Special Feature
Harley Flanagan Previews 'Wired For Chaos'
Renzo Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt And Hardcore Punk Legend Talks His New Biographical Documentary
When talking recently to hardcore punk legend – and Renzo Gracie Jiu-Jitsu black belt – Harley Flanagan, I happened to mention how the UFC recently entered the world of grappling with UFC BJJ, and how we might have to get him into a fight soon.
He laughed.
“Do they have an old man division? I'm almost 60 now. I'm lucky I hold my own.”
Flanagan, 58, is being modest. He still gets down to the gym whenever he’s able, and if you’ve ever seen him on stage with his band, the Cro-Mags, he’s got the energy of someone half his age.
“I still do all right, but I’ve got to say, the guys that I train with, they really put it on me,” he said. “There's no other way around it. But I feel like if I get one submission or if I get a few good sweeps and reversals, I feel like I just won UFC and I'm good with that. Hey, I'm still in there, I'm still putting in the work and I still feel great. My cardio is on point, I'm physically in great shape, I exercise every day, and it's not just for my jiu-jitsu; it's really for my job, my playing, my performance. If I don't train and stay in shape and exercise, I'm not going to be able to go out there and put on an ass kicking performance for 45 minutes to an hour and change.”
After our conversation last month, Flanagan was off to Europe for some shows, then he returned to continue promoting the documentary on his life, Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos. Released earlier this year and directed and produced by acclaimed filmmaker Rex Miller, this is not your typical music documentary. It’s more than that, and not surprisingly, it hits harder, taking viewers into a life that often defies description. That’s not just a credit to Miller, but to Flanagan, who was as no holds barred in telling his story as he was living that life.
“We didn't go into this thing knowing what direction it was going to go in or what turns it was going to take,” he said. “I had a feeling it was going to go into some pretty dark places, but I really wasn't certain. I knew they were going to be interviewing a lot of different people, and I knew a lot of crazy things were going to come up, some of them not so pleasant. Some of them were actually just quite terrible, and some of them I was responsible for, as well. So I was like, okay, this thing could play itself out in a lot of different ways. But I gave the director free reign based on a couple of things. One is that I saw the film that he had made, Citizen Ashe, and I remember one comment he made at the end of it was when he was editing and losing lots of parts of the film that meant a lot to him, he had to; that's how it is when you do any kind of editing. You have to ‘kill your darlings’ as they say a lot of times, to tell the story. And I remember him saying, ‘At the end of the day, I had to think about what was best for Arthur Ashe, what would be best for him?’ And now this is a guy who isn't even alive to speak for himself anymore, so I thought that that was very honorable, number one. Number two, the movie really pulled me in, and this is a movie about a tennis player and I have very little interest, actually, none really, in tennis, and I didn't know a lot about Arthur Ashe. I remembered him a little bit from when I was young, but I didn't really know the details of his life, and I found it a very fascinating story, and I found that the movie really sucked me in. And I was like, if this dude can do this, if this guy can pull me into a tennis movie about a guy that I really didn't know or care much about, I got to have faith that he'll be able to tell my story pretty well, because he's definitely got some things to work with.”
Oh, he did. From Flanagan’s unconventional upbringing and his start in the punk scene before he was a teenager, to life on the Lower East Side of New York City at it’s lowest point, to the Cro-Mags and all the craziness in between, Miller couldn’t lose here when it comes to telling a compelling story, but it was Flanagan whose honesty steals the show.
Having spoken to him at length previously, that honesty has always been there, and while it’s telling that he says in the film that if not for music he would be dead or in jail, I ask him where he would be if he didn’t step into Renzo Gracie’s gym three decades ago.
“I can't say where I'd be without it,” said Flanagan. “I was definitely lost prior to discovering jiu-jitsu and other things, but that was one of the things that really reconnected me to myself. When I say that, I mean the fighter in me had gotten me through all those tough times, and it was the fighter in me that somehow would always beat the odds. But I was starting to give up. I was starting to beat myself up. I was starting to deal with my trauma through excessive drug use and other things. I was becoming very self-destructive, and jiu-jitsu gave me a way and a place to really channel all of that in a really positive way. It gave some structure back to my life. It put me in a positive environment with people that I respected. When I was on the mats, I wasn't a musician. I didn't have people either kissing my ass or hating on me because of who I was in a band. I was just another person on the mats trying not to get put to sleep. And it kind of gave me, in that sense, some freedom back. It gave me my identity back by taking that identity away from me, in a way.”
Flanagan never left, and the reason is simple.
“It feels like home,” he said. “I haven't trained now in about five weeks because I've been on the road, and I just can't wait to get back in there. I was supposed to get in there for a quick roll today and I wasn't able to because I'm flying out of town tomorrow. I just got too much to do. But I'll be back in about two weeks and I just can't wait to get back in there and do some training, some groundwork, some standup. I just love being in there. The place has so many good memories for me. I've been in the blue basement since we moved in there. I've been with Renzo since ‘96. I've been through so many academies with him. I saw Matt Serra not that long ago. We were blue belts together. I go back, me, him and (John) Danaher were all blue belts at the same time. And when I think about the history that I've seen in that place, the number of incredible black belts that I've seen go from working their way up to those ranks. The beginning of the Death Squad and all these legends, the old school legends and current legends and future legends.”
The respected black belt can talk about jiu-jitsu all day, and the love of the game is real for him. I tell him I respect jiu-jitsu, but it scares me, recalling that I’d rather get punched in the face than choked.
He laughs.
“Yeah, but you can tap,” Flanagan said. “It's not getting knocked out, where you just wake up from getting knocked out because something got through. You know what, I've been knocked out a couple times, but I prefer to just be in the gym and have fun. If I get knocked out training, it's all good. If I get choked out training, it's all good. As long as it doesn't happen on the street, I'm happy. It's a lot of fun, man. It's beautiful, as we have both seen, and it solves a lot of problems. You don't hurt your hands. Nobody goes home with stitches.”
Can’t argue with that, and it’s that Flanagan honesty showing up again. Why, I ask him. After giving so much to his fans over the years, why continue to do that for this film? Why go into some dark places and revisit the worst times of his life?
“You know why? Because, first of all, that's just who I am. I don't pull punches. And if I'm going to tell my story, I'm really going to tell my story. That was one of the things that Anthony Bourdain told me when I wrote my book. He was like, whatever you do, don't pull back. Don't hold anything back. Don't be ashamed of anything. It's all out there already. So if people want to know, they're going to find out. You might as well put it in your words and just say it like it is. And like I said before, a lot of these things, I didn't really intend for them to come up, but I knew there was a possibility. So I just went in and, for whatever it's worth, I knew I was going to go into some heavy places.”
And he told that story. The result? He’s helping a lot of people he never even knew he’d be helping.
“Honestly, the people in the crowd have really been connecting to the story because to some degree or another, everybody has some kind of trauma in life,” said Flanagan. “You can't really go through life unscathed. We all lose people that we love. We all suffer through violence or neglect or sexual abuse or whatever cross that we have to bear. We all go through a lot of harsh realities, broken families, broken lives, drug abuse, so many different things that we battle or that people close to us. We have to go through watching them battle and feel the residual effects. So a lot of people were able to identify with something in this story, even if they could not identify with growing up around Andy Warhol and The Clash and this famous person or that person; they were able to identify with other aspects of the story. It's been intense, but I do think a lot of people are also going to benefit from my being so forthcoming. They're going to realize that no matter what they are going through or what they may have gone through, that as long as they don't give up, as long as they can weather the storm, some amazing things can happen. Life can really turn around, and if you give up, you're never going to know that you even have that possibility to reap those rewards. I'd rather die fighting than die because I gave up.”
As for part two?
“Part two is just going to be me kicking ass until I have a garden somewhere and I'm growing vegetables and I'm no longer kicking any asses except for my dinner's ass.”
Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos will stream exclusively in North America for one week, starting on Friday, August 8. To order, and for more information on the film, visit www.wiredforchaos.com