Hard-Core: Life of My Own Read online

  HARLEY’S GRANDPARENTS, JUAN AND BEATRICE FELIU, AND HARLEY’S GREAT-AUNT SOPHIE KIEWLAK

  She was a go-go dancer—and like so many people, she was caught up in the whole drug culture of the ’60s. And when I was a kid she was still a stripper. I remember going to work with her a few times when I was little; that was weird, looking back on it now. There was even a short period of time she was a dominatrix but that was much later. So if you wonder why I’m all fucked up, there might be a few reasons in there somewhere. And of course the alcohol was hard to deal with at times, but I loved her, and to her credit, she sobered up and got off alcohol for good in the ’80s.

  There’s a lot about her life I don’t know; I know my grandparents worried about her when she was off on her own. She had me when she was real young—she was 21.

  When I was a baby and during my early childhood I traveled so much and saw so many things with her, from New York to Europe to Africa and more. She shared the world with me, and in a lot of ways she helped make me who I am.

  We had an interesting relationship to say the least—with all its ups and downs and sometimes long gaps of time when we didn’t see each other at all. But one thing is certain: I love her and she loves me, of that there is no doubt.

  There were times that I had resentment and anger about my life, and I made it no secret. Sometimes I felt like I was living the life she wanted instead of the life a kid should have. Now looking back, I get it. She wanted to expose me to as much as the world had to offer, and I know I’m lucky I had her. As she approached the end of her life she told me one of her biggest regrets was that I grew up too fast.

  My dad’s name was Harley—he was from Texas. From what I have been told and what I found out over the years he’s got Irish, Dutch, English as well as some Native American blood: Cherokee and Choctaw. I traced his family back to the 1800s in Oklahoma when it was still known as “the Indian territory.” My dad’s mother Wanda raised him after his dad left when he was just a baby. She was only 16 when she had him.

  My dad left home for good around the same age as me, maybe 14–15, and started riding freight trains. But my Grandma Wanda told me the first time he left he was maybe six or seven: he rode off on a pig, and the cops brought him back from another town. She said when he got older, it always took at least two squad cars to take him in. Always a minimum of four to five cops, one for each limb. She laughed and said, “When he got older, there were states that he was banned from altogether. If he even showed up, they’d arrest him for even being there.” That’s my dad! He was a bit of a wild one—a “free spirit.” He liked to live from moment to moment and from everything I’ve heard he had serious drug and alcohol issues most all of his life. He was always in and out of prison.

  I found some hysterical letters he wrote my Grandmother Beatrice when he was in jail—complete with stories about escapes, recaptures, hiding from police dogs and the whole thing. It was pretty funny. He wrote about hiding in the mud and the weeds, listening to the dogs barking looking for him. At one point he said they walked right past him while he was hiding in the tall weeds, all covered in mud: “Them dogs ain’t all they’re cracked up to be!” He said they caught him the next day sleeping in someone’s barn. I found other letters showing a softer, more, I dare say, poetic side to him—not the guy I heard about. My mom would probably say he got someone else to write that for him.

  But from what I understand, he was really bad. On my birth certificate it says he was a “carpenter’s apprentice,” but he was pretty much a burglar/thief/hustler/whatever. One funny story I remember my mom telling me, she said, the cops came by our apartment one time when I was just a baby. He had all these stolen TVs and shit all over the place, a bag of golf clubs, and all kinds of shit. He used to break into people’s apartments and cars. The cops looked in and said, “You got a lot of TVs, huh?” He smiled, and said, “Yeah, I watch a lotta TV.” Then one of them glanced at the bag of golf clubs and said, “You play golf too, huh?” He smiled and said, “Yup—all the time.” From what I have been told, besides being a total fuck-up, he was pretty funny.

  My mom and dad met through their mutual friend Harry Smith at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. From what I understand, my dad didn’t make a very good impression on her; he was drunk and stank of alcohol. He was obnoxious and threatened to rape her. How they wound up together after that, I will never know.

  They were together on and off for a few years. From everything I have heard, it was pretty nuts; my mom split soon after I was born. I think he was in jail at the time. From what I understand, my dad wasn’t the greatest person to be around. He was abusive and violent at times. The fact that he was kind of big—and my mom was kind of small—didn’t help. I have heard from everyone who knew him that he was a charming guy when he wasn’t all fucked up … but by all accounts that wasn’t too often.

  It’s kind of fucked up but I remember, when I was in my early 20s, he sent me some letters. One was actually a cassette of him talking and playing guitar at some halfway house he was staying at. A halfway house for those of you who don’t know is where you stay when you first get out of prison, and they are trying to get you used to living in society and the world again. But yeah, it was him playing guitar and basically talking to me and apologizing, and hoping that I could forgive him, and hoping that now that I was all grown up, I didn’t want to kick his ass—but that he could understand if I did. It was sad.

  The part that hurt the most was when he said that one time when I was a baby, he had left me with one of his junkie friends while he was out copping or robbing or something, and when he came back, they were nodded off in the corner while I was crying in my crib all covered in piss. He said he looked down at me and felt so bad for this little bitty baby all covered in pee, crying all by himself while his dope fiend friend was passed out in the corner. He picked me up, changed my diaper, held me, and rocked me ’til I fell asleep. He said that’s the only time he ever felt close to me, and I must admit, it still hurts to know that. After I fell asleep, he said he stomped around the apartment cursing my mom for not being there. Meanwhile, as he put it, “she was only out trying to make some money dancing, ’cause [he] was too much of a sorry-ass motherfucker to take care of us or me.”

  He had a lot of regret and pain in his voice. He cried a lot on the tape. He would then turn it off, turn it back on and play some more little guitar songs he wrote and bluesy things. It was pretty hard to listen to, and is still hard to talk about. It’s hard to accept that your dad chose heroin and alcohol over you. It really does kind of hurt even now. I guess that might be one of the reasons why I turned out the way I did.

  From what I understand they’d break up and get back together. She’d go from one coast to another, and he’d track her down, until we finally moved to Europe in 1971. My mom and me did a lot of hitchhiking and stayed with a lot of different people. A lot of crazy shit happened on those trips. At one point, a friend of hers was going to Europe, and asked, “Do you want to come?” And my mom was like, “I’m getting the fuck outta here!” She did, and I went with her—I was probably around three or four. That was that; I never saw my father again. I stayed in Europe pretty much until I was about ten, but I’d come back to the States every year or so.

  We settled down in Denmark in 1971. From what I understand, the guy my mom initially went to Denmark with was selling drugs when they first got there—I’m not sure if it was smack or morphine or what. I think there was a little bit of a dope scene going on there in the ’70s. Some of it I remember, but not much, as I was real young. I do remember a few junkies here and there, not many, but in all honesty it wasn’t nearly as crazy as my life had been up ’til then with my mom and dad together. I lived in a lot of communes over there—one was Christiania, which is a famous hippie commune.

  HARLEY’S FATHER, HARLEY WAYNE WALKER FLANAGAN, PERSONAL COLLECTION

  Denmark and Danish culture are very wholesome. It’s a great place to grow up, but of course there’s a
n underside there too.

  In the ’60s—and in my case, the late ’60s and ’70s—it was cool in certain respects, and wasn’t so cool in others. You had all these people fucked up on drugs, and all the “free love”—everybody’s fucking everybody. And that’s not really the best environment for a kid to grow up in. And as cool as some of the things and a lot of the people were, a lot of them or at least some of them were just fucking lost. And yeah, all the kids were wild, what do you expect? I mean, we were just imitating the grown-ups.

  So as a result, I was getting laid and doing all kinds of other crazy shit way before I had even reached puberty. You basically had a lot of little kids just going off. You’ve got all these hippie kids with their hippie parents, seeing all kinds of craziness; adults running around naked, people doing drugs, being insane. That shit rubs off on kids. I mean, Denmark wasn’t as fucked up as like the “LES” or San Francisco or anything, but it was still pretty wild. People were still all in that “’60s mode,” you know what I’m saying?

  In Århus, we lived in a low-income area of town—at least it was then. It was near the docks. Lots of bars, hookers, a few porn shops, tattoo parlors and some local bikers—back then, they were called “rockers.” It was pretty tame compared to a lot of the places I’ve lived and been; nonetheless, it was the “rough” neighborhood there… if you can call it that. We had one friend—he was our friend’s cousin—his name was Helje, and he was like the first real thug I knew—a fucking lunatic. He was a really crazy biker, he used to come by our apartment and stash his weapons and shit in my room. He’d be like, “Harley, hide these for me. I’ll get them back later.” All kinds of shit, like motorcycle chains with handles on them, slapjacks, knives, and Nazi helmets. When me and the kids in my neighborhood would get into fights at the playground with the local Pakistani kids who used to come and try to fuck with us, I’d bring all his chains down and we’d chase them out of the playground! Last I heard anything about Helje, he had been convicted of some pretty violent robbery I think, and then broke out of jail and got recaptured.

  I remember me and these kids, brothers Martin and Thomas and a few others, we used to climb up on the rooftops and break in to the backs of stores and steal stuff—stupid shit, like cases of bottles that were returnable. We’d return them through the front of the store and get the money. I remember a few times hanging out in cemeteries and shit, vandalizing stuff, stealing fruit from the farmers, and stupid kid shit. We once tried to do a heist at the local mall, but we got caught hiding in the store after closing. It was all stupid harmless shit, but I was definitely well on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent.

  HARLEY’S GRANDMOTHER WANDA, GREAT-GRANDMOTHER HAYS AND UNCLE JACK, PERSONAL COLLECTION

  For the most part, my mom and me lived in Denmark, but we did do a lot of traveling. Usually it was my mom and me and my stepfather Karsten. But I remember a few times when just my mom and me were hitchhiking through Europe alone—and a lotta crazy shit happened.

  I remember one time, some truck driver who picked us up in Spain tried to attack her and pin her down. I jumped on him and started hitting him and beating on him while she was fighting him off and screaming. I was screaming, “Get off of my mom!” He just split. The whole shit was pretty fucked up. Looking back, just being out there at all, me and her … but I guess that’s the kind of shit people did back then.

  One time she and I went to England with a friend of ours from Denmark named Morten. He was going and he invited us, so we went. Well, he had a bit of a drinking problem, and pretty much as soon as we got to London he got real drunk and disappeared! We had no idea where the fuck he went or what happened. Weeks later, he turned up in Greece. He left mom and me there, broke and on the streets, with nowhere to go and no money. So here we are on the streets in London with our bags and shit—we’d walk the streets and go to pubs, meeting people, crashing at people’s houses. Some crazy shit happened there, too. At one point some crazy English hippie-types who were fucking lunatic drunks took us in. But that didn’t last long. After that, we wound up staying at this other hippie chick’s apartment we met. I don’t remember where we met her; I think we just met her on the street. She had a teenage son who was a Skinhead. I had no idea what a Skinhead was at the time, it was the early ’70s. But yeah, somehow we made it back to Denmark.

  When I was a kid in Denmark I had a lot of friends at school. I went to this really crazy school called Århus Friskole, “The Free School.” A lot of hippies were on the staff. I remember they tried to help promote the kids’ artistic skills. It was a “progressive” type of school—a lot of really cool shit was going down there, a lot of music programs and art. There was a school band that I played in; we did Santana covers and things like “Funky Stuff” by Kool & the Gang. When I was probably six or seven I used to jam on the streets with some of the other kids from school on Gå gaden, “the walking street” in Århus, and make money doing that.

  That was like my first paying gig. I got really into drums and percussion. I was into all kinds of crazy stuff—funk, reggae, and rock. Some of the first records I bought were Herbie Hancock’s Secrets, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, and Gasolin’s Live Sådan. I was listenin’ to all kinds of shit. I used to draw pictures of Jimi Hendrix and the Who. But one of the longest-lasting musical inspirations was Bob Marley. Even as young as eight years old, I used to pull his records out of my friends’ parents’ collection. And The Harder They Come soundtrack was really big for me. I was very into reggae.

  I remember in ’77 when Althea & Donna’s “Uptown Top Ranking” came out—another big one for me, that and Dillinger’s “Cokane in My Brain.” I remember there was this disco around the block from where we lived in Århus where they knew my mom and stepdad. They used to let me come up and spin records in the DJ booth sometimes and run the disco lights. I was always rocking that Althea & Donna and Dillinger shit.

  HARLEY IN DENMARK, 1978, BY JAN SNEUM

  Music was in my blood—I came from a musical family. My grandfather played piano, flute, clarinet, etc., and my grandmother played piano. My dad played guitar, my aunt Denise plays guitar. She was the founding member of the Stimulators, which I’ll get to later. I had a lot of music in my family; even the ones who didn’t actually play were always going to shows and concerts.

  My mom and my aunt saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium, the Stones, the Who, the Doors, Zeppelin—everything that was big or mattered. Denise was at Woodstock. Some of my first concerts are just vague memories. I was one of those little hippie babies in front of the stage, just running around—it might have been Jefferson Airplane or some shit, I don’t know. I was at a lot of shows. I remember hanging out backstage at some big outdoor gig with Gentle Giant. Our friend, Mick Shepperd from the UK, worked for them and just about every other big English band that came over. I was breaking their balls, telling them they should change their name to Angry Midget! They were all laughing.

  I remember my first reggae show—it was Steel Pulse in the ’70s. That was awesome. I was always at shows my whole life, really. But my first real gigging experience was while I was living in Denmark. This guy, Jacob Haugaard, was in a rock band called Sofamania back in the ’70s. He eventually became a famous comedian over there, and ran for office, and actually got voted into Parliament. He was a good friend of the family. He lived in the parking lot behind our apartment in like a gypsy wagon that he built himself out of wood. He was a nut. So yeah, at his band Sofamania’s gig, Jacob and I would get up onstage and jam with other local musicians. I would for the most part play drums, and he’d play guitar and sing. That’s how I started developing my “live chops,” playing in bars. I have some pretty shitty memories of that shit too, because my mom still had an alcohol problem back then.

  I remember coming off the stage one night, and these girls were there that I was hanging out with, and they’re like, “You know that lady you came with? She’s in the bathroom, she’s not feeling too good.” I went in the ba
throom, and my mom was throwing up all over the place. That kind of shit was kind of a comedown, back to reality, to have to help your mom walk home. I don’t want to dog her—she stopped drinking and was sober for the rest of her life. But it’s really no wonder why I started being such a fuck-up so early in life. Between her and my dad, it was almost like destined or genetic for me.

  So, Jacob, on Christmas Eve one year, he snuck into my bedroom, and set up an adult-sized drum set that he stole for me! He stole it out of a music store that had caught fire or some shit like that. Before I got that set, my “drum kit” at home was like a coffee pot, a phone book and a cardboard box, and I forget what else. I woke up to that shit in front of me for Christmas. That set it off—it was official that was the road I was on.

  Another guy, Ed Jones, was my math teacher, and music teacher. I think he was one of the only two black people I knew in Denmark—and of course he was from New York, too. He was a jazz drummer and a standup bass player. Very early on, he recognized and heard “it” in me. We had great jam sessions at school. That’s one thing that was great about that school: we had jam sessions all the time. I learned how to play all kinds of percussion instruments: timbales, cowbells, steel drums, and of course, a standard trap kit. He was a big musical inspiration to me; he really brought it out of me in a positive way. Between him and Jacob, those were two of my first big musical mentors.

  Another one was a teacher in my school named Leif Falk. He was a music teacher who used to go to other schools and teach their music teachers music theory, and how to teach music to children. He would bring me along with some of the other students from school to teach them, and turn these people on to different styles of music. He was a freak, and we were visiting schools that were a little more conservative, and we’d break down “freakiness” for them. Stuff like funk and reggae and music that they were just not accustomed to teaching in Scandinavian schools back then.