Hard-Core: Life of My Own

by Harley Flanagan

  By going to Webster Hall that night, I had unintentionally launched myself into the most sensationalistic worldwide media frenzy in Hardcore history. Hardcore-Punk Rock-Stabbing-Biting-CBGB—the press had a field day.

  So there I was, being carried out of Webster Hall by cops into an ambulance, strapped into a chair with my hands cuffed behind my back, but I was still reaching my arms around to the side, giving everyone the finger. I was screaming all kinds of shit: “You fuckin’ punk motherfuckers! All of you pussies couldn’t take me out. You bitch-ass motherfuckers! How’s your fuckin’ face motherfucker, you like that shit!…”

  Those motherfuckers had gotten so used to jumping people at Hardcore shows—kids with no heart who’d just take the beating—but yo, you jump on me, you better know that shit’s gonna get serious. And of course, my ol’ buddy John was nowhere to be found.

  He left down the back stairs that led to the stage as I was coming into the dressing room, just in time. He later told the press that he had armed himself with a metal pipe just in case ’cause he knew that I was gonna be there.

  I have to laugh: big, bad John dipping down the back stairs with his pipe. I mean, I always knew he was a bit of a bitch, but this was straight-up embarrassing. He should be ashamed and embarrassed; I’m ashamed for him that he even aligns himself with a bunch of wannabe thugs, especially since he pretends to stand for Krishna Consciousness and righteousness. That’s the guy I thought might still have some sincerity or love left. Boy, was I wrong.

  I thought all those years and all the good times meant more than all the petty bullshit and beef, and that the positivity would outweigh the negativity—that what we did together mattered more.

  I still believe in brotherhood, friendship, loyalty and forgiveness. I believed that growing up with someone and living on the streets with them and all that mattered. I believed that New York Hardcore had some sincerity and loyalty and honesty—or at least the old heads did—and that it was still a family. But I was wrong.

  So many people decided to immediately point fingers at me and to jump on the “Harley’s a loose cannon” bandwagon—even journalists that I know and people at labels that were supposed to be friends of mine for years started talking shit.

  God forbid anyone has the balls to speak the truth or for that matter stick up for a friend or someone who’s been on the scene since it began—motherfuckers would rather hide in the shadows than speak up ’cause everyone is a punk nowadays, and sadly the scene has deteriorated into some high school bullshit, where everyone is a kiss-ass so desperate to be accepted that they’ll just suck each other’s dicks to be a part of the cool crowd. I’ve been saying it for years, people: your New York Hardcore heroes and idols are nothin’ but bitches.

  The ambulance was outside Webster Hall, and people were all freaking out trying to take my picture. I had people coming up to the ambulance trying to get a look inside to see if it was me. I could hear people saying “Is that Harley?” Some chick looked in the window and said, “Harley, is that you?” I just smiled and shook my head.

  On the way to the hospital in the ambulance, my arresting officer smiled at me and said, “Well, at least they know you ain’t a punk!” Then he started laughing and repeating some of the things I had been yelling at the crowd. We both started laughing. I got to Bellevue Hospital and my leg was a bloody mess. There was blood all over my sneakers—some of it mine, some of it the punks’ that jumped me. From that point on, it just got more and more surreal.

  I was in a section of the hospital reserved for people either going to jail or who had been fucked up in jail and needed work on them that they couldn’t do in the prison hospital. I could tell you a few funny stories from there: guys on stretchers high on dust flipping out, people with slashed faces talking shit to cops and hospital staff—total madness.

  I was recognized by a few of the detectives who came to talk to me and see what was going on. By then, the incident was already all over the news and Internet. The punk-ass motherfuckers that I fucked up were in another section of the hospital ward getting stitched up—and that’s when I found out that I was the so-called perpetrator and they were the so-called victims.

  All these NYHC bitches were making it out like I launched myself into the dressing room like a wild man and just started stabbing people or some bullshit. I’ve known where John lives for years, so if I wanted to attack him wouldn’t I just go to his apartment? No, I would go to a concert full of people and attack him in a room full of witnesses and all his friends and band members all by myself. Even a dumbass should be able to figure out that isn’t what happened.

  All these fake hoods were quick to point the finger at me to try to cover their own tracks, and all the rest of the sheep and the media just went along with it—the more outrageous and sensationalistic, the better the story, right? The best one I heard was Jimmy Gestapo smuggled the knife into the club up his ass and gave it to me.

  From the hospital, I went to the 9th Precinct, where I had several cops come by my cell saying shit like, “Flanagan, what the fuck happened? What were you thinking?” To which I kept responding, “I got jumped. I got stabbed in the leg. Those motherfuckers are lying. This is bullshit.” Then a detective interviewed me. He’s interrogating me, trying to get all the details of the event, and he kept re-asking the same questions over and over in different ways, walking in and out of the room. I told him the same shit, and then they took me back to my cell. Time stood still from there on.

  From there I went to “The Tombs” down by Centre Street. The sun was just coming up when I got out of the police van. There were photographers waiting for me. Who was I, John-fuckin-Gotti? Charles Manson? I couldn’t believe the press was there, snapping my picture as the cops marched me in.

  I got inside, the doors closed behind me and the whole process began, strip-searched and whatnot. And then I waited; and as I did, I tried to wrap my brain around what was going on. It was bullshit, and on top of all of it, it didn’t help that me and the mother of my two boys were, to put it politely, going through a extremely ugly break-up. And all of this shit blew up around the same time. The worst part was that my kids were stuck in the middle.

  I didn’t handle it well. She was threatening to take my kids, and after the Webster Hall incident she started using it against me, trying to take them. I didn’t see any of it coming.

  At that point, the press was at my house interviewing my neighbors and trying to get comments from my family. I was being railroaded. The quotes from all the assholes at the show had painted me like I was some dust-crazed Charles Manson that just went berserk.

  Eventually I got led to see the judge, and met my court-appointed lawyer from the Legal Aid Society. After a few minutes in front of the judge, he said some shit but all I heard was blah blah blah $25,000 bail! My jaw dropped and I was led back down the stairs and into a cell. Eventually I was taken with all the other inmates and we boarded the bus to Rikers Island.

  The bus ride to Rikers was a trip. They had me in my own little cage up in front of the bus, me and this one big black guy. He was in a separate cage behind mine ’cause we were both going to PC (Protective Custody) since we both allegedly committed serious crimes, and mine in particular was so high-profile that they didn’t want me or him in with the general population. We started talking, and I started mentally preparing myself for whatever might happen next. I still hadn’t slept. I’d been awake for two or three days; I kind of lost track of time.

  I got to Rikers, went through all the processing, endless strip-searches, body scans and bullshit. Every step of the way, I was meeting people, both COs and inmates, who knew who I was, either from the Cro-Mags or from all the press. I was sent to C-76. I had no idea how much media attention I had been getting. I was in every major newspaper, on almost every channel and the radio—like 1010 WINS, Channel 2, and Channel 5. I was even on Taxi TV. So by the time I got out there, everyone knew about me. I even met a few COs that were fans of the band. It was bizar
re.

  Anyone who knows Rikers knows how big the place is, and how much craziness goes on in there. There were helmeted riot cops with shields heading from one area to another. They were these big motherfuckers that you weren’t allowed to look at. You had to face the wall whenever they walked by. I eventually got brought down to my cellblock and brought into cell 22. While in there, an inmate they called Smoke walked by mopping the floor. He looked at me and said, “I know you, what’s your name? Are you Harry?” I replied, “Harley.” He said, “Yeah, I saw you on Channel 2. They called you the white Mike Tyson,” and smiled and kept mopping. A little later, he came to my cell and gave me a copy of the New York Post with a full-page picture and story about me on page 2.

  The more I read, the more pissed I got. The lies were ridiculous. They claimed I was pacing around in front of Webster Hall with a serrated hunting knife, acting all crazy, singing the lyrics to Cro-Mags songs, talking about “Who the fuck do they think they are, playing my songs?” I was like, “What??? That didn’t happen!!! What the fuck??!!”

  Of course all the reports came from nameless sources, and then they had quotes from bitch-ass John talking shit. I was so fucking pissed. The guy in the cell next to me, Bam Bam, had shot two cops. The guy across from me ran a guy over three times; they called him a habitual violent offender. He was actually a nice guy. This other dude I met they called Knowledge, he had been in and out of the system for most of his life. He showed me around a little. One dude offered me some food ’cause I had missed dinner. I didn’t want to take it; I didn’t feel like owing any favors, but he was cool. I eventually took it. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten in so long, I didn’t even care that it was chicken. So for the first time in many years, I ate chicken. It was nasty but I didn’t give a fuck.

  I had no blanket, just two sheets and this thin plastic mattress on a metal bed in a little cell. There I was, and I had no idea for how long. When I came out and went into the main room with the TV where everyone hung out, they were all checking me out; they all knew who I was. I was still wearing my bloody T-shirt and bloody sneakers. There were also these two drag queens that pretty much just hung out by the TV shaking their asses as they watched and “vogueing,” hoping to get some attention from the other inmates.

  I almost got into a fight with some big Puerto Rican dude on the second day I was in there. He tried to hard-rock me but I stood my ground; nothing happened and that was that. From that point on, I kept my eye on him and didn’t let him stand behind me. I was doing over 1,000 push-ups a day. I was skinny from not eating right, but I figured if I’m gonna be here for a while, I’m gonna need to get in shape.

  It was as if my past and my present had collided; it was like some A Clockwork Orange shit. Just when things were starting to go well: I was working at Renzo Gracie Academy, I was a black belt, I had just signed a recording deal, I had my kids, and all of a sudden my past reached out and grabbed me. And I was really seeing who my friends were and who was full of shit.

  I remember my man Knowledge saying to me, “Yo, you’re high-profile, B. As many people are comin’ up against you right now, watch, you’re gonna have just as many people comin’ for you soon from out of places you never expected. You wait and see, this is no bullshit. Your shit was all over the news, B. That’s no bullshit.”

  Sure enough, he was right. As many friends I had that didn’t want anything to do with it or with me—people who were chicken-shitting away from me and talking shit—I had people that I couldn’t believe stepping up for me. I spoke to Renzo while I was locked up and he told me, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of there. Do you have a lawyer? We will get you one.” I told him I was good and that it was self-defense. He assured me that he and everyone at the academy believed in me and had my back and knew it was bullshit.

  At one point, I was in my cell and I was told I had a visitor: “legal counsel.” I was like “Damn, this shit must be serious if my public defender is taking time from all his other cases and coming all the way out here to talk to me.” I didn’t have a jumpsuit, but I needed to wear one to go from one part of the jail to another, so they made me borrow one. They told an inmate to give me his—ironically, it was from the one guy I had almost had a fight with.

  I get up there and bam, it wasn’t my lawyer at all, it was Laura Hill, who I had met just a few months earlier. I had done an interview for her website New York Natives. After I did the interview, we stayed in touch via e-mail; she was going to help me do some editing on this book. I had sent her a few chapters and we had started going back and forth with it when all of this shit happened.

  I was racking my brain thinking what the fuck was she doing here, and then I remembered her telling me that she was a lawyer, but not criminal law.

  I was like, “What are you doing here, this isn’t the kind of law you do???” I’d just spoken to her a few days earlier, and she was freaked out when she heard about what happened, so she used her legal credentials, got some sort of letter from her law firm, and was able to come in and visit me. I will never forget that shit.

  It was fucked up. Here was someone who barely knew me coming out to see me, and the mother of my boys was hanging up the phone in my face and talking mad shit to me. I was heartbroken and pissed off as hell. And I had never felt so betrayed in my life.

  All night, you’d hear people screaming and talking shit. The youth offenders were in the same building as us, right next store. So all night, you’d hear them screaming, “Suck my dick motherfucker! I’ll fuck you up! Suck my dick!” Riot cops came in all fucking night. Then as the sun would start coming up and they’d finally shut up, the seagulls would start making noise. It was nonstop. Ironically, it was the best sleep I had gotten in a while—ever since I’d started going through the bullshit with my ex.

  My life had truly become a nightmare.

  I remember at one point, I was looking out my window through the gates. It was a beautiful sunny day and I could hear birds, and a butterfly flew past my window and I was like, “Damn.” Right then and there that butterfly represented freedom. What I wouldn’t do to be free right then. I had no idea what was gonna happen. My lawyer told me that I was possibly looking at two and a half years in jail.

  The idea of being away from my kids and in jail, my woman leaving, losing my job, my apartment, my record deal—all of it—and for what? Defending myself? What the fuck! After a week I got bailed out by my uncle, so I knew I’d be on the street at least until my next court date, providing I could stay out of trouble until then.

  During my stay in Rikers my stab wound had gotten really infected ’cause when I was in the hospital they stitched it up real tight instead of stuffing it and letting it drain out. I wound up with MRCA and a staph infection from all the filth in there, so I ended up back in the hospital for about a week after I got out, on an IV.

  It was as if I was being tested in every way.

  So many of my so-called friends turned their backs on me, all the motherfuckers on the scene were painting me out to be some insane freak—even though most of these fucks are nothin’ but coke-sniffin’ drug-dealin’ scumbags at this point. Oh yeah, and of course I can’t leave out all the straight-edge dweebs and wannabe Hare Krishnas.

  I hadn’t been to a show in years except for when I had a gig to play, and I hadn’t been in a fight in years. I hadn’t done drugs or drank in years; all I did was take care of my kids, train Jiu-Jitsu and teach. It didn’t matter; I guess my reputation from the past still lingered in people’s memories and in NYHC history—forget where I actually was in my life.

  Because of all the people talking shit and trying to frame me, the record label I had just signed with was having second thoughts; everything was coming to a head. And now I had to prepare for a court date, facing four felony counts of second-degree assault and weapons charges—for biting and stabbing people

  I shoulda stayed home that night.

  I gotta laugh. If there was ever a time that I was about to lose my shit
, I’d have to say it was around this time. If there was ever a time someone would relapse into drugs, alcohol or some self-destructive shit, it was a time like this. I actually went out and got drunk a few nights, which I hadn’t done in a long time. I was really depressed. I was really at the bottom. I could have easily spun out of control, but I said to myself “Fuck that,” I was not gonna let myself go and do that to myself or to my kids, or give in and give the satisfaction to my enemies. I’m a black belt—I have more control than that now. I am not who I once was, I am stronger than that.

  I didn’t know where to turn or what to do, but I was starting to see who my real friends were, and for the most part, they weren’t who I thought they were. But I did have a few people who really came through for me, and I’ll never forget that. A few people started trying to raise money for me to help with legal fees and such, but it was few and far between and nothing actually happened. And then of course there were the total fuckin’ nuts reaching out to me as well.

  But during this time Laura really came through for me; she literally took me in off the street. I had been couch-surfing, sleeping on my roof and in parks. If not for her being there, I would not have made it through those times.

  As I waited for my court date, I started training and working at RGA again (thank you Renzo). I was amazed how much support I got at the Academy, not just from Renzo and all my friends, but from the parents of my young students. I was humbled by their faith and trust in me. I remember one of the mothers telling me that in the wake of all that had happened, her husband said to her, “At least we know that the person who is teaching our son martial arts isn’t a pussy.” I laughed my ass off. It was not what I expected to hear her say, and Renzo loved it. I started training again as soon as my leg healed enough to do so. It was exactly one month to the day of the incident that I started teaching again.