Down By Law

Freddy: Tell me what a New York skinhead’s about. Talk about skinheads.
Rico: New York skinheads…the skinhead movement—I don’t know if you guys know, but it started in Jamaica. It was a labeling word to get the records out. If you weren’t a Rasta, you shaved your head, and if you had your head shaved, you were a skin. It was a slang word for a shaved head. But there were a lot of people who you see—Jamaica was split up with two groups. Rastas were more going back to the earth and the hippie movement. The ones who shaved their heads were—the commonwealth was England, so they followed English ways. Because the Governors down there were all English, not Jamaican, so you had those who were positive and that. You know then, there were crazy fucking rivals against it. So, from that era came us, and then, when the commonwealth was taken—because England had Jamaica as this commonwealth—they sent their kids to England for school, because that’s how you conquer back. You get an education. So, their culture migrated to England, and that’s how they adopted this lifestyle. When the national movement broke out, part of them went that way, and we stayed traditional with the traditional roots, meaning rock steady, reggae, etc.
Freddy: And hardcore, of course.
Rico: Yeah. Of course. But, that’s how we started. Simply said, a skinhead is a skinhead, a Nazi is a Nazi.
Freddy: That was something I wanted to make clear. As soon as you throw skinhead on something, people imagine some big white dude with a swastika across his chest. Everybody says, “Nazi.” And that’s inaccurate.
Rico: Well, that’s what Geraldo’s show was trying to portray—we were on all those shows during the 80s speaking out against racism. We got on every show. It was like yellow journalism. It sold, you know?
Freddy: Agnostic Front. My brother’s band. For years and years, they got a bad rap because they were skinheads, with the look, the image and the whole nine.
Rico: It’s just, the media during that time didn’t have nothing to write about, and that was the best way to sell papers. Robert Downey, Jr., put a backwards swastika on his head and said, “Look at me, I got beat up by skinheads.” It was a quick way to get attention.



Freddy: So, a skinhead doesn’t mean a big white guy with a swastika on his chest.
Rico: No. No.
Freddy: I know that, because I grew up with it. With Black, White, Hispanic—every kind of skin you could think of.
Rico: Every skinhead we knew growing up in the Lower East Side was a different ethnic background. But in Brooklyn and Queens, Hispanics were the majority! (laughter)

Freddy: What happened in New York when there was some type of racist skinheads?
Rico: That’s who got beat up! All of them. We just went after them. There was no way they could get around us.

That’s how we started—that’s how we really started the little family of ours, because we stuck together in the pit at CBs. We had a group of us looking after each other. If you last at CBs for six months in the pit, you became someone’s brother. Because you either looked after him, for falling, breaking his neck, or you got him out of some situation he almost got himself into, just by dancing, you know what I mean? So, if another group were to come in there as a bunch of Nazis, we fought. And those who fought stuck around and stayed with us. Those who didn’t, it was kind of like—we took care of them at the end of the day, you know?

Freddy: What bands were you into?
Rico: Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags. That was like, you know, the essentials. I listened to a lot of old ska. You know, Desmond Dekker, Toots & the Maytals, The Skatalites. That’s the stuff I listened to. For me, coming up, you know—there were great punk bands, but hardcore was what helped get the skinheads into that music, you know what I mean? For Bad Brains—I used to crack up. There was a big show at the Ritz that happened a long time ago. I guess they didn’t know that Bad Brains was not white. ‘Cause a whole bunch of Nazis happened to come in there, and they wanted to see Bad Brains. And the whole crowd turned around, and there’s these guys on the corner, on the wall. You never seen a whole fucking show rush a group of guys like that. It was like a wave, a tsunami. If I had to describe what it looked like, it was a tsunami. They cleaned ‘em up, and then they went back, and then there were all these bodies laying there. We couldn’t believe they showed up.

Freddy: Rico, let’s bring it back to the fam. Let’s put it all in perspective here. When did you become part of the fam?
Rico: 1986/87. Everyone went to CBs for matinees, and that’s where we hung out and got to trust each other. And what I mean, trust each other—it wasn’t just like, “Oh, hey, buddy, how you doin’?” No. You’re in the pit, you’re sweating, you’re dancing to this band, but you looked after each other. And those times it was pretty dangerous, because you didn’t know what crew was what, and that’s how the family came out. It was a way to weed people out. It was called demonstrating. If you were hanging out with us, and you didn’t have, as the English would say, the mustard, to kick it and hang out with us, you had to demonstrate. And if you did demonstrate, all you gotta demonstrate is heart. But that was the way to just show your loyalty, because it wasn’t about politics, it was about looking after your brothers. You could always scold your brother after the fact. But you don’t scold him during the fact, because you had to be there for him. And that’s how we always were.

Freddy: Name the people who should be mentioned.
Rico: Double O, Scot E., Bundy, I mean these guys were legends. Still are. The best people, all around. And I’d like to dedicate this chapter in my life to my sons Gabrielle, Alex and Ritchie.