the old Harley’s War Hardcore All Stars/Cro-Mag EP, with the 1982/’83 Cro-Mag demos and some bonus live Harley’s War at CBs, and a bonus DVD.

  Mike Mahler is a fitness, strength coach, and motivational speaker. Initially, I had given him permission to use some Harley’s War music for his DVDs on Kettlebell workouts, and then in turn, he helped me get back in the studio when I was unable to finance it myself. I got a distribution deal with MVD Audio, and I got in the studio thanks to Mike, who basically sponsored the recordings. I felt some of it was going to be the best stuff I ever recorded, but the engineer freaked out. At some point out of nowhere, he discovered a new “hobby”—crystal meth/coke. One thing led to another, and somehow in his mind I went from owing him $300 to $3,000 overnight! Go figure. Anyway, it turned into some drama with him flipping out, and I only got to walk with some of my tapes, and unfortunately, some of the best stuff got lost. Soon after, that engineer died. I tried to salvage what I could, but I really did lose some of the best stuff. The worst part is, some of it had HR of the Bad Brains on vocals. The shit kills me to even think about.

  In 2008, I was contacted by Magma and Measure to do another Magma Fest tour of Japan. This time they told us we’d be playing with punk rock legends the New York Dolls, as well as the Bad Brains, Biohazard, Marky Ramone’s band, and some Japanese bands. This time it was just a quick visit, a few gigs.

  November 27, 2008, we were getting ready to go. It was me, Will “Cave Man” Dahl, Sean Kilkenny, and this time Ryan Krieger on drums. We brought along my friend Rich Von Mullen, a tattoo artist and guitarist as tech/roadie, and Steven Blush, author of American Hardcore, to film and document the trip. This time, the chaos started when they didn’t get us our visas on time. They tried to talk us into re-routing through Seoul, Korea, to “try” to get our visas confirmed from there, which was completely nuts. So they rebooked our flights and we missed the first couple of gigs.

  December 2, 2008, we had our flights booked and we were supposed to be on our way to Japan. My roadie got to my house at 5:00 in the morning, and my phone battery was dead. The motherfucker didn’t know what apartment I was in, and sat there for three or four hours, and then I don’t know what the fuck, but he split. Sean and Will stayed at the studio the night before, and made it to the airport. Ryan was flying to Japan from L.A.; that would be the guys’ first face-to-face meeting. Steven Blush was in Florida and he made it to the airport. Everybody got to their airports.

  Me, I finally woke up; I got my AM and my PM fucked up! So the guys were at the airport, the plane was getting ready to board and I was calling them up, flipping the fuck out, and leaving messages. Finally, I got through to them. I was like, “Where are you?!” They’re like, “We are boarding the plane, where are you?!” It was almost kind of funny. So the boarding started and I was still in my house.

  The whole band was on the plane but me! Anyway, after a bunch of phone calls to and from Japan, I would leave the next morning, land in Japan, get picked up at the airport, get driven to the gig, walk up onstage, and play.

  The band had never actually met each other or played together! I had introduced them like two weeks earlier through an e-mail. It said something along the lines of “Ryan meet Sean and Will, Will, Sean meet Ryan,” and that was that. I sent them the set list of songs I wanted them to know, and they all met up in Japan for the first time!

  I knew individually they had it down, and that the band would sound great ’cause it was all guys I had played with before. Everybody knew what they had to do. I told them a few parts they needed to concentrate on and said, “When you get there, do sound check. Run through whatever songs you need to work on, and put together a set. I told them over the phone, ‘I’ll get picked up at the airport, and see you guys at the gig.’”

  So I was doing a headlining gig the same night I would land, then one day off, then two shows with Biohazard and the New York Dolls.

  Now, the madness begins—my drummer was in Tokyo ’cause he flew from L.A., my guitarists were in Nagoya, and I was in Detroit! My drummer would be arriving in time for sound check the next day, and I’d be arriving in time to get to the venue and walk onstage. I was cutting it very, very close. Also Steven Blush’s flight was late arriving in Tokyo; he missed his connecting flight. But somehow he made it there.

  I arrived at the airport, got through the gate, my ride was waiting, showtime was supposed to be 9:30. I pulled up at the club at 9:27! My guys were in the dressing room with their guitars on, strumming, trying to figure out, “What are we supposed to do if he doesn’t show up?” I walked in the door, got handed my instrument, walked onstage, took off my jacket and started playing.

 
; “We were onstage tuning and the intro was playing. We still haven’t heard if he even made it to Japan! Harley walked onstage at the last second. The band killed the place, and no one even knew he just got off a jet just an hour earlier and traveling all day. That’s a fucking rock star right there.” —Sean Kilkenny

  “The amazing part of that night was waiting by the airport gate in Nagoya, and seeing Harley escorted out of customs, in his wife-beater, a bag over his shoulder, and two kettle weights. We got into the car and the promoter handed over a huge sack of weed from Mount Fuji. And yes, he arrived moments before showtime.”—Steven Blush

  So that’s how the trip started. And then it gets even weirder.

  We got to the first of those big shows with the New York Dolls and Biohazard; the Bad Brains were on the bill, but didn’t make it. We were playing at a venue that held about 5,000 people, but there was zero advertising. So it was more like a private party: a two-day party with the New York Dolls, Biohazard, and Harley’s War, and a bunch of Japanese bands. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen. All the bands were confused as fuck.

  By the end of the second evening, there were all kinds of crazy rumors buzzing around that it was some kind of gangster money-laundering scheme ’cause they had spent so much money on the event and it seemed like they had no expectation of trying to make it back. It was hysterical—besides all the bands that were playing, there were only a couple of hundred people there. The first time we had been to Japan, the festival shows had a couple thousand. This time, there were bigger bands but it was empty. It was crazy. But these dudes who looked exactly like the Japanese Ramones were there.