Portrait by Richard Kern

BLOODCLOT! - PART 1

John Joseph of the Cro-Mags Makes the Rest of Us Look Like Pussies

INTERVIEW BY TREVOR SILMSER

One morning on my way to work, hungover and feeling sorry for myself, I ran into John Joseph, who I knew a little bit through our mutual friends in the hardcore scene in New York. John was the lead singer of the Cro-Mags, who are responsible for Age of Quarrel, the best hardcore record of all time. Through the years I’ve always heard these insane stories about him but never had the balls to ask him what’s for real and what’s not. Now that I’ve read his autobiography though, I know that all the shit I’d heard about John—and way more—was indeed true. Yes, he was a 14-year-old runaway on the streets of Rockaway in Queens. Yes, sold he fake acid at Madison Square Garden, joined the navy and then went AWOL, rolled with Bad Brains, and hustled with Hare Krishnas in New York City and Hawaii.

But anyway, I digress. So I ran into John and I was feeling like shit. I said hello and he said, “What’s up, man? You don’t look so good.” I said I was feeling ill. He grabbed me by the shoulder, walked me into a nearby juice joint, ordered me a combination of stuff that I had never even heard of before, then handed me a bottle of all-natural liquid medicine and said, “That should set you straight.” He was carrying all these deli bags with him, and I asked why. He said they were meals and that he was on his way to feed the homeless. What the fuck!? That moment had such an impact on me. I felt like I was fucking up—that I had lost the plot. I mean John Joseph is out there helping hungover dudes on their way to work and feeding the homeless all at the same time. What? Plus he was in the Cro-Mags and just wrote one of the most intense memoirs I’ve ever read. What the fuck have you done?

Vice: This is not a thin book you’ve written here. It’s hefty.

John Joseph: Ha, that’s what my uncle said. He goes, “Jesus Christ, I could use it for a fuckin’ weapon.” I was at the restaurant Caravan of Dreams with Googie from the Misfits recently and some dude came up telling me he got the book and that it’s fucking insane. These girls we were sitting with were like, “Oh, you wrote a book?” So I started telling them stories about the Lower East Side—some crazy shit. They asked Googie if he read the book and he was like, “I don’t have to. I heard these fuckin’ stories a million times already.”

He’s in the book, right?

Yeah, because when I was a kid he saw me riding on one of these junkies’ bicycles in Rockaway. He was like, “What the hell is this kid doing?” Rockaway was like the Irish Riviera then. All the poor Irish people had their summer bungalows out there, and his family had one.

You were like 14, living on the streets.

Yeah, I was a heroin mule for addicts.

How were you involved with so many drugs without doing them all?

I did do drugs. I tried heroin one time. I fuckin’ skin-popped it, vomited, and I was like, “Fuck that.” I was more into hallucinogens like mescaline, microdots, and acid. Weed, too—I was a huffhead and I was fuckin’ smoking dust.

Union Square was a big place to score drugs in the late 70s, right?

Fourteenth Street and Union Square Park, people don’t know this now, but that place was a drug supermarket. You could buy anything there. There were hookers there, too. Once, me and my crazy friend Dave Dolan, we bought Placidyls there and then we went to Max’s Kansas City. That was my first time going to that club.

What were Placidyls like?

They called them “jellybeans.” They were horse tranquilizers and they were the size of a fuckin’ 50-caliber machine-gun round.

What would they do to you?

Just lay you the fuck out. There were also Tuinals and Seconals—they’re all barbiturates. I must have good genetics, because with all the shit I’ve done to myself, I’m still running marathons and triathlons. I can pop off a 20-mile run in a clip.

But anyway, we got the shit stomped out of us that night at Max’s. I was passed out in the doorway outside, but my friend Dave went in there and stole all these dudes’ money off the bar. I was outside, 14 years old, fucking drooling all over myself, and next thing I know the door comes flying open. I see this guy getting the shit stomped out of him. All the punk rockers back then used to wear those pointed shoes and the dudes in Max’s back in the day were ass-kickers. It wasn’t like these punk-rock motherfuckers right now. Like I said in the book, they would stab you in the face 20 times with a bottle because they just didn’t give a fuck. Plus you could get away with it back then. So I’m looking and this dude is getting fucked up. He crawls over and looks up and was like, “Yo, John, help,” and they’re all like, “Oh, you’re with him?” Boom!


TO BE CONTINUED
BLOODCLOT! | 1 | 2 |

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