Documentary Review: Harley Flanagan – Wired for Chaos
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
In something of a strange synchronicity, this feature-length documentary comes my way after reviewing new records recently by both Biohazard and Agnostic Front, bring together a trilogy of legacy bands from the New York Hardcore scene, reminding us all of their undoubted influence on the music of yesterday, which remains to be felt even now.
Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos is director Rex Miller’s unflinching look at one of the NYHC scene’s survivors and is due to hit UK cinemas on 14 November, with a number of preview Q&A screenings happening in Birmingham, Brighton, London and Manchester.
What you get is ninety-plus-minutes of one of the most jaw-dropping life stories imaginable, a tale that, were it not true, would be dismissed as implausible fiction. Yet Harley had already lived a dozen lifetimes before reaching the age of sixteen.
From the neglect of his childhood, through the fight every day just to exist, to the Lord of the Flies hellscape of New York in the seventies, Wired for Chaos is essentially a filmic adaptation of his autobiography, Hardcore: Life of My Own (Feral House, 2016) and follows many of the beats found therein.
His early exposure to the decadence of bohemian New York, Warhol and the Beats, his emergence as a pre-teen punk sensation while playing drums for The Stimulators, the touring, the parties, and the access to punk rock royalty lead one contributor to comment Harley was “absent from his own childhood”.
But away from that, lies the dark heart of the story: the violence, the abuse, the loss of humanity, all coming through in brutally honest confessions; he, as an early-teen, and Adam of the Beastie Boys dropping acid and going to see A Clockwork Orange, almost getting molested by a drug dealer, all experiences no one so young should have to go through.
A festival in Belfast, a fateful trip to Canada and fleeing New York to the West Coast due to having a hit put out on him are just some of the things a young Harley endured, before even conceiving of Cro-Mags in 1981.
Seeing that punk was old and Hardcore was new, Harley redefined himself as someone to be feared, imbuing the broken upbringing into the band’s rage, joining forces with like-minded musicians to eventually release the still-relevant debut album, Age of Quarrel in 1986.
Drugs, religion, racism, success, all contributed to the turbulent time when Harley’s hold on reality was starting to be loosed by his reliance on narcotics; his rescue of an infant from a crack-house and his three years of parental responsibility led to him cleaning up; double-crossed by his former band mates led to incarceration, though both, in the long-run, turned out to be advantageous in the overall story.
You might get the impression that Wired for Chaos is a dark journey without hope, but that’s not the case, for Harley Flanagan is one of life’s survivors, a man who would have every excuse to lay down and blame others for his lot. But that’s not his style: Harley is a man who is very much captain of his own ship, and there’s a warmth to the documentary, a human story of hope and triumph in the face of adversity; it’s a story of what happens when you refuse to let life beat you.
Ju-Jitsu, his two kids and his wife have all been saving graces for Harley, and here is a man who is more inclined to count those blessings, rather than rage at the universe for the negative things he has had to deal with.
Including contributions from Red Hot Chili Pepper bassist, Flea, Henry Rollins, Roger Miret, Keith Morris, once of Black Flag, now Circle Jerks, and many more who’ve met and been influenced by one of New York’s most iconic personalities, the documentary serves to paint the picture of a good man, flawed of course, but a man who strives to do his best and to be the best he can.
In that respect, Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos is a heart-warming documentary of a man who has weathered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and has come out the other side, battered and bruised, admittedly, but as a survivor, knowing he’s taken on the worst of what the world can throw at him and is still standing.
To borrow a line from the sixth Rocky film – “…that’s how winning is done.”
