FROM THE NYHC BOOK ARCHIVES: Gary Meskil (Crumbsuckers)

This interview with Crumbsuckers bass player Gary Meskil was conducted in the fall of 2013 for my second book, NYHC: New York Hardcore 1980 - 1990. Signed copies of the book may be purchased here.

Tony Rettman: How did you find out about Hardcore and what was going on in the city while living on Long Island?
Gary Meskil:  I just stumbled onto the radio show Noise The Show by accident. Until that time, I was listening to bands like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, and more traditional Rock ‘N’ Roll and Heavy Metal stuff. But from listening to that show, I got more and more into what the DJ Tim Sommer was playing. It was a very influential time. That particular time had a great impact on me as a musician. It was magical to be a fan of that music at the time. There was a lot of excitement about the scene. People were collecting everything they could get their hands on. There was a cool, underground feel to it. 

Your first Hardcore show was the Misfits and Necros on Halloween ‘81 at the Ukrainian Hall. What do you remember about that show?
I was surprised at how intimate the music was. I had no preconceived notions going into it. I thought it would be some huge place and we’d be sitting down in some movie theatre-style seating or something. I got pretty close to the stage and as soon as the Necros hit the stage, it broke into this crazy, mosh pit. I was completely unprepared for it. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but it was a lot of fun. That led to weekly trips to CBGB’s, A7, Gildersleeves, Danceteria, and Bonds. Wherever there was a good show going on, that’s where you’d find me and a handful of friends from Baldwin who would go down and support the scene on a weekly basis. 

Who are some of the local bands you remember seeing at those early shows?
I remember seeing Agnostic Front very early on when Adam Mucci was playing bass and Ray Beez on drums. We got to be pretty close friends with those guys and they helped the Crumbsuckers get embedded into the New York scene. As for other bands that were prominent back then, there were Kraut and Cause For Alarm. The Abused were a pretty hot band on the scene. It’s unfortunate they didn’t stick around as long as they could. They were one of my favorite bands. The Mob I saw several times back in the day and they always put on a very killer live show. I saw Murphy’s Law when Harley Flanagan was playing drums for them. There was also Antidote, another really cool New York band. 

What did you think of the Bad Brains?
I have this little signature book from elementary school. When I graduated the sixth grade, they gave you this little book so you could take it around and get your teachers and your friends to sign it. I still have mine, and when you open it up, it says ‘Bad Brains #1!’ That shows you how much I was into that band. The Bad Brains were way ahead of their time. They’ve had such an impact on the music scene.

How did the Crumbsuckers form?
By the time I became a fan of Hardcore and Punk music, I was playing bass as a novice for a couple of years.  In ’81 or ’82, I had this friend of mine I used to eat lunch with in the high school cafeteria named Franco Capelli. I knew he was a guitar player, but he was into Van Halen and big rock bands of the time. I asked him if he had any major plans for the summer and he said he was just going to be hanging around. So I said, ‘How about we start a band, man?’ and he said ‘Of course’. We found a drummer that lived right around the block from me named Jason Bolenini. He was thirteen at the time but was a really great drummer. Due to a joke, we formulated in the high school cafeteria about a guys’ lunch habits, we called the band the Crumbsuckers. We began by learning songs from the Misfits and UK Subs. That was the original line-up. 

We soon became this sensation in a very short time; we played Baldwin High School. Then we started to have line-up changes very early on. We got Dave Brady to sing and he was with us for quite a while before Life of Dreams came out. Dave was a major score for us because he was this real, artistic guy in high school who knew a lot about the punk and Hardcore scene. He was an avid New York City goer and was really good on stage too. We got one of his friends, Dave Wynn to join us on guitar and then the drummer seat was occupied by another friend of mine, Dan Richardson, who eventually joined up with me in Pro-Pain. 

We started to find places to play outside of the high school party scene. We had some opportunities in New York City due to our friendship with Agnostic Front and Cause For Alarm. We started to play at the Right Track Inn in Freeport and The Half Crown Pub in Island Park. 

I think peoples’ history of the Crumbsuckers begins with Life of Dreams. I don’t think they realize how far back you guys go into the A7 days.
I was going to A7 before we started playing there. It was Dave Brady who got us our first show at A7. I’m pretty proud to say we were involved in the scene as early as when A7 was around. We played CB’s many, many times. We were starting to pick up some steam. Then we would go to Connecticut to play at the Anthrax Club and we’d go to Boston and play the Channel. 

What was it like coming in from Long Island and going down to A7?
It could be a bit intimidating at times. It was a complete contrast to my environment to my upbringing. I grew up in South Baldwin right on the water in a suburban environment with lush, green grass and all the clichés that come along with it. Finding myself in New York City down on the Bowery every weekend was pretty interesting. Kids who grow up in suburbia, get bored of it, especially if you're artistic. I wanted something more edgy and exciting in my life. 

We were creating our own little vibe on Long Island, but we needed to get respect in that New York City clique. We earned our respect because we had so many people that would come out from Long Island to see us in New York City. In terms of any intimidation, we kind of turned the tables. That’s how we got respect. We overwhelmed them in numbers. We had these big, football guys who would follow us from Long Island and really start a ruckus in the mosh pit. A lot of that fervor helped us gain notoriety in the NYHC scene. It would be like ‘The Crumbsuckers are coming in? There’s going to be some shit going down today!’

Did you have a kinship with the ‘other’ band from Long Island, the Nihilistics?
I think I was more intimidated by the Nihilistics than anyone that was from the New York City scene. I was always spooked out by them and afraid to go up and talk to them, but I thought they were great. You’d always hear stories about how one of them worked in a funeral parlor and stuff like that. 

What do you remember about The Cro-Mags?
The Cro-Mags stormed the scene. We played together a few times. They always impressed me and were the heaviest since the Bad Brains. The aggression they had on stage was real. They had this killer sound and the place would go wild. They were the band to beat for a very long time. 

Why the change over from Dave Brady to Chris Notaro on vocals?
We were having some problems with Dave Brady. He had lost interest and wasn’t showing up for rehearsal and we wanted to keep the ball rolling. We thought it was in our best interest to move forward. We were discussing different singers to replace him and as a result of playing several gigs with our friends in Krakdown, we thought about Chris Notaro. He was great on stage and had a killer voice. 

How quickly did Chris get his footing in the band?
Going into our deal with Combat, Chris was fresh in the band. He was still learning the lyrics and all that. I don’t think he played a gig with us before signing that contract. But after Chris joined the band, that’s when we started to get more recognized outside of the comfort zone of the tri-state area. 

Life of Dreams was recorded in 1985 to be released in 1986 and things picked up from there. We started to get internationally recognized. I can’t say all of us were ready for such a thing. Danny was still in high school. We were all very young and naïve.  I think as young kids, we were overwhelmed by the whole thing. 

How do you remember the crossing over of Metal into the NYHC scene?
I started to see some Metal guys show up at CBGB’s. I met Scott Ian and Dan Lilker around then and they were getting into the Hardcore scene in a pretty big way back then. That was when the crossover thing really started to happen. You had Metal guys starting to play Hardcore riffs and Hardcore guys starting to get into Metallica and things like that. That’s when the scene started to intermingle with one another. A lot of cool music was produced as a result of it. 

What do you think attracted them to the NYHC scene?
Getting turned onto this underground music that had an awesome spirit attached to it, there was something cool about it. It was something you immediately wanted to be involved in. I think Scott and Dan were musicians consciously looking for broader influences to incorporate into their own style. Plus the shows were a lot of fun. It wasn’t long before they started incorporating a more Hardcore style in their music and it served them really, really well. 

How did the Combat Core signing happen for the band?
Getting signed to a label was the furthest thing from our minds at the time. We weren’t thinking along those lines. We were basically a band that wanted to get together on weekends and have some fun.  We played one time with Nuclear Assault at CBGB’s and there were some label representatives there to see Nuclear Assault from New Renaissance, Combat, and Roadrunner. Johnny Z from Megaforce was there and showed up with some professional wrestlers and they were stage diving and stuff. People were mortified! There was no way anyone could catch these guys! We just had a great show where everybody went crazy. As a result, we had labels coming up to us offering recording contracts. We were just like ‘What the fuck do we do with this? Is this something we want to do?’ Around that time, we were being courted by a scene goer by Connie Barrett. She was already managing Agnostic Front and was trying to manage Pete Steele and Whiplash. We asked her to help us out. She said she could help by representing us. We met at a restaurant near CBGB’s after that show. We all agreed she should be handling our business matters. I think we had at least four offers on the table at that time. She was friends with a local attorney who was Roadrunners’ attorney. His name was Jules Kurtz. He was overseeing our recording contract. We started to develop this team and decided on the Combat Records contract. Life of Dreams was recorded afterward at Systems Two in Brooklyn, New York. After that, Life Of Dreams became more of an underground success than we thought it would be. It caused quite a stir around the country. We were invited to play with the Bad Brains at Fender’s in California. They flew us out there and got accommodations and the band was bigger than ever. 

There’s an infamous story of Kirk Hammett joining the Crumbsuckers on stage at CBGB’s and getting spat on by Tommy Carroll of Straight Ahead. Can you tell me what happened?
I think Kirk was turned onto the Crumbsuckers by Johnny Z at Megaforce. We had some pretty damn good guitar players in the band, so I think that’s why Kirk appreciated the Crumbsuckers so much. He joined us on stage and people still talk about it. That was one of the highlights of my career. Next thing you know, Metallica is doing their first arena tour with Metal Church and I heard they were spinning Life of Dreams every night in between bands. I was so happy to hear that. 

Back in those days, anyone who got some mainstream notoriety was deemed a rock star. When Kirk was on stage with us and we were having our moment, Tommy from Straight Ahead was causing a ruckus but Billy Milano stepped in and took care of it immediately. He wasn’t having it because Billy was there with Kirk and as soon as he saw what was going on, he put the kibosh on it immediately. 

In Hardcore music, there’s a lot of purists. When the scene all of a sudden becomes infiltrated by outsiders, it makes for an uncomfortable, broader scene for some. A lot of fights would pop up at shows. It was all due to a lack of open-mindedness if nothing else. 

At a certain point, there were certain aspects of the scene that started to bum us out. I think we made at least a conscious effort to go more into a thrash metal direction. We liked a lot of what that scene had to offer and we were becoming fans of the bands that were playing that type of music. We didn’t abandon our roots completely, but we went in a certain direction and polarized our audience in doing so. There’s always this argument between Life of Dreams and our next album Beast on my Back. 

What was your take on Youth of Today and the bands they brought into the NYHC scene?
I was pretty close friends with Ray Cappo then. As far as that next scene, I wasn’t as embedded in the scene at that time. If anything, I worked my way out of it. I wasn’t really going to shows to see some bands. I’d see Gorilla Biscuits because they were the favorites of the next generation of NYHC. The scene was just getting more popular as time went on. There were bigger venues opening their doors to these bands that weren’t open to this music a few years before. The next waves of NYHC were bigger on a commercial level. 

What do you think differentiates NYHC from the other scenes that were going on at the time around the country?
All those areas had their own sound. A lot of it had to do with the local atmosphere outside of the music. The New York bands were a bit harder. A lot of the things were about living on the streets and overcoming hardships. The delivery was aggressive. 

I’m sitting here realizing I’ve been doing this for a hell of a lot longer than I haven’t. It’s become a very big part of what I am today. That scene is responsible for everything I’ve done in music. They’re great, unique roots to have as a musician. It gets you immediate respect on a worldwide basis now. That platform made it much easier for my next endeavor, which was Pro-Pain, to gain traction. We did that as a result of being in the Crumbsuckers and carrying a fan base over from one band to the next.

BECOME A PAID SUBSCRIBER TO NO IDOLS AND HAVE A HEAPING HELPING OF HARDCORE NERDERY DELIVERED STRAIGHT INTO YOUR INBOX ON THE REG!