HARLEY FLANAGAN On Possible Reunion With Former CRO-MAGS Members: 'I've Always Been Open To Any Kind Of Communication With Any Of Those Guys'

In a new interview with the Lipps Service With Scott Lipps podcast, Harley Flanagan, who founded the legendary hardcore band the CRO-MAGS at the age of 14, reflected on the CRO-MAGS' rise to success in the mid-1980s. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I think part of the reason I failed at life financially is because I never set out to be a rock star. I think most people who start bands wanna be, and I figured if I was playing at [legendary New York City club] CB[GB]s, I was, like, 'Wow.'"

After CRO-MAGS' video for "We Gotta Know" received airplay on MTV in 1986, "It had that moment where we felt like we were catching fire, and then all the things that can possibly happen happened," Harley recalled. "You have the horrible manager, you have the terrible record deal, everybody starts getting manipulated, and it starts turning into just everything bad that can happen to a young group — the infighting, the ego battles, the manager that turns everybody against each other in order to try to… that whole divide-and-conquer shit. Like, turn everybody against each other so that you're the one person that can keep everything in order, type of shit. And none of us knew what the fuck we were doing, and everybody likes to think that they did."

Regarding a possible reunion of the CRO-MAGS' classic lineup, Harley said: "For whatever it's worth, man, I've always been open to any kind of communication with any of those guys about whatever, and always have been. But sometimes people just get so dug in on shit that they lose sight… Honestly, I can't say that fans really would give a fuck about me playing with any of those guys again at this point, because we're doing well, we're touring a lot, life is great, but if the fans really wanted it, and more so if those guys ever wanted to give those fans what they wanted, I'm always open for the conversation. Because at the end of the day, as a musician, you're an entertainer, right? I mean, that's what you're getting paid to do, is to make people feel good or get some steam off or whatever that emotion is — that's your job. So if that means that you gotta get on stage and do that, and you know you can do it with these guys and people are gonna be super pumped, then what the fuck, man? I mean, I just don't see the big fucking deal [of] just playing with people that you may not necessarily love just for the sake of, you wanna make fans happy, you wanna make people happy. But fortunately for me, I feel like I'm doing that right now any goddamn way."

Harley also recounted the incident in July 2012 when was arrested in New York City on charges of attacking several members of the CRO-MAGS during the CBGB Festival. Flanagan, who had been a panelist at one of the event's seminars, allegedly attempted to attend the concert of his former band. At the time, CRO-MAGS singer John Joseph told the New York Post he and Flanagan started the band together in the early '80s, but Flanagan continually took all the credit for himself. Joseph claimed the situation got so bad, Flanagan pocketed every cent from their 1986 tour. "That caused me to lose my apartment and be homeless in 1987," John said. "I lived hand to mouth." In a separate interview with The New York Times, Joseph said that Flanagan "has been a negative thorn in the side of this band forever."

Harley told Lipps Service With Scott Lipps about the altercation: "I talk about it in the film [the recently released 'Harley Flanagan: Wired For Chaos' documentary, which charts his tumultuous life and survival] pretty extensively. I don't think I can ever say I'm good with it now, 'cause how do you get good with getting set up by people that you know and assaulted.

"We don't gotta get into the entire thing," Flanagan continued. "I went to go see my old singer who at the time was playing under the name CRO-MAGS. It was illegal; they weren't supposed to be using the name. Whatever. Longer story, irrelevant. I went to go see the show. Some part of my brain thought that I would see these guys and there would be some rekindling of the bromance. They'd be, like, 'Oh, really? You fucking asshole. Ah, fuck you too. Ah, come on. You wanna come up and play a couple [of songs]?' Some fucking dumb part of me was, like, 'Come on, man.' We used to fucking live in squats together, man. We used to have to fucking shoplift food together. We were fucking homeless kids… Anyway, so I was, like, 'All right.' I went. And ironically, I was texting the woman who's now my wife on my way there, like, 'Do you think I should go? I'm thinking about going. There was this whole series of texts, and I was, like, 'Yeah, yeah, fuck it. I'll go.' And I actually got put on the guest list… So, anyway, I go. I have tickets. And everybody knew I was coming. And I got invited backstage, and the fucking door got pulled shut, and I got jumped by a room full of people. And I heard a lot of different things that were happening inside that room before I went in from different people, but it's all hearsay. I'm not witness to it, so I'm not gonna repeat what other people told me. It doesn't matter anymore. What the end outcome was, I wound up getting like 40-something stitches. I got stuck with something. I put three guys in the hospital. And then it just turned into this whole thing where they all started accusing me of going in there and attacking everybody, which was complete and total fucking nonsense."

Harley added: "[Eventually the case] got thrown out, [but] I did go to Rikers Island [New York City's notorious jail complex], and that's where things got kind of weird because that's where my old singer was going in the New York Post and all these different newspapers and saying a lot of, basically… I get really uncomfortable even talking about this shit. Like, [he was] basically putting a fucking target on my ass, calling me a snitch, saying I'm a skinhead, I'm a racist, I'm this, I'm that, all kinds of shit that in any kind of a lockup situation would possibly get you fucked up by someone who totally just wants to get some credibility. And it was not cool, man… This big black dude comes in my cell and throws the paper on my bed and says, '[Is] that you?' And I'm reading all this shit and I'm, like, 'Wow.' And I'm just shaking my head, like smirking to myself, just like, 'This motherfucker. Unbelievable.' So I can't say I'll ever be good with it."

Harley went on to say that he spent around "10 days" at Rikers Island. "It wasn't shit," he explained. "But I was having a hard time raising bail, and I was looking at up to three years for nothing. So it was a very unnerving minute, especially with all that shit in the papers, because I was, like, 'Somebody's gonna try to do some shit,' whatever, whatever. Anyway, it doesn't matter. This shit's old news. I'm kind of past all that, the experience, but that shit bothers me. It does. It does bother me that things had to come to that, that somebody would pull some shit like that."

In 2018, Flanagan filed a suit against Joseph and drummer Mackie Jayson regarding ownership of the CRO-MAGS name. A year later, Joseph and Jayson reached an agreement with Flanagan over the rights to the CRO-MAGS name. At the time, it was announced that going forward, Joseph and Jayson would perform as CRO-MAGS JM while Flanagan would get to use the CRO-MAGS name for his own version of the band.

In October 2022, Flanagan announced that Joseph would no longer be able to use the CRO-MAGS JM name to promote his live shows. As part of a settlement between Flanagan and Joseph filed on September 30, 2022 at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Joseph agreed not to use the CRO-MAGS mark, the CRO-MAGS JM moniker or any derivative thereof for any of his projects. Since that time, the CRO-MAGS mark has only been used by Flanagan.

When Flanagan sued members of the group for allegedly using the CRO-MAGS name without his permission, he claimed that CRO-MAGS was his idea when he formed it back in 1981. Flanagan filed a lawsuit against the then-most recent lineup of the group — including Joseph — in part for copyright infringement, saying he trademarked the "Cro-Mag" name for recording in 2010 and for merchandise in 2009 and then again in 2017.

According to the New York Post, Harley claimed in the lawsuit that the other members of the CRO-MAGS took over the band around 2002 when "Flanagan's first son was about to be born… and Flanagan had to stop touring to help with the baby."

Earlier this month, a freshly re-recorded version of the CRO-MAGS classic track "Hard Times" was made available online. The song arrived just in time for the 40th anniversary of the hardcore legends' "The Age Of Quarrel" debut album. This version, dubbed the "Wired for Chaos Session", also celebrates the aforementioned documentary film of the same name.

"Wired For Chaos" arrived in theaters last June.