This is a very special interview. We have nothing short of a legend with us. New York hardcore pioneer Harley Flanagan is here to talk about his new movie, ‘Wired for Chaos’ which is in UK cinemas from November 14 with added preview Q&A screenings in London, Birmingham and Brighton.
Harley, it’s an incredible film, unlike any other documentary about a musician out there, really. Unflinchingly candid and brutally honest, nothing that’s glamourised. How did this project come about?
“You know what? It all happened, I guess, because of the book that I wrote, Hardcore Life of My Own. And my wife, who I was not married to at the time, was my editor, and she kind of got it into her head that it should be a film. We started working on that book a long time ago. I guess I had got her involved with it around 2012. The film was really her idea. I had no involvement in making it. I actually didn’t even see the thing until it was done. That’s how little I had to do with it. I saw some work that the director had done, and I was really impressed with his work. That’s what made me say, OK, you know what? I’m going to have to trust this guy to use his vision to tell this story. Honestly, I think he did a pretty good job. If you’ve read my book, it holds true to the same story; it just tells other stories and different details, but I think he did a really good job.”
We don’t want to give too much away about the film, but we do have a few questions. We’d seen photos of a very young Harley Flanagan playing drums in the past. We didn’t know the full backstory until we saw the movie. You were 11 years old when you played drums in your first band, The Stimulators?
“Yeah, I actually had been in another band that had already toured before I joined. Yeah, but that was my first real claim to fame, I guess. I think we recorded our first single when I was 12. People always ask me how cool it must have been, or they wonder how or why or this or that, and they just don’t really understand that there’s also a bit of a downside to being the only kid in the room at an adult party. Obviously, I don’t pull any punches on any of this stuff in this film because it’s really part of what made me and what made my music. So, it was going to hit some brutal facts. But this is what I signed up for, I ain’t never been afraid of the truth, even if it’s not pretty and even if it looks bad, sometimes you have to own things in order to move forward from them.”
If you were an 11-year-old playing drums that well and were a multi-instrumentalist. How early did you get started with music, like from when you picked up your first instruments? Because you were a prodigious talent.
“You know, I would like to have thought that, or I would like to think that I was somewhat advanced. But you see these kids on YouTube nowadays who are like six and seven years old who are playing ridiculous bass, ridiculous drums, and guitar and classical music. So, I don’t necessarily think I was that exceptional. I think all kids are exceptional. Sometimes they just don’t get the opportunity to explore what they’re exceptional at. I guess that’s more the fault of the parent than the child. I think that although I am obviously musically skilled, just instinctively, because I didn’t study anything, and I’m very Rain Man-esque when it comes to music. I can hear things and hear the similarity in like 10 different pieces of music. My wife is always making fun of me in that way. I think it had a lot to do with the surroundings I was put in, the reason that I excelled, and so that had its pluses and minuses.”
Photo Credit: Marcia Resnick (Warhol & Strummer)
There’s a very interesting part of the film where you mention not having access to equipment. So, you would ring up your friend’s answering machine and sing riffs into it?
“I would hum a lot of my songs into his machine. I would say, “don’t pick up the phone,” and I would hum the song because it was my only way to log the riffs. It was pretty funny. Short version of the story, I lived in a squat and didn’t have any electricity, so I couldn’t record anything on cassette, which is how we would have done it back then. So, I would literally run to the corner with a quarter and call him up from the payphone. That’s how we would make progress.”
I always find it very inspiring when I speak to musicians who can make something from nothing.
“That’s what punk rock is. Bro! I actually remember booking European tours and shit on the corner payphones and being on one payphone and on the other payphone with two different booking agents and promoters and people come up and want to use the phone and you’re on all of them at the same time with like a credit card number that you bought off someone on the street you know what I’m saying?”
We recently spoke with a friend of yours, Eugene S. Robinson, for the second time about the re-release of the Whipping Boy record Muru Muru, and your name came up. We’ll run this quote by you and see if you remember saying it; it’s one of the best we’ve heard this year. He said you said that “hardcore was a shit that you did in the early 80s that wouldn’t flush.”
“Yeah, I pretty much did say something along those lines. I think it was a little more cold than that. I think I may have said New York hardcore was the shit I took in the eighties that wouldn’t flush, actually, that’s just part of New York humour, we’re dicks, we shit on everybody, it’s bad habit, but that’s how you can tell somebody who’s really an old school New Yorker as opposed to a new school New Yorker, old heads, we shit on everything and anything. That’s why we hate people from Boston, because they do the same shit, so I guess we hate them because they’re similar, except that they’re townies and we come from an actual city. But anyway, enough of that.”
One thing to segue out of that, one thing that you and Eugene share is a love of martial arts.
“Oh, yeah. We were both jiu-jitsu heads. I’ve known Eugene since I was probably about 12 years old. I mean, we go way back. He’s a really solid guy. He doesn’t care if he’s making a friend or not; he’s going to be honest, and then the friend or not comes out of that honest relationship. He’s a badass, and he’s also a black belt. He’s a big fellow, so I would hate to really have to go all out with him. I’d have to probably do something really filthy, like use a weapon because he’s tough as nails, and he’s a big boy. A big man, I should say. He will definitely put the pressure on.”
Photo Credit: Jan Sneum (Denmark 1979)
How does it sit with you when a lot of modern metalcore bands cite Cro Mags as being year zero for their style?
“Yeah, I take that as a compliment. These are all such new terms to me; I thought of that whole umbrella as being more of a crossover thing. I guess it’s now metalcore or whatever. Quite honestly, when you’re in it, it’s difficult to see it from an objective standpoint. From the outside, oh, this is such and such, and this is that. I was just kind of doing what felt natural at the time. And (Seminal Cro Mags album) Age of Quarrel was a progression of that. Hardcore and punk were influenced by some of the metal that I was starting to listen to. That’s what inspired those songs and that style. And Best Wishes, quite honestly, was me taking that and saying, “OK, how would a hardcore kid write a metal album?” I just took everything that I had poured into that first album and tried to write what I thought was more of a metal album. Which was at that point influenced by things like, obviously, Judas Priest and whatever else. So many different things, but on each record, I try to just take outside influences, not really from hardcore. I think that’s what makes it interesting. If you start stealing inspiration from your own genre, it’s going to come out sounding like everything else within your genre, so take it or leave it. Some people like some records more than others. Some records are not as good, some are better, whatever. You’ve got to take chances, right?
There’s an old cliche that happy musicians don’t make good music. Do you think you would have been able to create this hardcore sound if your situation wasn’t so chaotic, and that came through in the music?
“I don’t know, man. My life is pretty fucking good now, I gotta say. I’m making some of my best music. I can’t eradicate one from the other because I still have those experiences. So, I may not be living that same exact struggle at this point in my life; nonetheless, I still struggle with those same experiences. It’s still echoing in my brain, and I still deal with things in my own way as I try to move forward in life. Because, quite honestly, when you have PTSD, it’s like sometimes being in a peaceful environment is almost more torture than being in the chaos. Because in the chaos, you feel a certain sense of, this is my comfort zone. I’m in a state of fight or flight. When there’s no fight or flight, you find your mind racing to a place to create it. So sometimes, you know, calm can be more difficult than a war when you’re, when you’re raised in battle.”
One thing that comes across is how intuitive the music was. Is that how you still write?
“A lot of the stuff is actually written in the studio. Typically, I’ll go in with half the songs kind of formulated, and the other half will just kind of happen, and then I’ll just move a couple of parts around, but that’ll be the basis of the song. In fact, I find more often than not, those are the songs that come out the best because they’re just burning. They’re coming out right then and there. Then the good thing to do is to freestyle some vocals or whatever and then come back to them later with actual lyrics or try to put lyrics to them and take it from there. My process is still evolving.”
Well, any good musician is always just evolving, aren’t they?
“Maybe that’s why I haven’t had any real success, because I haven’t stuck to a formula long enough for people to sink their teeth into it. I don’t know. But do you want to be a successful artist or do you want to be a satisfied artist, I guess.”
Then you get on to the question of what is success? Is success just being happy?
“You know what? Success for me is that I appreciate the woman that I am married to every day, all day, all the time. My kids are young adult men now and are doing well and have survived through things already that would have broken a lot of people. So, I feel super successful because I married someone who really complements everything in my life so perfectly. My kids are growing up to be strong, well-rounded young men who are figuring things out. That makes me proud. Fuck man, if that ain’t success…”
Photo Anthony Bourdain – New York Natives interview
How do you feel now, looking back at the film? Is it difficult to watch?
“It was the first dozen times, but it gets easier, just like therapy. Incidentally, I started seeing a therapist when I started working on the film because I knew I was gonna hit some walls in this fucker. So I tried to get in front of it before it went south which I think is actually a good thing and I think most people either don’t have the energy or luxury of the accessibility to that or a lot of men don’t think they need to or don’t want to or think that think they got it figured out or just think that they’re too tough to fucking need to talk to anybody. Quite honestly, if you’ve ever been through any real shit in life, sometimes it’s not a bad thing to talk to someone who may not necessarily understand what you’ve been through but might be able to give you some coping skills. They might actually give you a couple of tools that might be helpful for you in handling your own trauma or your own stress. So, along that process, it was definitely good for me. For instance, yesterday I spoke to my therapist. Haha. I love saying that makes me sound like such a badass, right? I spoke to my therapist, and then I went to jiu jitsu and fucking got my ass kicked for a good hour by a bigger, stronger, better black belt. Did I leave out younger? And that was my therapy for the day.
First, I sat and talked to somebody who has a more educated perspective on how the brain works; it’s fascinating. It has so much to do with, in my case, chemical shit, more than what you might want to call emotional shit. I was looking for a balance and in my case, I get it from, you know, dopamine peaks, which I get from either, raging out on shit or from training or from all of the things that drive us, whether it’s sex, or in my case, writing, performing, playing, always seeking that dopamine, same shit that people seek when they take a hit off of a cigarette. Now that I understand a lot more about this, I realise that the rollercoaster I’m on is partially chemical. It’s not just that I’m psychotic. Once you understand that, it makes it a little easier to cope with the fact that you’re losing your mind over time. It’s like, oh, OK, that’s why.”
We can’t do this interview without mentioning one of your friends. The reason many people got into cooking and that is Anthony Bourdain, who turns up in your film. Did you meet through punk rock initially?
“You know, ironically, we met through jiu-jitsu, but as it would turn out, we had rubbed elbows or definitely been in the same rooms throughout my childhood. I just wasn’t aware of it because to me, he was just another adult in the room. I was a kid, and unless you were in one of the bands that I was friends with or somebody that was friends with my mother or my aunts or somebody like that, you were just another person that I could hit up for a quarter to play games of pinball. This was my whole thing. I’d be running around Max’s all night or at CB’s asking, “You got a quarter? You got a quarter? You got a quarter?” I’d just be glued to the pinball machine in the back. So that would have been the extent of my relationship with him.
I was probably more like his daughter’s age when I met her. That’s how that story begins. Actually, I met him at an MMA event before. It was like the first sanctioned MMA event in New York. Then I was his daughter’s jujitsu instructor. Then, over a period of time of getting to know him, that’s when he dropped, “you know, I don’t know you from Cro -Mags. I remember you from The Stimulators.” And I was like, what? Then he started going down all the different people that we knew in common and all the places we had been. I guess he wanted to suss me out before he dropped that bomb. He wanted to see what I was like as an adult now. Here I am teaching his daughter jiu-jitsu. I guess he wanted to see what Harley Flanagan, the adult, had turned into before he said, I’ve known you since you were a kid. He was really, really an awesome guy. Honestly, there are only a couple of people that I’ve known in my life that I really would look forward to our next conversation. What am I talking about? What can I try to bring up? Because I want to get their thoughts on it, this type of shit. He was definitely one of those cats. Sadly, the first two people that come to mind in those categories are both no longer with us. So, I just have to think out loud to them and just listen and imagine.”
Photo Credit: Jonah Odin Flanagan
Another name that comes up in the film is Adam Yauch of The Beastie Boys. When you knew people like him as a youngster, did you think he had fame and fortune in the stars? Or was he just a goofy kid?
“He was just another goofy kid. I thought he was sad just because his family had money, you know, and they didn’t even have money. They had money, to me, because I didn’t have shit. He’s got a nice house, whatever, but he was a fucking great guy. Literally, when you say his name, the first thing that I think of is how much my stomach and face would hurt from laughing at him when I was a kid, because he was just that kid. He would fucking make you laugh until you were literally ready to piss yourself, in pain laughing type shit. He was that good. He was that fucking funny. This was way before the Beastie Boys. I actually was with them, John Barry and the girls from Luscious Jackson, when they came up with the name Beastie Boys. I was there. I remember it. Every time I walked past that block, I pointed to the window and I said, that apartment, that’s where the name came from. It’s cool to go that far back with cats that contributed that much to culture. It’s funny because, when you’re that close, you almost don’t see it with the same marvel that people do, because I remember him teaching me how to play fucking Dungeons and Dragons and giving me my first hit at Acid when I was like 12. I never really thought they were that great rappers. I thought they had some great songs. But they were a punk band. I got all these other feelings that go along with it. One of my best memories is him jumping up and down on his bed, rapping along to the Sugarhill Gang, way before the Beastie Boys were a thought, and I’m laughing again; it was one of those belly-hurting laughs. If you told me that in the studio, he’d be like the dude that puts hip hop on the map, into the mainstream. I literally said, get the fuck out of here!”
The film comes out in this country on November 14, and we really recommend everyone see it. Do you have a message for our readers?
“These stories are nothing. If you want to hear about real underground shit, like going back. Look, my mom is the reason that Andy Warhol met the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed. So I’ve been in it since before I knew what it was. And that’s how my life started. So it’s definitely an interesting story. It wasn’t a great experience all the time. Nonetheless, it’s a pretty interesting story. I think that most people can relate to the story in some way, shape or form, whether or not they have lived anything like my life. You don’t have to have been in a band or been around this or known this, because there’s a lot of just stuff in here that I think most people can relate to something in it.”
Harley, it’s an absolute honour to talk to you. It’s absolutely amazing, mate. And yeah, best of luck with the film. I know it’s already smashed America.
“It’s going to be in London at the Finsbury Park Picture House, November 6, Manchester at the Cult Plex on the 7th, and Birmingham at the Mockingbird on the 9th. Dukes at Komedia in Brighton on November 10, and back in London at Ritzy’s Brixton Picturehouse on the 11th. And you can get tickets at www.wiredforchaos.com or contact any of those theatres. I’ll be there for a Q &A. Pow!”
Absolutely. Pow!
Interview By George Miller
Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos:
https://www.instagram.com/wiredforchaosfilm/?hl=en
https://www.facebook.com/people/Wired-For-Chaos-Film
Harley Flanagan:
https://www.facebook.com/harleyfflanagan
https://www.instagram.com/realharleyflanagan/?hl=en
