Jonathan Shaw
When I met him, he spoke to me about the spirit world, exorcism, metaphysical science, quantum physics and God. Fifty-three years worth of hard living, sex, drugs, and rock & roll, burning up the road to Hell. Pain and suffering. Major league insanity. Six years of solid recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, the plagues of his life. “I was in Baghdad when you were in Dad’s bag,” he says to me through a cloud of cigarette smoke, that ever present cigarette dangling between his lips, moving when he talks, gold teeth flashing in the smoggy light of another Hollywood night in temporary exile from his home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. “My motto used to be ‘live fast, die young, and leave a pretty corpse.’ Well, it’s too late for that now, so I guess all I can do is just keep living’ fast. I got no regrets. Any day above ground is a good one.” This statement seems to underscore his newfound peace and simplicity after a long absence from the world of tattooing. A world he was once so passionately involved with.
A nighttime montage of Hollywood coffee shops, and I began to really understand the character of the man sitting in front of me. Jonathan Shaw, the infamous cult figure, a walking, talking, living encyclopedia, embodying vast experience and knowledge of all my budding interests. The enigmatic tattoo master who over the last three decades pioneered an industry, before disappearing into thin air. The visionary who I would soon find myself consorting with on much greater levels.
As his apprentice and personal assistant, let me say that Jonathan is not easy to work for. He is still as demanding of quality from those he works with as he has always been of himself, always pushing the envelope, often to his detriment and frustration. A true artist, an old school craftsman, businessman and entrepreneur, he breaks major balls to get what he wants. And he does get what he wants, naturally. After all, he is the Captain; he calls the shots and that’s that– he’s been there and done that for years in his various endeavors and many incarnations. A traveler of the seven seas, tattooing the rich and famous, the low and infamous. Buying low and selling high; a one time professional criminal; Gonzo journalist, producer, director, poet, screenwriter, painter, creator, curator and collector of lowbrow art; low-life, celebrity, wheeler, dealer, hustler, psychic, psycho, pirate, pimp; Editor-In-Chief of a major magazine. And the eccentric owner and operator of the legendary, avant-garde world famous NYC Fun City tattoo studio.
While Jonathan has long left the scene he pioneered behind for new challenges on happier horizons, his shadow and legacy are forever tattooed on New York City’s collective conscience. Not to mention the thriving tattoo scene he grudgingly admits to have spawned there. On a recent trip back to New York, freshly clad in a new sleeve and back piece from JS, I got to hear firsthand accounts of some of his more colorful personality traits. Traits that, happily, I had never seen myself. His old character. The control freak, the boss-man, the ne’er-do-well playboy, coked up drunk and junkie- the world-class asshole. The trendsetting artist. And the dangerous maniac who carried a ball-peen hammer in his back pocket and didn’t hesitate to use it on any poor bastard who stepped out of line as he conducted his nefarious outlaw business with thieves, derelicts, outcasts, criminals and other lower members of society. Making it happen in an aggressive, edgy, always authentic way among bloody, bone-breaking rumbles, gunplay, chaos, passion and good old garden variety drunken punch-ups.
Most of the people I talked to were decorated in Jonathan’s shadowy black and grey neo-tribal work. All of them made it clear that he was boldly pioneering this style long before it reached its current mass-market phenomena to become the meat and potatoes status quo staple of the tattoo industry. That was, to my understanding, around the time when the Captain abandoned ship; the beginning of the end of an era where tattooing was still edgy and antisocial and..cool. It seems JS was country before country was cool. And, talking to him, I got the impression that he’d known for years that he’d somehow created a monster, continuing to go through the motions, having lost his original fervor for what he was doing anymore. Like a ghost haunting a house, long after its death. Ghosts are haunted too, though, by memories and regrets. “I was really an insane person back in those days, an untreated alcoholic– restless, irritable, discontent. People didn’t even have to do anything most of the time to piss me off– I was already pissed off,” he explains. “Unfortunately, I was in the position there where I came into contact with alot of people. Bad luck.”
Finally he realized he was tired of living a life he’d come to hate, being a ‘brand-name’ with diminishing returns, circling the drain in a slow descent into drug-addled, alcoholic madness. Simply done being a parody of himself, chasing his tail for money and acclaim that had lost all sparkle or appeal to an artistic spirit. And so, sometime around September 11th, he sobered up, dug his head out of his ass, and, after a swan song tattoo tour of the Yakuza family business in Japan, without fanfare or comment, he quietly retired from tattooing. “Old tattooers are like old tattoos. They never die,” he was heard to say to a close friend at the time. “They just sorta fade away.”
Alot of the stories I heard seemed blown far out of proportion, like long held urban legends. Incredible anecdotes of a mysterious gun-packing psychopath who would go off on just about anybody for just about anything. Strangely though, most of these lurid accounts ended in breathless, almost reverent tones– “What a great artist.” Vinnie Casanelli, a customer turned friend on the scene back in the early days of Jonathan Shaw’s world famous Fun City Tattoo recounts the time when a local “wannabe” tattooist who’d manage to build up quite a prosperous clientele by operating in Jonathan’s shadow, one day fizzled out and quit tattooing after a short and lackluster career.
“Jonathan was kind of offended this guy didn’t have the class to tell him he was going outta business, give him some referrals and shit, after JS had been generous with his time and experience. Tattooing was real underground in the city back in those days, real shady and real competitive. And Jonathan had been good to the guy. JS never said nothin’ though, he just called the phone company, pretending to be the guy and got his old phone number transferred over to Fun City, so whenever his customers called, JS or one of his boys would say ‘He just stepped out for a minute. Why don’t you come down here and we’ll take care of you.’ He was always pullin’ shit like that. The guy found out about it and yelled at Jonathan’s old lady on the street. Real tough guy. I guess he didn’t have the balls to face JS direct. That fuckin’ mook is lucky to still be alive and not crippled, I’ll tell ya’, the way JS used to be. Thank God he’s sober now…” he continues. “It’s true, he had a really nasty temper. But it was usually well placed. His victims usually had it comin’, one way or another. Alotta people thought he was just a straight-up maniac. But he was really a very intelligent, crafty cat with his own weird code of honor. JS was a product of the streets; he always had a million fucked up tricks and scams like that. Nobody could keep up with him. Artistically he was way ahead of his time. At the same time he was a real balls out, no bullshit, old school tattoo man. Not some egghead college educated art-fag like ya got around today. We miss him, bad temper, blunt objects and all. New York misses him.”
I listened to these tales, all alike. Story after story of dirty tricks, bloody beatings, death threats, rumbles, hostile take-overs, burn outs, piracy, dementia and underworld happenings taking place in a decrepit nether-landscape. A burned out, pre-Giuliani, thug controlled Lower East Side that was operating on the streets I grew up on decades before I was born. It sounded like something out of The Gangs of New York. Yikes. I was confused and amused by these epoch accounts. It seems that my friend and mentor Jonathan, the kitten loving, girl chasing, hopelessly romantic, generous-beyond-measure dude I know had been the stuff of legends back in the day.
“Teddy Roosevelt said ’speak softly and carry a big stick’ right?” says friend and Hollywood screenwriter Kenneth Shiffrin. “Well Jonathan used to speak loudly and carry a big stick. But he has a big heart. And he’s really a much nicer dude now. No doubt about that.” Even today, mellowed out, chilled out, sober and reflective, as hard as he tries Jonathan is still just not so polite to everyone. Suffice to say he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. No doubt a tricky personality trait for a tattoo artist to possess and still survive, even thrive, in a world of raging egos, frantic greed, vanity and ugly, often-unprincipled ambition. Back in the day, my dear friend had been, by all accounts, a real hardass. Albeit a colorful one. “Jonathan Shaw is the great nightmare antihero of the new age.” says his old friend, rock legend, Iggy Pop.
Why am I not surprised? Probably because he is one of the most unpredictable human beings I’ve ever encountered. On a recent trip to his home base in Rio de Janeiro, we schmoozed in high society cocktail parties with one of his many and weirdly diverse groups of friends– movie directors, captains of industry, architects, artists, movie stars and musicians; then, a heart-stopping motorcycle ride later, bobbing and weaving through road warrior traffic and police roadblocks, we were sitting in a teeming, decrepit favela in the foul-smelling third-world ghettos eating “feijoada”, hairy pork snouts peaking out at me through a bowl of beans, while coked-up machine gun toting twelve year old drug-trade soldiers and pregnant teenage whores crowded around him, shooting the shit and gawking at his full body-suit of tattoos. This exemplifies a weird duality that always made him stand out from the herd. That singular cross pollinization of two or twenty diverse worlds and cultural orientations. Always smiling crookedly, flashing ruby-studded gold teeth, putting out his hand with the dollar sign tattooed on his palm… Jonathan is more than a tattoo artist, more than a living legend. He’s a fucking bloody pirate. He’s been around the world a hundred times and has enough stories to tell for hours, or talk with authority on subjects ranging from art and literature to the hidden hand in world politics; from philosophy to obscure history to the occult.
In his penthouse office and home-away-from-home in a landmark building overlooking the glittering lights of Hollywood Boulevard, above his desk where I work while he’s off traveling the world, there are framed portraits of him drawn by old friends. Well-known artists like Robert Crumb and Johnny Depp. The Depp portrait bears an inscription from the famous actor, “To my brother JS– the original Captain Jack the pirate.” Wow. So that’s where Johnny Depp took that character from, the gold teeth, the cynical, half-drunk swagger. I knew I’d seen all that before.
“You know, you remind me of someone. I just don’t know who…” I told Jonathan when we first met. It wasn’t until I read that inscription that it all clicked into focus. Jonathan Shaw–the real life Captain Jack the Pirate. Of course…
He likes to tell me about the old New York, reminding me that I missed it completely; By the time I was born I had unfortunately lost out on the glorious ’70’s and ’80’s, spending most of the ’90’s learning how to ride a bike and write in cursive. He talks about his original tattoo studio off the Bowery, years before the acclaimed Fun City, in an innocuous basement on a shabby street peopled with drunks and junkies. The Bowery. That name really conjured up images for me. The birthplace of Electric tattooing, (SEE AUTHOR’S BIO BELOW**) and the end of the line for armies of lost souls. He conducted his business there. “It was a real shady, underground scene,” says Luke Miller, a customer and helper at the original location. “I answered the phones, stuff like that,” he tells.
“It was pretty crazy, real secretive. We used to tell people to go to the corner and call from a pay phone. Then JS or one of us would go up there and check them out. If they looked alright, we’d walk ‘em back over to the studio, which was completely low-key, just a boarded up storefront, no sign, nothing to indicate a tattoo studio. It was a dangerous scene, real risky. He used to get a lot of death threats and stuff, mostly from tattooers in Jersey and other places. I guess they didn’t like the idea of competition from some upstart running an illegal shop in NYC. Jonathan was real paranoid back then. He didn’t go out for smokes without packing at least one gun.”
Jonathan laughs today, “Like Lenny Bruce said, ‘I may have been paranoid, but there really were people watching me.’Characteristically, he persisted, slowly, stealthily building an underground art empire and legacy there. Quietly operating in the shadows of an anonymous, dingy basement covered from floor to ceiling in thousands of original antique tattoo design flash sheets. Artwork collected during years of travel and adventure, in his insatiable hunger for knowledge of history. Wooden cases above his work area displayed South American shrunken heads, walls covered with pictures, exotic mementos, original art and paintings by his friends and frequent visitors, underground icons like Robert Crumb, Joe Coleman, Robert Williams, S. Clay Wilson, Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman; Jonathan’s true peers, since he never really considered himself at home among other tattooists– save for a select few, like tattoo legend Filip Leu, who often came and worked out of the secretive, appointment-only studio, tattooing side by side with Jonathan there for months at a time. New Yorkers like Jim Jarmusch, Dee Dee Ramone, Vincent Gallo, John “Bloodclot” Joseph, Steve Bonge, Clayton Patterson and Ari Roussemoff stopping by on their bicycles to hang out for a while. Film makers the Maysle Brothers, of Gimme Shelter fame filming the proceedings while Pulitzer Prize winning artist and friend Spiegelman sits in a corner sketching a portrait of Jonathan at work for the cover of the New Yorker magazine. What? A tattoo artist on the cover of the stately New Yorker? All in a day’s work for Jonathan Shaw.
The paintings that once hung in that fabled studio now decorate his homes in Hollywood and Rio de Janeiro. Paintings that I gawk at in amazement because I know they really belong in a museum somewhere– his houses, like the shops he used to run, are like museums, filled with rare, eclectic works of art. And littered with random chatchkas. Today, for instance, I found a tarnished old Zippo lighter in a kitchen drawer with the classic MAN’S RUIN girl in a champagne glass. It belonged to a soldier in Vietnam, and on the back was inscribed “If you want to make love, smile when you hand this back to me.” I couldn’t capture Jonathan better in one sentence– forget his art collection; his girl collection is equally charming, if not more beautiful. Essentially, JS is a lover, not a fighter. But his extensive collection of Charles Manson paintings is rare and incredible too.
Jonathan was always a step ahead of the rest; he intuitively knew what was cutting edge way before it ever became popular. “Jonny is never kitsch. The art he cultivates is completely uncommon,” says Clayton Patterson, Gonzo historian and president of the seminal New York Tattoo Society. “All of Jonathan’s art, including his own, are testimonials and souvenirs from a lifetime of exploration, all showing some side of his very special weirdness and coolness.” After decades traveling the world, working alone by appointment, as well as alongside other notorious tattoo legends like Spider Webb, Crazy Ace, Zeke Owen, Bob Shaw, Colonel Todd, Gil Montie and Filip Leu, in the mid ’80’s the world famous Fun City was born. New York City’s first walk-in shop since the decades long official ban on tattooing. Spawned out of the Bowery basement location it landed one day like a UFO at 94 St. Mark’s Place, smack dab in an astonished public eye, instantly blowing minds and turning heads- tattooing was still illegal in New York City. Who was this person who had the balls to openly flaunt the laws of the land? Jonathan Shaw, who else? That studio became the impetus for the legalization of tattooing in new York City, eventually becoming “the” NYC landmark tattoo parlor, synonymous with the highest standards of world-class tattooing the world over. The same antique flash from around the world covered the walls. Classic handwritten signs like “If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport”, and the rusty meat cleaver that hung under a plaque that read “TATTOO REMOVER”. A pistol, people told me, was duct-taped under his chair– just in case. A dead fly was crucified on the wall with a tattoo needle by tattoo legend Zeke Owen, and it stayed there for years. You could not sit in there for five minutes without learning volumes about tattooing. Just by looking at the walls. And if you spent weeks or months in there and thought you saw everything, you could walk in there one day and notice something completely new.
“Jonathan drilled tattoo history into us all day long– I’m so grateful for that now…” says Elvis Crocker, one of the scores of well-known artists who worked for Jonathan at Fun City over the years. The studio was not only a prominent landmark because of its earned reputation in the trade, but also a bold testament to the Lower East Side’s own oddball collective personality. The first time I set foot in there, I was overwhelmed, and not just because I was a stoned fourteen-year-old. But because I couldn’t believe how much shit was everywhere. Astonishing. By all accounts, he loved that place like a baby. He made it, watched it grow, and, when it passed its prime, beginning a descent into decadence marked by his increasing disinterest and absence from the scene, he let it go gracefully, selling out to an ambitious local operator. St. Mark’s Place having not so gracefully long suffered its gentrification into a trendy version of Fifth Avenue. Today the old shop is different. Devoid of its old air of mystery and danger, reflecting the ’safe’ and sanitary New York of today. Sterile looking, stripped of its once terrible and fantastic aura of history and tradition. Gone are the walls and ceilings packed with the mystique of its former owner, retaining only its notorious name to distinguish it from the dozens of neat looking, modern, cookie-cutter tattoo places that have sprung up in the creeping wake of respectability and post-Giuliani globalization.
“In all fairness to the new kids on the block, the truth is that Fun City had simply degenerated into a filthy, spiritually bankrupt, toxic hell-hole over the years. Kinda’ like me… A real ratty old dinosaur,” Jonathan explains, laughing with his classic straight-shooting, “tell it like it is” mannerism
“I was too sick and burned out at the time to even give a fuck towards the end. My heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I ended up with crack-heads and junkies running the joint. I was already gone, off living back in South America, getting sober, and the place just went to rats and ruin… Oh well. The people who bought it really did a great job fixing it up. They were too smart to try polishing a turd, so they just pulled the wicked old plant out by its roots and basically built a whole new place in there. The old Fun City is dead and gone. Good riddance, I say,” he laughs, not without irony. “Tattooing has become a respectable gig, man. No place in the modern tattoo world for a dump like that… I’m just glad to be done with the whole thing. By the time I sold out, it was like waking up from a long, terrible nightmare. Sweet relief…Done. Next?”
Before St Mark’s underwent its mass “yuppification”, it was essentially a small, tight-knit community where Fun City played a major role. Everyone on the block knew Jonathan well and looked out for him. He did business with everyone. The cops would drive by as he stood with his size twelve motorcycle boot on someone’s face and wave to him without stopping. Everyone was on his side. I listened to another day-in-the-life account where Jonathan had gotten into a bloody fight because someone was harassing one of his girlfriends and a gang of drug dealers on the corner of Avenue A jumped out of the woodwork to protect him. Business as usual. There was drama every day on that street. I was even able to see a little of this firsthand, having spent half of my teenage years lurking in front of Tompkins Square Park. There was always a whole vibe over at Fun City, kids outside smoking, laughing, fighting. Everyone seemed to get along fine though, living harmoniously in a dysfunctional ecosystem of artists, freaks, losers and weirdos.
Jonathan knew the streets and respected them equally. However, when people wanted to challenge him, he was prepared. “Ya’ fucked around, ya’ layed around,” he laughs sheepishly, remembering the old days. “There was bloodstains all over the walls in there, and it wasn’t from tattooing.”
More than once is he said to have pulled baseball bats, sawed-off shotguns and other blunt objects, gleefully inflicting insult and injury on would-be tough guys who came in with attitude. As I’ve learned, he means business. He’d once had the peephole on the diamond-plate armored front door of the original Bowery studio fitted just so the barrel of his AK-47 could fit through it.
But like many respected artists, Jonathan’s binge drinking, massive drug habits and unrestrained, violent lifestyle eventually took its toll, shuttling him right out of a mundane world that he didn’t dig, and burying him alive in a hellish parallel dimension; a surreal universe made up of bloody warring fragments and terrible nightmare visions raging away in his battle-scarred, increasingly deranged mind. St. Mark’s Place was like a Vietnam minefield where no limbs went missing, just marked indellibly by complex, angry looking tattoo marks. Hieroglyphics of an underworld vision that Jonathan’s singular perspective personified for a whole generation of New Yorkers.
And back at the world famous Fun City tattoo, another day, another dollar, another fight, another batch of antics. But Jonathan always had his special brand of street-wise diplomacy. That can be summed up by a sign that hung for years above his station, among the clutter and chaos: “TACT- THE ABILITY TO TELL A MAN TO GO TO HELL AND MAKE HIM FEEL HAPPY TO BE ON HIS WAY.”
“He’s really crazy, and I don’t mean that lightly. He just doesn’t give a fuck. I think Jonathan was basically more afraid of living a half-assed life of quiet desperation than he was to die,” says long time friend Billy Leroy, an antique dealer and outlaw biker, referring to an incident that occured when some big drunk thug changed his mind about getting a tattoo after already paying, demanding a refund after Jonathan had spent time working on a design. “He told the guy there were carrier pigeons at the window and that the pigeons flew to Queens with all the money so he couldn’t give a refund. Carrier pigeons? Where’d he get that?! He just stood up and looked this big bruiser right in the eye and turned out his empty pockets like he didn’t have a penny to his name… The look on his face, ya’ hadda be there. The guy just shrugged and left scratching his head. Played, by the master. Shit, JS probably had a coupla’ grand in hundreds tucked in his motorcycle boot. What a fuckin’ nut.”
As Fun City became a staple NYC tattoo parlor in the early 90’s, it grew a big name for itself. “He ruled the shop with an iron fist,” says Marcus Epstein, who has one of the last great full-body pieces that Jonathan completed right before retiring. A final innovative masterpiece that won every award going at tattoo conventions all over the world. “He used to say to me, ‘Damn, I wish you could just drop your arm off and I could give it back in the morning.’ Later, after he got sober, he told me he was massively strung out on heroin the whole time. How he managed to pull off that quality of work stoned out of his mind seems to defy the laws of nature. We were working five nights a week for almost six months.”
And long days were just a part of Fun City’s surreal nightmare dynamics. Open until four AM or later, depending on street traffic, visiting friends, hot chicks, the combination of liquor and drugs flowing through Jonathan’s veins or the number of Hells Angels bikes lined up out front. Over time the clientele got larger, growing into a feeding frenzy of major demand. Soon the spot became a timeless, twenty-four-hour nether-world time-warp of vital art and local flavor, a notorious Bohemian gathering place. A hectic underground mecca, packed to the rafters with all the crazed flora and fauna of a vibrant counterculture neighborhood. Beautiful losers, visionaries, street thugs, cops, mobsters, artists, tourists, bikers, hipsters, high-rollers, stock brokers, artists, junkies, strippers and movie stars. Busy all the time, Jonathan was in his element, casually banging out pieces that were changing the tattoo world for good, without even realizing it. His combination of old school technique taught to him directly from old-timers, tattoo legends like his “uncle” Bob Shaw and Colonel Todd, mixed with his trademark neo-tribal, primitive graffiti spin, his huge, colorful, abstract, neo-cubist style, his classic spindly claw-like tendrils. His mounting body of innovative tattoo work was turning heads all over town, putting him in authority as a true leader in the fledgling industry. And with this trailblazing work he was also slowly building a demanding, sophisticated and affluent clientele, becoming by the mid-90’s the numero uno celebrity tattoo artist.
“You could tell the difference between Jonathan’s work and anyone else’s,” said a heavily tattooed guy I talked to in Tompkin’s Square Park. “Just the way he dragged his needle across, it was a whole different technique. Nobody ever saw that kinda shit before. I been tattooed by alotta guys over the years, but Shaw really had a special touch.” And that “special touch” let him create unique works of art employing a traditional technique that was very old school and simplistic for such intricate masterpieces. He puts ink in with a heavy hand, and I do mean heavy. It stays… JS makes three hundred pound tough guys cry, just to say he did. And despite the sick pleasure of his cold-blooded bedside manner, those of us who have been tattooed by him reap major benefits. We will never need a touchup. Never. You can’t tell if a tattoo is ten months old or ten years old.
Musician and long time friend of Jonathan, Ricky Beck, knows from experience. Over dinner recently, I asked him about his first tattoo. He lifted his sleeve to reveal a colorful, intricate tattoo by Jonathan. Over twenty years old, the piece looked like it was done a month ago. Then he pointed to a fuzzy blue mark on his upper arm, laughing. “See that dot there? That’s really my first tattoo. Jonathan did it in 1984. I asked him, ‘Does that hurt?’ while he was tattooing my friend. We were all coked up. He didn’t say nothin’. Then all of a sudden he just stabs me with the fuckin’ needle and he goes, ‘Did that hurt?’ ” This kind of unorthodox behavior went on throughout his entire career. A fuzzy blue shadow of the old Jonathan Shaw. Secretive, bordering on paranoid. As protective of his craft as the old-timers who schooled him. Like one of the Mulberry Street wise guys he tattooed, Jonathan never liked to be asked too many questions about his business.
So it was particularly ironic when, in the mid ’90’s, he suddenly began appearing on the David Letterman Show– the first and only tattoo artist to ever do so. And so he began building a real reputation, not only in the insular tattoo community, but in the general public eye. As Fun City’s advertisement said, it was “where the tattoo elite meet”. And this was fast becoming the stuff of legend. The names “Fun City” and “Jonathan Shaw” were suddenly known in the celebrity crowd as the where and who to go to for tattoo work. But, to his consternation, he eventually came to be known publicly more for his celebrity clientele than his actual tattoo skills. And that very same taboo mystique that enticed the entertainment world soon became a sort of fly in the Shaman’s ointment.
“It wasn’t really what I wanted… I mean, yeah the business was good and all that…” he reminisces, “but then it just got kinda stupid, ya know… Hoards of really squares-ville people started coming in, not for the quality of the work, but ’cause I was the guy who tattooed all these fuckin’ famous dudes. It coulda’ been anybody. The ol’ ‘thundering herd’ mentality. Most of these fuckers didn’t know enough about the work to care, they just wanted the status of that ‘I got tattooed by the same guy who did so-and-so’s piece.’ BORING…”
Iggy Pop, Johnny Depp, The Cure, Shane MacGowan, Dee Dee Ramone, Marilyn Manson, Jim Jarmusch, Johnny Winter, Kate Moss, Orlando Bloom, Kathy Acker, Tupac Shakur… and all of his bitches. The VIP list goes on forever. Even Vanilla Ice was lining up for an appointment. Everyone who was anyone was getting ink from Jonathan Shaw.
While Ed Hardy was tapping into the fine art world on the west coast, JS was doing the same on the east coast, but creating a durable myth with his own colorful, weirdo, edgy flare– legitimizing the art through numerous gallery shows that he curated and/ or participated in as a painter. He was one of the first tattooists to cross the fine art line with high profile style in public view. There are also the hundreds of TV, MTV, radio and news media appearances he made internationally. He was always in the spotlight, later taking it to the outer limits with his own magazine, International Tattoo Art, and his extensive interviews with respected artists from around the world. Today’s household names like Joe Coleman and Robert Williams were first introduced to a tattoo audience through Jonathan’s groundbreaking articles. Not to mention tattoo legends and old friends like Bob Shaw, Jack Dracula, Coney Island Freddy, Japan’s Horiyoshi and Filip Leu, to name a few. Jonathan helped bring tattoos into the mainstream by creating a magazine that was centered in tattoo culture, packed with vital information and history in every issue. A whole generation of new school tattooists came up, weaned on Jonathan’s sophisticated, cutting edge articles and editorials. And he was cool. Mysterious and attractive; well spoken with a hip, bad-boy charisma, an A-list mover and shaker who knew everybody worth knowing. Essentially he was propelling himself beyond the confines of his own neo-celebrity status. Something unheard of at the time. A superstar tattoo artist? No way…
“JS took the role of being a tattoo artist to a whole new level,” says Clay Decker of True Tattoo in Hollywood, CA. “He was completely tapped into all these different worlds, way before anyone else, especially after he started ITA.”
After cutting his teeth as a regular contributor to Outlaw Biker, a motorcycle mag with a small tattoo section, he was approached by publishers with the idea of starting a new magazine that would be dedicated strictly to tattoos. And so it was that International Tattoo Art Magazine was founded in 1991, christened with an article by Jonathan Shaw, Founder and Managing Editor, and soon put on shelves worldwide. It was the perfect opportunity to raise the bar of tattooing. And right at the height of its new novelty status with an increasingly receptive public. And Jonathan ran with it with style, engineering a magazine that was the first of its kind. His brainchild and obsessive new project, ITA took the common grassroots tattoo mag format and pushed it up to the level of a legitimate fine art magazine, changing forever the way people would look at tattoos. It focused greatly on tattoo history, making sure that priceless archives, information and legend was not kept hidden away to be hoarded by a few elitist tattoo historians for their own self-serving and short-sighted purposes. It maintained a high standard of the industry by showcasing world class works of art, including Jonathan’s own revolutionary pieces. His neo-tribal work, detailed back pieces. His first-of-a-kind tattoos of Robert Williams and Joe Coleman paintings, which he copied immaculately in loving tribute to his old friends and art mentors, each tattoo looking exactly like the oil painting from which it came. All this was totally unseen before his time.
Indisputably, when Jonathan was running ITA, it was at its best, personifying not only a vibe that people were into, but the actual essence of Jonathan himself. His sophistication, his dark sense of humor, his ruggedness, his outspoken opinion and outlook, his neo-traditional view of tattooing and underground culture across the board. He painstakingly compiled every piece of information in every issue personally, knowing full well that he was kicking up the level in which tattoo magazines and tattoo culture were held, raising the standard way higher than anyone had ever thought to push it. And he made his classic big demands on all of his writers. He wanted research, humor, detail, depth, drama, and art. And he got it. “ITA proposes to edify, educate and entertain its readers,” he stated in an early editorial. In the scores of pieces he wrote he gave the reader the feeling of intimate familiarity with his interview subjects, putting you in a place and time so accurately described and documented it’s almost eerie. An accomplished writer, he devoted his vision and talent to detail, poetic phrase and description. Many of his articles in ITA are the only written pieces of accurate history on legendary tattoo figures. Needless to say, ITA was a contribution beyond measure, and Jonathan finally gained well-deserved worldwide respect for it.
As graffiti artist Angel Ortiz took Keith Haring’s crawling baby and barking dog and made them into pop art by filling them in with bright colors, Jonathan did this with traditional tribal art. By adding his spin of originality, color and finesse, obscurity, flavor and love, he made each one individual and unique. Something that would be embraced by an American counterculture always craving something fresh. The difference between Angel Ortiz and Jonathan Shaw though, is that Ortiz did not have the wherewithal to sustain the spotlight– the savvy to grow as an artist, remaining stuck in the familiar realms of his work. No predictable one-trick pony, Jonathan did, and has continued to evolve and grow creatively and artistically. And this is a very important fact to consider in assessing Jonathan’s successful life on this earth; an innate ability to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. To adapt and excel in anything he is doing, no matter what field of endeavor.
The fact that he was born into sophistication is an inherent reality. Jonathan’s mother Doris was a movie star. His father was Artie Shaw, the legendary Jazz man and big bandleader. But his mother was an alcoholic, and Artie left when Jonathan was very young.
“I was pretty much an orphan, raised by wolves, running the streets of Hollywood and New York City, hitchhiking, bumming around the country, eventually taking off on the road into Mexico and South America and never looking back from about the age of twelve,” he told me. “My real family and school were the streets, bikers, hipsters, alkies, druggies, hustlers, criminals and whores. And they raised me well. I didn’t come into tattooing so much for the art thing as I did through the outlaw lifestyle. For me the art came later. Much later. Eventually it all just blended together and took over my life, like a weird Frankenstein monster vision of the world.”
As much as he rebelled against his parents’ lifestyle, dodging school and sticking to the streets, later traveling the world for years haphazardly as a merchant sailor, a certain artful maturity of vision and taste was borne into his DNA. Shining through all he has created in many areas of his world. An inherent affinity for the finer things in life… A rough-hewn personal grace and charisma, tempered by a very real, streetwise worldview. Sometimes, when I pester him and ask questions, he looks up from whatever he is doing and snarls like a feral medieval warlord, scaring me half to death. Yet when he walks into the realm of high society he is somehow respected and accepted. He is royalty. And people in positions of power and prestige can smell it on him like some exotic cologne. Even when he scavenges buffet tables like he hasn’t eaten in three weeks.
Maybe his skills to pull this off come from the rare success he has enjoyed in a diverse multitude of fields; As a writer he hung out and studied with Charles Bukowski, their first informal meeting ending in a bloody, drunken fist fight; As a tattoo artist he apprenticed with Bob Shaw, who taught him the basics and much respect for the game over countless hours and months of practice on drunk sailors up and down the fabled tattoo factory of the Long Beach Pike; as a screenwriter he collaborated with Hubert Selby Jr., selling an option to his first piece to Leonardo DiCaprio; As an aspiring independent filmmaker, he was schooled by the likes of Sarah Driver and Jim Jarmusch; As an actor, he’s played the part of tattooed bad guys opposite the likes of Clint Eastwood; As a biker, he is old friends with highly respected Hells Angels. As an editor, he founded and ran the first widely recognized top shelf tattoo magazine. The list goes on… a true Renaissance Man, Jonathan has the capacity to meet the highest levels of excellence in whatever he chooses to do.
But it was with his own highly innovative, trendsetting original abstract freehand work that Jonathan Shaw would change the face of modern tattooing. When I came to him for a tattoo, he was already long retired. Somehow, I convinced him to tattoo me… Yet I had no idea what the hell I wanted. That worked in my favor, as luck would have it. He told me it would have to be the artist’s choice, if he was going to come out of retirement for it. It was his way or the highway. And, somehow I agreed to let him do just that. I just wanted something beautiful and flowing. And I got it. Beyond my wildest expectations. He said to me “Sailor, when people look at you they’re gonna think you’re covered in fine lace.” Like me, over the decades, many clients came to Jonathan with nothing specific in mind, only a blank canvas of skin for him to do original work on. He is famous for his ability to casually bang out masterpieces off the top of his head.
He is also notorious for his mobility. His mysterious disappearing acts… which have been going on for the last forty years. Whenever I see someone that knows Jonathan, they ask “How is he? Where is he?” Every time. They name a list of cities and countries he may currently be inhabiting. For decades, as a resourceful, functional, hope-to-die alcoholic, seeking a simplistic geographic solution for an inner soul sickness, whenever he grew tired of the place he was living, he would simply “vaporize”, soon effortlessly building a whole new life somewhere else. Only to destroy it and move on again, ad infinitum, like a dog chasing its tail, always seeking the next place of imagined sanctuary. And never finding it. Time to move on again, Goddamnit. Finally he found the road itself to be his only real home, more perhaps than any of the homes he built and fled from like a fugitive over the years. Maybe it’s partly the Gypsy blood in him– being the grandson of a Romanian gypsy on his mother’s side. Whatever its roots, this practice has earned him a multitude of familiar, established homes– pretty much anywhere in the world he happens to be.
To a large degree this all started way back in the early ’70’s, when he jumped ship in an Amazon port town and began hitchhiking through South America. Tattooing crudely for chump change, he eventually ended up in Rio de Janeiro. The one place in the world he truly considers his real home. Where, all these years later, he is still known only as “Cigano” (the gypsy)… Maybe because to this day he comes and goes so often. But Rio is not the only place where he has deep roots laid down. The product of a lifetime of restless travels, Jonathan literally has these odd home bases all over the world, fully peopled with thriving tribes of friends and family, roots, history and memory. He’s equally at home in Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Paris, Tokyo and a dozen other places. And it seems, like an actor on the stage of his own strange and multifaceted life, he gets to be all the things he is, certain sides of his confusing make-up naturally coming out to play in all these different places. He is an enigmatically spontaneous creature of many faces, a real life, lowlife Indiana Jones, speaking several languages fluently, in spite of his lack of any formal education.
During his travels, Jonathan met and studied with many tattoo masters from different cultures, different traditions. He finally ended up in New York, after a stint in New Orleans, one day impulsively hitching a ride to the city of his birth with the band The Fuzztones after tattooing their guitar player. By then he had already begun making a minor name for himself around the world. In parts of the United States and other countries where tattooing was legal. New York would be a new challenge, one he was born for and yearning for now, having grown tired of tattooing mostly sailors in port towns back when tattooing was not widely accepted in polite society.
This was way before the mass marketed tattoo equipment was readily available. It required great perseverance and determination to break into the game back in the day. The tiny handful of professional tattooers in the world back then were a secretive lot. Closed mouthed, inbred, fiercely protective of their trade secrets. But he did learn. The hard way. And he carries this way to all those who come around him. “Stop asking questions, Sailor. Just pay yer’ dues and pay attention.” This is what he tells me pretty much every time I open my mouth, even when I open it to cough or sneeze or yawn. But he’s right. I get it, he’s passing on the tradition.
His first stint in New York found him teamed up with his old friend Spider Webb. He worked side by side with the legendary “Webbo” for years before going off on his own to open Fun City.
“It was never a dull moment working with Spider. What a guy. I love that man. He taught me things nobody else coulda’ taught. Things too fucked up to mention. We both liked liquor and drugs alot… And pretty girls. We were like outlaw rockstars in this totally surreal no-limits world of underground art. It was like Andy Warhol meets Easy Rider. Dinkins was mayor of New York, back in the day when Times Square was still Slime Square, not Disneyland. We worked in this big loft upstairs from a whorehouse. It was mayhem. Good times, baby. You can imagine…” He winks, a gold tooth sparkling behind the ever-present cloud of cigarette smoke.
And because Jonathan was taught by the original masters of tattooing in this country, he always ran his business like them. Traditional, no bullshit. He tried to teach all those who have worked for him the meaning of respect, carrying on those crooked carny codes of honor that barely survive in the modern tattoo world. “He’s a two fisted old school tattooist,” Baba of Vintage Tattoo Art Parlor in Los Angeles says of Jonathan. “He learned the tricks of the trade straight from the old timers and has honored them throughout his career. Old school is who he is, where he comes from, what he does.”
“He’s exactly what he says he is, which is rare,” says punk icon Howie Pyro. “He’s not some newfangled goon who wants to be Picasso.” And Jonathan is a business man; he sure as Hell knows how to sell a tattoo. His over the top personality and dark charisma are a gift. “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullshit.” Bob Shaw once told him. And he certainly mastered that. The whole show business aspect of the game… With his slick hair, gold teeth, and Rolex watch, he always looks his best. He still possesses the mysterious qualities of any good salesman. That special magnetism that make people nervous and excited for what’s in store. In this case, to be tattooed. Making customers wait outside the shop on the sidewalk for outrageously long periods of time, no one was allowed backstage while he set up. Even if he was really just sitting in there drinking, shooting shit with friends, movie stars or guys who worked for him. People knew his tattoos were worth waiting for. And he definitely had a way with the ladies, giving pro-bono orgasms with his wrist while he worked on a cute girl’s hip. The tricks were a funny part of his hustle and jive. He always knew how to keep ‘em smiling and keep coming back for more.
When it comes to the awards Jonathan has won over the years, there have been many, most of them recognizing his trademark freehand work. “It’s all a bunch of meaningless nonsense. Cheap tricks to impress the sheeple, the thundering herd. Award winning this, award winning that. Shit,” he says when asked about them. “That crap was the first stuff to hit the dumpster when I sold the shop.” And this seems to paraphrase his view of the entire industry at large. A bunch of meaningless nonsense. A jaded view, to say the least. But one he has undoubtedly earned.
“Industry? Gimme a fuckin’ break!” He sneers, laughing. “A buncha tattooed freaks with pierced faces, lousy attitudes and expensive drug habits, too lazy to work and too scared to rob. Some industry… Take ‘emselves too fuckin’ serious. They ain’t exactly curing cancer ya’ know…Arggh.” Although his contributions are great, he doesn’t see the need to play them up. He was just making a buck doing what he liked and sharing his art with the world. He has respect for those who came before him. He is an artist, not an entertainer, although in today’s tattoo world the two have often become confused and Industrialized– as seen on TV.
Like many longtime tattooers, Jonathan watched his humble craft grow into an Industry with a somewhat amused, often perplexed attitude. A global market where tattooing has become a fast track to cash and prizes for people who care little for its history and essence. And as much as he tries to downplay any bitterness, it clearly disgusts him. Even as one may argue that he was the first to do it. But it seems he wasn’t doing it for the wrong reasons, working much harder to promote the art he loved than to enshrine his own ego.
Today, the Mass Media has discovered and exploited the tattoo culture in a big way, making it into a cheezy fast food phenomenon in the past few years– usually without giving back. Converting it into a commodity and source of prime-time commercial ratings, without exploring the true potential, the great uncharted depths of the subject. The art of tattooing, with the great technological and artistic advances it’s taken, is arguably being degraded by those who would reduce it to sitcom culture for fun and profit. And, sadly, the focus is not on those who created it, but the current mass market trends, something young and hip and trendy. And above all, profitable.
Right before the advent of the current wave of tattoo “reality” shows, Jonathan was approached by a producer friend for the first shot at the spotlight on Miami Ink. Just having gotten out of the game and enjoying his newfound freedom and happiness, he turned them down flat.
“No way was I gonna spend any more time pandering to the lowest common denominator of public taste. That’s basically why I quit tattooing. Let somebody else do that now. That guy Garver they got? I gave him his first job tattooing for me at Fun City a million years ago. He’s a real good tattooer. Used to be a bit of a prima donna, but hey, nobody’s perfect… That’s why I’m perfect today,” he cackles. ” ‘Cause I’m NOBODY. And proud of it, baby. Now they’re big shots. Good. God bless ‘em. It could be a lot worse… It could be me again,” he finishes, wincing in mock pain.
I’m glad I’m getting to see this for myself because tattoo artists like Jonathan are a rarity these days. He came in with the old school generation, and is a direct link to those who fought a bloody, unpopular battle to clear the way for future generations, ever since tattooing first crawled out of the dirty old low-rent bucket shops on the Bowery. He got to witness tattooing come of age and turn into the monster that he believes it to be today. And get out… Intact and with no regrets.
I wonder, how many times did JS used to roll his eyes when some dumb chick came in asking for a lady bug on her hip– really small so her parents wouldn’t see it? Or some lame-ass hair-moussed guy asking for a tattoo of some less than challenging Looney Tunes character. I know. When I got my first tattoo I wanted it real, real low– so my parents wouldn’t see it. The artist, if you want to call him that, didn’t roll his eyes at me. He didn’t even check my ID (good thing, ’cause I was thirteen). He didn’t give a shit about the art. He wanted the profit. He took my money, put the stencil on, and did the tattoo in about twenty seconds. I guess the joke’s on me, since I’m the one stuck with a blurry, scarred-up and ridiculously crooked star in the middle of my crotch. Ouch!
Despite his cynical cracks toward the industry, Jonathan has been around for the technological, intellectual and artistic advances tattooing has made. And whether he likes to admit it or not, the fact is that his major contributions were a big impetus for that very growth. He was one of the first people who kept tattooing real and artful when most others were working just as hard to contribute to the mediocrity of the scene. He helped keep the soul of it alive in a time when money making propositions are taking over the world, the youth, the arts, the quality of life. With the growth of international conventions to fuel the fire, tattooing has undeniably become a ready-made source of income for many unworthy people to jump right into. It’s the way of the world. Just look at what’s become of rock & roll, once a badass outlaw, grassroots art-form, too. It is obvious that Jonathan’s tattooing was not only for the money. He does charge, and charges high… But he also delivers quality work. Some of the best work the world of tattooing has ever seen.
When I asked him about his own body-suit, he looked up from his writing and replied, “Dude, who the fuck cares? It’s nobody’s business. Just say a tattoo’s a tattoo and leave it at that.” Well. I thought it was important. And as much as a tattoo is a tattoo, regardless of who did it, Jonathan has in time had history and fine art carved onto his body. With one of Ed Hardy’s best and only dragon back-pieces, done back in the late ’70’s, a city skyline and chest-piece by famed underground cartoonist-turned-tattooer Greg Irons (who was run over by a bus in Bangkok shortly after doing his last tattoo– on Jonathan), and a miscellaneous collection from artists like Bob Shaw, Zeke Owen, Luis Segatto, Filip Leu, Spider Webb and even Johnny Depp. His body is a colorful map of many lives, adventures, friendships, love affairs and dreams etched into his skin over many trips around the world.
After retiring in 2001, Jonathan moved back to Rio de Janeiro, leaving New York behind for good. He currently splits his time between his home in Rio– where he is writing a detailed, blow by blow memoir– and Hollywood, California, where he is working on a number of other, yet to be disclosed tattoo-related projects– including a traveling museum show of antique tattoo flash.
Jonathan’s legacy will always remain fresh, tattooed on hearts and minds throughout the world. He is a revolutionary. His contributions have changed American popular culture, and his unique, groundbreaking work will forever be marked on the bodies of thousands of people. His knowledge and skill and ideology have been passed on directly and indirectly to legions of young tattoo artists, who are saving the tradition of tattooing from becoming even more of a money grubbing monster than it already is. Thanks in part to him, we have the glossy tattoo magazine, the explosion of ‘tribal’ tattoos, the reality shows, the wide acceptance of tattooing the world over. A world where every young person has one. Where I won’t be the only old lady with full sleeves.
The doors of the future of tattooing that Jonathan first kicked open are open for good… And thank God for him. I know I do.
Alessandra DeBenedetti Los Angeles, CA 2007
© Jonathan Shaw, 2007
