Okay, here’s the story as I remember it: several friends and I were at CBGB for a matinee headlined by one of my all-time favorite bands The Crumbsuckers. If memory serves, this was during the summer of 1987. Tons of kids in the NYHC scene loved the Crumbsuckers. Not only did they have anthemic songs that you could scream along to with their supreme screamer Chris Notaro, they, along with fellow Long Islanders Ludichrist weren’t afraid to show the traditionally snobby HC crowd that they could actually play the shit out of their instruments. One of the first great crossover bands for sure. Now enter Straight Ahead front man Tommy Carroll. Don’t get me wrong, Tommy was a good friend of mine, but to say he was an extremist is an understatement. He was most definitely on the “keep it real” tip and if he liked a band which was straight edge for instance, his band had to be MORE straight edge. If they played fast, his band had to play faster. If someone was a hard dancer, he made sure everyone felt his presence on the dance floor. You get the picture. So on this particular afternoon, Scott Ian from Anthrax, also a friend of Tommy’s, brought Kirk Hammett from Metallica to CB’s to turn him onto The Crumbsuckers. Long story short - Kirk loved the band so much he asked if he could join them onstage for a song, and the band was only too happy to oblige. I’ll give you one guess who this little situation didn’t sit well with. So Kirk is up there ripping shit up with The Crumbsuckers and Tommy makes his way to the stage, grabs the mic. and yells “get that fuckin’ rock star off the stage!” He then proceeds to rare back and spit right in Kirk’s face. Again, Tommy was my boy, but I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed. So Kirk is freaking out and the band stops playing. Then from out of nowhere, Billy Milano, ALSO a friend of Tommy’s, barrels his way through the crowd and gets to Tommy. He grabs him by his shirt and drags him outside the club. Many of us followed to see what was going to happen. Ultimately, not a lot went down out there other than Billy scolding the shit out of Tommy like an angry dad whose kid just got expelled from school, repeating to him over and over how stupid and disrespectful and embarrassing what he had just done was. You could tell Tommy realized what he had done was dumb, but something tells me he would have done it all over again. FYI - Tommy went on to become a struggling Golden Gloves boxer and Kirk Hammett…well he’s still a “fuckin’ rock star.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
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