Hard-Core: Life of My Own by Harley Flanagan

Author:Harley Flanagan [Flanagan, Harley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627310390
Publisher: Feral House
Published: 2016-09-05T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

‘THE AGE OF QUARREL’ TOUR

PHOTO BY JJ GONSON

The Cro-Mags played with everybody back in the day—almost every Hardcore band that was around, and as the shows got bigger and the whole “crossover” started, we played with tons of metal bands too, so many that I can’t even remember.

One of our first tours was with GBH; we did like a half a tour with them, then Agnostic Front picked up the other half. I met GBH on their first trip to the States when they were playing at Great Gildersleeves with Agnostic Front and CFA in 1983. They told me when they first arrived in New York, they didn’t leave their hotel for days ’cause they were too scared! When they finally did, they met Eric, me, and this punk rock chick from Canada, Lisa Bat. We saw them walking down St. Marks Place, so we walked up and started talking to them. Within a few minutes, a photographer came up and started snapping pictures of us. Lisa started protesting, but he kept snapping away like we were on display, like some fuckin’ zoo animals. After a few seconds of this, I grabbed the guy by his collar and kicked him in his face and knocked him to the ground. Me and Eric and proceeded to beat his ass for taking our pictures. It was a pretty bad ass-beating: stomped on him, field-goal kicks to the head. It ended with his camera smashed over his head and his face getting bounced off a fire hydrant. This was on 8th Street and Avenue A in broad daylight! GBH were shocked.

As we walked off, the photographer was still rolling around on the ground, trying to get his brains back together. Jock from GBH told me, “If you lived in England, you’d have a fucking Army!” Later that evening, they saw a Hell’s Angel stab someone on 7th Street and Avenue A, so between me and Eric laying an ass-beating on that photographer and then that Hell’s Angel, New York really lived up to everything they expected, I guess.

One night on that tour with GBH, me and Mackie and busted into a jam of Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “It’s Just Begun.” Doug started ripping into some sick leads—some of the sickest shit I ever heard him play—and we just jammed out for a good 15–20 minutes. There was hardly anyone there, so I could see clear through to the bar at the other end of the club. I could see GBH sitting there with their jaws open, drinks still in their hands. It turns out Lars from Rancid was there. He told me years later it was one of the sickest things he had ever seen—it was a straight-up funk-punk-metal-fusion jam.

We were so broke on tour, I don’t know how we did it. It was a very different world. We didn’t have ATM cards, no cell phones, no GPS. John and me were out of control with the shoplifting, ’cause we had no money.

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