Tattoo (Magazine) No. 14 Summer 1989

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The article Rockin' Tattoo Blues by Jim Pisaretz details a post-concert interview with legendary blues guitarist Johnny Winter, focusing on his extensive collection of tattoos and his passion for the art of tattooing. The setting is a sold-out show at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano during Winter’s "Winter of ’88" tour, where he performed a powerful blues set to an enthusiastic crowd.

In the interview, Winter shares anecdotes about his tattoo journey, starting at the age of 39 when he was seeking something new before turning 40. He talks about his experiences with various tattoo artists, including Spider Webb, and discusses the challenges of being tattooed as an albino. Winter reveals the stories behind specific tattoos, many acquired from international artists, each representing different moments of his life and travels.

The piece highlights Winter's candid enthusiasm for his body art, despite the pain involved, and his preference for getting tattoos from various artists worldwide rather than sticking with a single tattooist. He also expresses his admiration for certain tattoo artists, such as Miss Roxxy from Hawaii and Ed Hardy, for potential future tattoos.

In conclusion, the article provides an intimate look at Johnny Winter's deep connection to his tattoos, blending personal storytelling with humor and insight into his life off the stage.

Rockin Tattoo Blues
By Jim Pisaretz
Photography: David Dewhurst

We arrived at San Juan Capistrano’s Coach House to a sold out show, talked our way past the girl at the box-office window, secured a table close to the stage, stocked every inch of its meager surface with boiler makers and settled into an evening of paint blistering blues according to Johnny Winter. Fronting a new, stripped down band (bass and drums), he delivered over an hour of power blues cranked up to brutal volume. Which was just fine with the crowd; they stomped and hollered and danced in the aisles, where there were aisles. By the end of the show the entire house was on its feet wailing right along with Johnny Winter’s pegged-at-maximum-volume guitar.

When the set ended it was hard to tell if the band or audience had worked themselves into a sweatier frenzy.

The dressing rooms at the Coach House turned out to have been built for Tom Thumb’s little brother, so we had to use the bus for the photo set and interview. Ted Keedick, road manager for the “Winter of ’88” tour, found us after the show and hustled us past a shivering group of fans, die hards all, huddled together against a chilling coastal rain.

We got comfortable around a few beers and a moment later Johnny Winter emerged from the aft section of the bus.

He’s picket-rail thin, tall and wiry. Even in the dim light inside the tour bus his tattoos are vibrant against his pale skin. They’re opaque and Possess the translucent quality of water colors. And he has collected a large number of those tattoos over the years, more than I had realized.

I have met hundreds and hundreds of tattooists and tattoo fans and rarely have I met anyone with Johnny Winter’s enthusiasm for the art. I had been warned by a couple of people, folks who were supposed to be in the know, that it would be difficult to get Johnny to talk about anything, let alone tattooing. Instead, we met a man who was eager to discuss his tattoos with us. We went right past the introductions and straight to the subject at hand:

“I was 39, I guess I was getting ready to be 40. I was bored with everything and I wanted something different going on. So I figured if I was gonna be 40 there should be something there,” Johnny related.

“It was about a week before I was gonna be 40. I had a friend, Keith Ferguson who plays bass with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, and he was getting something off Spider (Webb). I went and watched him for awhile. He was gettin’ one under his arm. I was watchin’ ’em do this shit and it really looked like it hurt bad, ya know.

“I watched for a couple of hours and I wasn’t real sure that I wanted one. I figured, well, if I was gonna get one started, I wanted to be sure I could finish the damn thing.

It took Johnny awhile to decide to get his first tattoo. He talked to Lyle Tuttle about it because Lyle had tattooed a girlfriend. Lyle wasn’t too sure about tattooing an albino.

“Lyle said, ‘I don’t know, I’ve never tattooed an albino before. I don’t know what it could do. I better not fuck with that. I’m just a little afraid of it.’ Spider said, ‘Aww, fuck that, it ain’t gonna make no difference. It’ll just look better. It’s like the difference between white paper and brown paper. It’s just gonna look better.’

But Spider, I remember saying in one of my interviews, that Spider’d tattoo his grandmother’s c*nt if she’d lay down there long enough. But Lyle was really scared. He didn't want me to get tattooed and die of cancer in a couple of years. But I couldn't figure any reason for me not to get tattooed, either.

"I asked Spider to do a few lines on me with no ink in it. He starts playing tic-tac-toe with my girlfriend on me. I guess it was right here in the middle of the star here on my arm.

"He did a line, a little blood came out and I said, ‘That's not bad, that’s not too bad.’ He was just gettin’ into it playing away makin’ Xs and Os. And I said, ‘Wait, wait, if this is it, then just stop this shit and go ahead and start puttin’ some stuff on here.’ Spider was disappointed, he wanted to win the game."

That was about five years ago. Johnny pointed out a collection of stars and star bursts up his right arm that Spider did. The first being the lowest black star on his forearm. Then we took a brief tour of his international tattoo collection.

It’s quite a list. There’s a piece by former Spider Webb’s Tears. He wasn’t sure of the artist’s name on a couple of pieces from Copenhagen, but remembered it as Denny Ole. About his tattoo from an artist named Toby in Germany he said, “He couldn’t speak much English and I couldn’t speak much German.” One of his favorites is by the Swedish artist Doc Forest. The rainbow was acquired from the wife of Henry Goldfield in San Francisco. The tattoo of the state of Texas with the yellow rose was done in Austin by an artist named Moreau, who travels the world with his wife making a living from their tattooing. Another tattoo was acquired on a recent trip to Australia. (“I just wanted to see what was goin’ on in Sydney.”) He picked up a tattoo one night in New Jersey from a biker tattooist who “…was nobody known. We were just drunk and in New Jersey.”

Probably the best known of Johnny Winter’s tattoos is the chest piece of a dragon by Kevin Brady. A close up of it is featured on the cover of his new album, "The Winter of ’88." He got the tat about four years ago, before Kevin moved from Hollywood to Indiana, got caught up in a web of local tattooing restrictions and eventually moved back to Hollywood. The dragon took two days. The first day Kevin did the outline.

The next day he put in the color. “Man it really fuckin’ hurt,” Johnny remembered. “That second day it really did. But I was so drunk the first day I didn’t know what it was. He put on Vasoline and all this shit, put the bandage on and I woke up and didn’t know what the fuck it was...I didn’t know it! I remembered just a kind of an idea at the early part. What the fuck did I get? What the fuck did I get? Am I gonna like this? Should I take this off? What’s the deal here?”

“There was this biker tattooer that was standin’ right by him that kept sayin’, ‘Things will feel better if ya just scream. Things will feel better if ya just go arrrrggghhh.’”

Johnny related a tale of pain concerning another tattoo he’d gotten that didn’t work out as well as the Kevin Brady piece.

“This guy dug real deep. It took over a month for the scabs to come off. I was telling him, ‘Ya don’t have to dig this deep.’ It was crazy. It really did take over a month to heal. Then when it did, the scabs took off a lot of the color with them.”

When we asked Johnny if there was any tattooists he’d like to stick with he told us quite simply, no.

“I just go around to different people. I never wanted to have one particular guy do it. I like havin’ somethin’ from everywhere. It’s like havin’ travel stickers on your suitcase, only they don’t come off. I try to get the guys I like, but also, you might just all of a sudden end up in some weird little town and not have the faintest idea if anybody’s there.

“My friend Keith, that guy I was tellin’ ya about that got one of his tattoos from Spider, that guy really is nuts. He’ll see something... Well, he told me they were gettin’ gas one night. He was going to the gig and he was gettin’ gas in some little town from a Chinese guy. He was goin’ in to pay and he saw, like with the tire irons and inner tubes and all the other stuff, he saw a tattoo rig hangin’ up here. And the guy said he did tattoos on the side. It was just kind of hangin’ up there with all the battery cables and shit and Keith, having no idea at all, just said, ‘Well, give me one.’

“This mutherfucker just don’t care. If I go in there and it don’t look quite right, or the guy doesn’t have any work that he’s done, then I won’t get one.

“I figure, I’m old enough to get a tattoo now. If I change my mind it’s not ’cause I’m young and stupid, it’s ’cause I’m old and stupid. Fuck, I’ve had ’em five years now and I like ’em now better than I did when I first got ’em. I really enjoy ’em. I really fuckin’ enjoy ’em. I don’t have any I don’t wish I got... About half the tattoos I’ve had, I’ve looked at ’em and gotten pissed off, but I’ve never had one of ’em changed.”

Although Johnny doesn’t have any definite plans on who or where his new tattoo is coming from, he does have some specific people in mind for future work.

“Ya’ll heard of a chick from Hawaii, Miss Roxxy? She’s the number one person on my list. I’ve seen stuff that she’s done that really knocks me out.

“You see stuff in the magazines and when you’re on the road a lot of people show you their tattoos. You see people’s work and you feel like ya gotta get somethin’ by this person. There’s a lot of good people out there, really great people. But Miss Roxxy, she’s the Number One artist on my list. Ed Hardy is another person I’ve been itchin’ to get something by. There’s one or two I’m hot about now.”

But no matter where Johnny gets his next tattoo, it’s certain he’ll enjoy it as much as all the others.

We’d like to thank Teddy Slatus at Slatus Management in New York City for all the cooperation in setting up our meeting with Johnny, Ted Keedick for his help at the show and photo-interview and seeing that we were well supplied with Coronas during the interview. But most of all we’d like to thank Johnny Winter for being so candid and open in sharing his tattoos with us.

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