The Mad Ones: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld

by Tom Folsom

The Mad Ones chronicles the rise and fall of the Gallo brothers, a trio of reckless young gangsters whose revolution against New York City’s Mafia was inspired by Crazy Joe Gallo’s forays into Greenwich Village counterculture. Crazy Joe, Kid Blast, and Larry Gallo are steeped in legend, from Bob Dylan’s eleven-minute ballad “Joey” to fictionalizations central to The Godfather  trilogy and Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight . Called the toughest gang in the city by the NYPD, the Gallos hailed from the rough Red Hook neighborhood on the Brooklyn waterfront. As low-level Mafiosi, they were expected to serve their don quietly, but the brothers stood apart from typical gangsters with their hip style, fierce ambition, and Crazy Joe’s manic idealism. Here, for the first time, is the complete story of the Gallos’ war against the powerful Cosa Nostra, an epic crime saga that culminates in Crazy Joe’s murder on the streets of Little Italy, where he was gunned down mid-bite into a forkful of spaghetti in 1972. The Mad Ones is a wildly satisfying entertainment and a significant work of cultural history.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, True Crime, Crime, American History

256 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2007

About the author

I write tales of rebels and outlaws. Next up is Wild Man Dennis Hopper. HOPPER: A Journey into the American Dream (March 2013). Also THE MAD ONES: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld and the co-author of MR. UNTOUCHABLE: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of Heroin’s Teflon Don, written with its subject, drug-kingpin Nicky Barnes, who was featured in the film American Gangster.

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Praise for HOPPER:

"Tom Folsom's HOPPER is an electric and rollicking tour-de-force profile of Hollywood's great outlaw chameleon. All the wild-eyed stories and high-octane pathos in these pages makes me miss the edgy Grand Artiste Hopper anew. A knockout book!”
—Douglas Brinkley

“Dennis did a lot for motorcycling with his movie Easy Rider.
Folsom has written a book that shows Dennis' life like it was, crazy but brilliant.”
—Ralph "Sonny" Barger, author of the New York Times bestseller Hell's Angel
and former head of the Oakland chapter of the Hell's Angels

“Essential reading for anyone interested in Dennis Hopper, the explosive sixties, Hollywood, American cinema and art of the 20th Century. But watch out—this visceral book puts you right in it, and some of it is jaw dropping.”
—Philippe Mora, director of Mad Dog Morgan starring Dennis Hopper

“What a terrific book about Dennis Hopper—he would have loved it and hated it. Beautifully written, stunningly accurate, HOPPER captures all the wonderful and terrifying contradictions of the sweet, sad, funny, angry, loving man that was Dennis.”
—Henry Jaglom, actor, playwright, and director of Tracks starring Dennis Hopper

“Fortunately for him, Dennis Hopper has gotten the biographer he deserves. Which is to say, Folsom's gonzo prose pulsates with Hopper's manic energy and fits his madness like a glove.”
—Peter Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tom Folsom is so concerned with making each sentence laconic, spare and chock full of hard-boiled imagery that the book often seems more like a collection of pictures and gestures than a narrative, as if the reader were looking at a '40's noir frame-by-frame with no film projector to bring it to life. The best sequences--like the night Joey gets whacked--have narrative power and movement, but there needs to be more chapters like these.

I'm all for brief biographies, but this one leaves out too much cultural and contextual background, and consequently the portrait of Crazy Joey Gallo--vicious hood, amateur existentialist, and one of the few pop celebrities of US crime--never fully emerges.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I get older, I try to take myself, and my reading tastes, less seriously. There was a time where I fancied myself a Very Important Book Reviewer that would choke the life out of anything I read in order to critique it with skill. It’s silly, at least from my perspective. I love reading and I love writing reviews but they’re just that: reviews. Chronicling the things I read, if I liked them or not, and if I would recommend them. No more, no less.

The Mad Ones is a book I would have ripped in to at a different point in my life. It’s messy, meandering, condescending, and way too proud of itself. The style is meant to be off kilter but it felt too cool for its own good. I should not have enjoyed this book.

And yet, I did. Because Joey Gallo’s life was ridiculous. And it probably deserved to be told in a ridiculous fashion.

I knew next-to-nothing about Gallo saved for what I’d read in . His death is portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman as a big time mob hit. But Joey Gallo was a small-time guy whose crew was apparently a big pain the rear for the Profaci Family. And it seemed like Gallo himself had other interests besides the mob life, as he’s seen as an artist, a philosopher, a civil rights advocate, and many other identities.

Tom Folsom is smart enough not to try and make sense of Gallo’s many contradictions. Instead, he lets the story do the talking as it vacillates from whatever Joey is doing to whatever is going on behind the scenes in the perpetually ongoing mob struggle. The result is the book, which jerks the reader from moment-to-moment, never letting them forget how ridiculous all of this is.

It’s not a good book but it’s a fun one and it’s one I may actually revisit some day because the story itself is so wild.

[Jennifer Nelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so disappointed by this. I have to come right out and say that this is probably the worst book about organized crime I've ever read. It tries sooo hard to be cool, like the author is trying to channel Kerouac or something, which is stupid, as it just makes the book hard to read. There's no flow, until maybe the final three chapters. I wish the rest of it could have been written more like that, more concerned with the actual subject. I feel like I only write reviews for books that disappoint me, but I guess that's what gets my blood pumping or something.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

We purchased this book based on the Folsom's appearances on the daily show and fresh air. The author was a decent interview and book seemed interesting. However, my wife read it first and didn't like it. I took it on a work trip read it and also didn't like it. The mad ones is all packaging, there is no there there. It's like the author had his pitch and spiel down, they got a great graphic designer to do the cover, lots of blurbs for the jacket...and then didn't bother with the book.

Despite Folsom's rhetoric about why crazy joe is interesting, he just doesn't come off as interesting in the book. In talking about the book Folsom makes the claim that Gallo was a vibrant antihero, the mob version of a 60s rebel. But Gallo never comes off of that way--he just seems your typical greedy, sociopathic thug. Either Folsom didn't do a good job in writing about Gallo or Gallo just wasn't an interesting, complex person. Whichever, folsom never manages to get inside gallo in such a manner that justifies the book.

The Mad Ones is episodic and once a scene is over, characters are often just dropped from the narrative. It reads as if Folsom culled a bunch of anecdotes from secondary sources and strung them together...but there really isn't much flow from episode to episode. The book was a big disappointment.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tom Folsom owes Jon Stewart some money.

Like many others who've reviewed this book, I picked up The Mad Ones on the basis of Folsom's appearance on The Daily Show. It was a good press junket interview and, for the five minutes he talked about it, he made it sound pretty great.

Anything sounds pretty great for five minutes.

Much like the movie trailer that gives away too much, Folsom's interview was filled with great anecdotes that, unfortunately, represented most of his book's substance. Once you get done with the hitmen in drag, lions in the basement of the nightclub, and beatnik gangsters hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities, there's not a whole lot left to tell; certainly not enough to fill 250+ pages.

The book runs out of steam very early on, leaving you with chapter upon chapter of some of the least interesting gang war narrative that's ever been put to paper. You quickly realize that there's a very good reason so many of the other incidents in the book were nicked for use in various movies: the whole is much less than the sum of its parts.

Definitely one for the library.

[BeParticular · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was depressing, boring, and frustrating. Joe Gallo is completely unsympathetic--he comes off as a smart, but completely inept, gangster wannabe. He and his gang threatened, kidnapped, and killed hoping to make a big enough impression to be given some of the action by the New York "family". When that didn't work they started a self-destructive, pointless "war". Who cares about these guys? And his 15 minutes as part of the "gangster chic" trend was particularly depressing to read. Especially the part where Jerry Orbach and his wife become friends with Joey and it becomes the in thing to say you'd met Joe Gallo. Gag! Everyone is on the take--politicians, police, judges, etc. And knowing that this cycle continues today just makes it that much worse.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love the character, a beatnik gangster with movie star looks, and if you see the types of books I read, you will know I love character driven stories. Unfortunately, this book never quite delivers on the promise of what could be a great character profile. I am not sure what the author, Tom Folsom, had in mind with the manner in which he constructed his story, but I found myself getting a bit lost as he jumped from story, to tangent, to story again. I wanted to love this story, but I was simply tempted by nuggets of insight into Crazy Joe Gallo, but never came away with understanding I would have liked.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5-3 stars. Here's hoping the movie is better than the book....
I was really into the book at first. The subject matter is fun (you know, as fun as documented killings and gang violence can be) and Joe is an interesting character, but the structure kind of ruined it for me. Maybe just this once, being a bit more ordinary and telling the story in the order it happened would have been the way to go. Also, maybe a little less side character woe and a little more Crazy Joe.

BUT if you like 50's,60s NYC or reading about mob or gang violence, it might be worth your while.

[Shannon Miller · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish. No fluidity to the story (was there a story) and just way too choppy.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Mad Ones," suffers from the limited trajectory of its subject.

In the same way Joey Gallo's life never really took off, neither does this book.

"The Mad Ones" is a guilty pleasure read for those who like a good Mob yarn. It is also a great portrait of the era in which its anti-hero leaves his bloodstained mark.

Here is a tale about a low-grade, psychotic guy who sallied forth into Greenwich Village just as the sixties were taking off and willingly let some of its rebellious patina rub off on him.

After getting introduced to the scene by his future wife, Jeffie, "Joey decided to make a go for it in the Village. He took up painting, like the abstract expressionists brawling at the Cedar Tavern, a few blocks from the pad. His portrait of Jeffie burst with animal energy, an uncanny likeness painted completely from memory during a brief stint at Rikers Island. Joey was clawing his way up from the bottom, unlike Jeffie's first husband, jazz icon Gerry Mulligan."

Which is all well and good, but, as it turns out, it's the "Rikers Island" reference that does a better part of the foreshadowing.

In his "My Last Sigh," the surrealist film director Luis Bunuel meditated upon the implications of Spain's Civil War and concluded that, "all the wealth and culture on the Falangist [right wing:] side ought to have limited the horror. Yet the worst excesses came from them; which is why, alone with my dry martini, I have my doubts about the benefits of money and culture."

The point being (other than clumsy erudition) that Joey Gallo read Camus, was enthralled with Nietsche, but was, in the end, still a cheap punk.

The storyline, such as it is, follows the Gallo boys through mishap after mishap in their effort to reign supreme on the big Mafia family scene befuddling New York City at the time.

Gallo's bohemianism isn't really that pronounced. He's more of a classical night club and cocktail guy from the prior era. And we have to take the word of those whose testimony author Tom Folsom has gathered or researched as to the extent of his vaunted charisma.

And that's because he is a rotten person with a rotten pedigree, up from the juke-box industry, as it were:

"Joey was a little guy, listed by the NYPD as 5 feet 6 inches. Small, like the toughest guys in the B-pictures, Jimmy Cagney or George Raft, the steely henchman in the original gangster epic, 'Scarface.' In his teens, ruling the corner of Fourth Avenue and Sackett Street as King of the Cockroach Gang, Joey flipped a silver dollar, Raft's signature move. Joey wasn't going to be stealing copper piping from Brooklyn brownstones for the rest of his life. He was going to make it to the big town. Give big lunks the score.

"'I could have worked my way up to head soda jerk at Whelan's Drug Store,' said Joey, 'but what kind of life is that for a guy like me?'"

Colorful, sure, but rotten.

His attempt to shake down a "two-bit check casher" named Teddy Moss will horrify anybody who makes an honest living, feeds a family, and doesn't employ a personal bodyguard. It is rendered pathetic by the fact Gallo botches it and ends up in jail.

For "The Mad Ones," Folsom adopted a clipped, noir-ish style that makes for great fun, and does not limit his erudition or ability to transmit hard-earned information. But he also opted for a fragmented, back and forth manner of laying out the story, which confused this reader.

The author's gumshoe prose might have been better matched with a simple linear narrative or clearer delineation at the necessary points of digression.

At somehwere in this mushy timeline, Gallo gets it into his fevered head to take on the Colombo family, even though they have more men, bigger guns, and a legitimate claim to the "businesses" at stake.

And so Joey and his "Barbershop Quintet" of thugs hole-up with a lot of firearms and spaghetti at the President Street headquarters in Brooklyn to await a big shootout with the Colombo clan, or some clan made up of Colombos.

The stage is set, the police are on edge, trigger-fingers itching and....nothing happens.

They hang around eating. A few missions are aborted. The police run periodic and preemptive raids to keep them off-balance. Worse, the guys' wives start complaining about lack of money. The army which served as fodder for Jimmy Breslin's
"The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight," grows fat waiting.

Meanwhile, Joey goes to jail for a few wasted years, reads a lot, befriends black revolutionaries, and dreams up a strategy for heroine in the streets of Harlem based upon the novel stuff he's been learning in The Big House.

He gets out and rejoins the boys who are short on strategy, resources, and street smarts. One of them, or maybe not, shoots Joe Colombo who goes into a coma. An old-style "gangland" war breaks out and few of the Gallo crew are murdered in exchange for a few of the other team's. Nobody is asking who killed first.

Joey, ever the man about town and artistic wannabee, charms certain of the Manhattan literati and entertainment types, but mostly Jerry Orbach who had just played Kid Sally in the movie version of "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight." You might remember Orbach from "Law & Order."

Anyway, "The Godfather" was being shot (okay, not the best choice of words) on the streets of New York as a gangster chic took hold in the culture and elevated Crazy Joey's status with Cafe Society.

Aspiring writers will sigh at learning that he had a book deal with a prominent publisher and was garnering invitations to speak on big media panels with people like Gore Vidal.

But they kept PULLING HIM BACK IN! So that whatever Gallo thought he could be and was building toward....doesn't happen.

Instead his dreams are snuffed out in a hail of gunfire over a very late-night repast at Umberto's in Little Italy on the lower East Side.

And there is your story with the old-time moral that crime doesn't pay (unless you're really good at it).

The opening quotation is from Jack Kerouac: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the one who are made to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace things, but burn, burn, burn."

But the Beat poet waxed about something different than what "The Mad Ones" covers. This petty gangster's name, in the end, was not "Mad," but "Crazy" Joey Gallo.

And he earned it.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best things about "The Mad Ones" are the title and the book jacket. Both are cool. But despite an enthusiastic endorsement from John Stewart during an interview with the author of "The Daily Show," "The Mad Ones" was a huge disappointment. It's the story of Joey Gallo, a colorful gangster who read Camus, hung out in Greenwich Village and became a minor celeb before getting gunned down in the early 1970s. He inspired "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight" and a Dylan song. He's a fascinating character and deserved something far better than this book. The scenes featuring him are interesting, particularly those with a lot of dialogue. Otherwise, this book is undone by writing that is shockingly clunky and choppy. Kirkus Reviews said the writing is "as tight and hard-boiled as any James Ellroy novel." Ellroy should have someone at Kirkus whacked for that comment.

[Kevin · Rating 1 out of 5]

All style and little substance, this true crime story's subject--Crazy Joe Gallo's war with the Mafia during the late 50s and early 60s--is given short shrift by Folsom. Interestingly, TJ English, author of The Westies, blurbs the back. I recommend his account of that violent Hell's Kitchen-based Irish gang over Folsom's account of the slightly less violent, though no less terrifying, Gallo gang. English knows that probing his characters' psychological depths is just as important as probing their crimes.

[Brenda Wegner · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, but I didn't. I didn't care about anyone in the book. I usually like stories about mobsters, but I just couldn't get into this.

I bought this because I saw Tom Folsom on The Daily Show. Jon Stewart seemed convinced that Folsom was going to make this into a movie. I think I might like it as a movie. The writing seems jerky and some visuals and a good soundtrack would probably make it much more interesting.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great story, super-annoying writing style. It almost seems like Tom Folsom is trying to be hip in the way he jumps all over the place, but he only ends up making the narrative extremely convoluted. And I cringe when I read sentences like "The Gallos were trapped, desperate as the junkyard dogs that howled in Red Hook." ugh.

Like some of the other reviewers, I bought the book after seeing Folsom on the Daily Show, but it was a major disappointment.

[Jim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main issue that I have with this book is that the writing is all over the place. As others have said, the author seemed to be trying to replicate a "Beat" style of writing, which unfortunately confuses the reader. There were a few instances where events jumped from one another in a single paragraph. Fortunately for the book, the story of Joe Gallo is interesting enough that you'll want to continue reading to see the conclusion.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is insane. There is so much hyperbole and over the top crazy writing. I am not sure if it is so bad it's good or just bad. The story IS interesting but it is diffifult to stay focused while slogging through so many unecessary adjectives and clauses.

I'm stopping. I just can't go any further.

[Jim Nirmaier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun easy/breezy read about "Mad" Joey Gallo - a hipster low-level, but movie-star-handsome, tabloid-star gangster that was the inspiration for "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight". The 1971 low budget gangster film, based on Jimmy Breslin's novel, is best known now as one of Robert De Niro's earlier movies.

[matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disjointed and frequently unclear, Folsom does a poor job at expounding upon the numerous contradictions that made Joe Gallo such an enigma. Perhaps the forthcoming film (the Wiensteins financed the book) will do this story more justice.

[aya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great premise and subject matter, horrible execution. Badly organized, spotty, overly novelistic and unfocused. A book that has the sentence, "he didn't know nothing" and isn't dialogue is hard to take seriously.

[Pat · Rating 1 out of 5]

Extremely annoying writing style. The author tries to be a Jack Kerouac/Jimmy Breslin hybrid but fails miserably. The story gets lost behind his attempt to be hip. Disappointing reading to put it mildly.

[Dylan Lysen · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only snippet of information that I gathered from The Mad Ones is that Kid Blast is the most dope gangster name of all-time. The rest of the book is nothing I care for, and I am pretty upset that a book about a promising subject could end up being so worthless.

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is an okay portrait of Crazy Joey Gallo it deals with his life but is quite short and doesn't go into great detail about the mob wars that he and his brothers led against the Columbo family. It dealt a lot more with his celebrity friends and avant garde lifestyle

[Yvonne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I chose this book because of the subject matter. I thought it would be interesting. The it is written is such a turn off that it kills any interest the reader might have. It there is any concise description that sums up my feelings about this book it is "THE BOOK THAT WASN'T "

[Kevin Kiernan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Folsom tries to get too cute with his writing, and it comes off a bit stilted. I didn't really end up learning that much, when it should have been a fascinating story.

[Marc A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing. The book is long at attempting a hip, hardboiled style, and short on the facts and eyewitness anecdotes that make the true crime genre so much fun for me to read.

[Jessica]

great stories and characters, awful writing. a serious disappointment.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great subject matter delivered with arrogant mediocrity.

[Bee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't much like the style of this book, the story was disjointed and had no flow to it. Felt I had more questions about the Gallo family, than answers after reading it.

[Therese · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book Jacket looks interesting

[Michael Staples · Rating 2 out of 5]

There wasn't enough substance in what was being said. It just touches lightly on each time or event.