Flint Could Make A Girl Scream

By Vicky Adams
For New York’s Entertainment Today
March 17th, 1999

Flint is in Ney York City for a two week tour with a big show on St. Patrick's Day. New York City just may be Flint's kind of town. Their rap sheet of misbehavior would give any band on the planet a run for their money. Keyboard player Doug Cherokee has had two altercations with photographers in recent months including last week’s tossing of one through a window. The next time lead singer Cody Jackson enters the state of Missouri he most likely will be arrested on an outstanding obscenity charge stemming from an incident two years ago. He was supposed to sing the line “Your mouth was made to suck my kiss” from the Red Hot Chili Pepper anthem ’Suck My Kiss’ but Cody managed to replace the last word with a synonym for rooster. Fistfights, controversy and turmoil have plagued this band since their inception in the early Nineties. It sounds like Florida-based band Flint would fit perfectly into the chaos that is New York City.

Flint is a five-piece outfit. While bandmates Juwan Pilgrim, Lance Overmars and Pierre Young are off seeing the city, Flint's record company sent us the band’s more explosive personalities, the aforementioned Jackson and Cherokee. A band like Oasis refuses to have its chief combatants Noel and Liam Gallagher in an interview at the same time for fear of fighting. Overlord Records employs a different strategy. By having their two sticks of dynamite interviewed together, they hope it will spark a more interesting story. Typically, it has and my interview with them was no different.

Sitting across a booth from Flint’s dynamic duo, it is hard to believe the stories that have preceded them. They look like ordinary twenty-four year olds but there is also something very unnerving about that. I almost feel like I am sitting across the murderers from ”Scream”. Cody comes across as Billy, the mastermind psychopath as he seems the darker and quieter of the two. His painful, lounge-act facial hair makes him look tougher than his starved, white-boy figure would suggest. Doug is his perfect complement as the Stu character. His clean-cut prissy-boy looks hide a bizarre-humored lunatic waiting to explode. I am nervous but feel the need to present myself as strong. This interview will go fine if I quit playing head games on myself. In hindsight, I was dead wrong.

When you’ve reached a wider audience, do you think you will replace Marilyn Manson as the bad boys of rock music?
CJ: I didn’t realize Marilyn Manson was a boy.
Well, he recently got engaged to Rose McGowan... You know, the girl in ‘Scream’... (A bad sign for my mental well-being)
DC: Daddy likes her. If she wants a real man, let her know she can look me up on tour.
But I heard you recently got engaged to Felicity Shagbark. Wouldn’t she object to you having sex with another woman?
DC: I never said Felicity wasn’t allowed to join in, did I?
(Cody laughs. I think he realizes I may be in way over my head)

Don’t you think comments like that only had to your band’s womanizing reputation?
DC: I think you mean womanizing appeal. Girls want to be with me, guys want to BE me. What can I say.
CJ: I think the reputation is a bit of a myth. Sure in the past, I fathered a few kids here and there but that’s just life in the environment I grew up in.

Recent articles would suggest you still have a lot of groupies...
CJ: I think we’ve cut back a lot. Doug is recently engaged and he doesn’t have as many girls on the side as he used to. Juwan is practically engaged and Lance and Pierre date models. I think with our band it’s more about quality, when in the past it was quantity.
DC: And Cody, because he’s being interviewed, wants to appear humble. He's loving the beautiful, internationally famous and... (Cody cuts him off with a menacing stare)
CJ: Listen, smart guy. I don’t want to involve her in this conversation.

Why not?
CJ: I think some things should be private and I’ve been burned before in the past. When Trish [Ed. Note: supermodel Trish Henley] ditched me for a forty year old hockey player [rumored Mark Messier], it was hard because... I didn’t really care except it was public and hurt my pride when people tried to feel sorry for me.

I’m near tears. That’s really sad.
DC: This is usually the point of the interview where he would sense you feeling sorry for him and invite you upstairs to his hotel room. (To Cody) That story gets better every time you tell it.
CJ: What are you talking about? You haggis-eating sheep shagger. F*ck it, I’m done talking.

But this is an interview
CJ: Well then write how I get a baseball bat and bash his f*ckin’ head in.
DC: Didn’t you just say you are done talking? You know if we scrap, your 5’1 girlfriend isn’t tall enough to save your white a**...
CJ: That’s it. I’m done.
DC: Thanks for letting us waste your time. Don't worry, the guy's all talk. Are you coming to see the show at Butler's. I've got tickets in my hotel room you can have if you want to come and get them now...

Very interesting guys. If they get over their differences, Cody, Doug and the rest of Flint will be appearing at Butler’s Irish Rover Pub on 54th tonight and will be performing on Channel 10's Heidi Neville Live show being filmed tomorrow.