While the stabbing that took place during the CBGB Festival last week has understandably been focused towards eyewitness accounts and media reports in the wake of former bassist Harley Flanagan’s arrest, New York Natives has interviewed Flanagan to get his side of the story. He’d claimed earlier that he stabbed current bassist Mike “The Gook” Couls and William Bererio in self defense, and expands on that in this interview. Harley says that instead of looking to attack his former band, he went there with “the best of intentions,” and instead was attacked by the band as soon as he got in the door of the VIP section.
When I saw that door get pulled shut I was literally fighting for my life,” he says. “I was afraid these guys were going to kick me half to death, roll me down the back steps and that no one would see it… and there would be no witnesses and that would be that….and all I could think about was getting home safe to my kids…I wanted to save my life, to protect myself and these guys were trying to do me in.
And at that point everybody started screaming and I saw the door of the dressing room open and I started screaming security, security and I saw somebody pull the door shut to keep security out. And in my mind I thought to myself, “fuck, these dudes, their intention is to fuck me up, they don’t want no one to see it they’re trying to beat the shit out of me…SO what I did was defend my life…”
He claims that the leg that was reported as broken in the melee was a stab wound, so for the first time, we’re hearing that Flanagan was also stabbed. While it would be premature to play amateur detective and dismiss his account as bullshit, the blog obviously has a bias towards Flanagan, much the same way the media has taken a decidedly anti-Harley stance. But how did the hunting knife get involved? I’m pretty sure that a 5″ hunting knife wasn’t in the VIP section at a Cro-Mags show to cut brie. And why doesn’t his account say anything about him actually stabbing current band members outside of the generic “defending myself’ stance he takes? That’s something I’d probably somehow mention. You can read the rest of his account here.
