Jeff Johnson Books » Reviews

John Irving on Tattoo Machine

admin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:30:13 +0000

“There are terrific stories in this book–not just tattoo stories, although Jeff Johnson has many good ones, but also stories about human nature. Jeff Johnson is a gifted and natural storyteller, and he knows about things you don’t know.”

– John Irving, author of Last Night in Twisted River, Until I Find You, The Fourth Hand, A Widow for One Year, Trying to Save Peggy Sneed, A Son of the Circus, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Cider House Rules, The World According to Garp, The 158-Pound Marriage, The Water-Method Man, Setting Free the Bears

Katherine Dunn Reviews Tattoo Machine

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:54:21 +0000

The topic is prickly, but Tattoo Machine is a charmer. Jeff Johnson is a sharp-eyed master tattoo artist, and an extraordinary writer. His own remarkable story of up-from-under redemption weaves through this engaging, gritty, and meticulous examination of the shadowed art of personal symbolism. As co-owner and manager of the famed Sea Tramp Tattoo shop in Portland, Oregon, Johnson has 18 years of hard-won insider knowledge. He presents that expertise with lyrical prose, savage humor, and enormous compassion. In the process he documents a seismic shift in cultural attitudes.

Thirty years ago, when I first started looking at tattoos in a serious way, skin art was commonly associated with criminals and drunken sailors. Cops assumed any woman with a tattoo was a prostitute. There were artists and mystics who flaunted the outlaw aura of their tattoos. But there was also a secret world in which engineers, business tycoons and surgeons hid elaborate tattoos beneath their suits and scrubs. A prim, strict trauma nurse of my acquaintance took years to complete the storm of Japanese plum blossoms that whirled around her torso. Only her closest friends knew what she considered her true identity.

Now, that secret world has exploded into the light. More than half the working adults in the United States casually sport at least one tattoo. Johnson gives us not just the why but the how of this transfiguration. He provides an entertaining dictionary of tattoo lingo, and a primer on what to look for and what to avoid in shopping for a tattoo. He explains what’s going on in the needle, the mind of the artist, the skin of the tattooed, and the back room, basement and latrines of the tattoo shop. He tracks the rapid evolution of the art and the fierce rivalry of different schools of design and technique. And he does all this with vivid characters, mesmerizing human tales-within-tales, and plenty of scabrous shenanigans. Tattoo Machine is informative, intelligent, and beautifully written. Marked or un-marked, the reader comes away with wiser, more generous eyes.—Katherine Dunn

Katherine Dunn is the author of three novels, Attic, Truck, and Geek Love, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Read the review on Amazon.com

Publisher’s Weekly Review of Tattoo Machine

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:49:39 +0000

Tattoo parlors are showcases for the socially disreputable, the brazenly nonconformist and the indelibly creative, all on display in this colorful memoir. First-time author and veteran tattoo artist Johnson has a million tales of the tattoo demimonde, who come to his Sea Tramp in Portland, Ore., as well as tattoo shops around the country. Into his shop walk scamsters and freaks; a gangster whose gun-toting posse rattles Johnson into misspelling their boss’s tat; a punk femme fatale who lures him into a trap; and a probable serial killer who has the names and Social Security numbers of his victims emblazoned on his skin. Ruggedly individualistic artists are part of the show, as is Johnson himself: œI have no shoes and no driver’s license and I’ve been smoking gooey Mexican heroin and snorting piles of coke off a switchblade for three days straight,opens one tale. (In a grungy management primer, Johnson offers tips on customer service, employee relations and the importance of bathrooms so clean that œsome daisy-assed pantsuit could feel safe and secure in them.) The book is little more than a collection of shaggy-dog stories, but Johnson’s stingingly profane prose, storytelling chops and offbeat sensibility definitely get under the reader’s skin. (July 14)

Read the review on Amazon.com

Washington Post Book Review: Tattoo Machine

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:47:33 +0000

In addition to the interwoven account of how the author survived a messed-up youth (which included crime) to become co-owner of the Sea Tramp, the oldest tattoo parlor in Portland, Ore., and a brief but very interesting history of the business and how it works, Mr. Johnson delivers a virtual cornucopia of rogues and rascals. He portrays the artists, both good and bad, and their customers, good, bad and very bad, all of it with a rollicking brio that is often contagious.

Mr. Johnson writes, “Every tattoo has a story. Every cover up has two.” What is an artist to do if he or she, heaven forbid, misspells a word or, worse, a name? It happens more than you’d think, apparently. Even Mr. Johnson has done it, as he tells us in one particularly funny but scarifying account.

Ever wonder exactly who — other than a vast number of young people these days — gets tattooed? Buy and read “Tattoo Machine,” and you’ll learn that Mr. Johnson has inked the skin of “professional athletes, nervous coeds, age-defying moms, newlyweds and sociopaths.” And you thought it was just you.

NY Post Reviews Tattoo Machine

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:43:43 +0000

In “Tattoo Machine,” Jeff Johnson gives a salty tour of the shops that nervous mothers once forbade their sons and daughters from visiting. As the co-owner of Sea Tramp Tattoo Company in Portland, Oregon, and a practicing artist who has wielded an ink-and-needle gun that “smacks the skin between 60 and 120 times per second” for decades, Johnson’s got an endless supply of stories to tell.

There’s the homesick Lone Star State G.I. who drew a copy of his state’s flag from memory for the artist to create and then returned later shouting, “This ain’t the flag of Texas, and I ain’t no f – - – in’ Portugese!”

Musing on dozens of cases of surprise tattoos gone wrong, Johnson notes, “It’s amazing how many people can’t spell their spouse’s name.”

Woven throughout Johnson’s funny, outlandish and sometimes disturbing anecdotes about drug-addled tattooists who fall asleep while blotching the arms of customers, scam artists who promise sex for services rendered, and the still-at-large serial killer who embazoned his victims’ names on his body, is an intricately rendered history of a once-marginal service industry.

Monsters of Ink: Tattoo Machine Reviewed in Portland Mercury

admin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 14:38:02 +0000

In his new book Tattoo Machine, Jeff Johnson does something I wouldn’t have thought possible in a town as ink-saturated as Portland: He makes tattoos seem cool again. Johnson is co-owner of the Sea Tramp, the oldest tattoo parlor in Oregon, and his behind-the-scenes account of life in the industry is a swaggering, gossipy read.

Tattoo Machine Featured in the Oregonian

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:02:59 +0000

The Sea Tramp Tattoo Co. is the oldest tattoo parlor in Portland, but it’s not the Shop That Time Forgot. Sure, there are some old military recruiting posters high on the south wall, and some of the flash — the drawings by tattoo artists that show their skills — that covers the walls dates back to when Uncle Sam was looking for Doughboys, but this is a clean, well-lighted place where the artists step outside to smoke and co-owner Jeff Johnson says he’s only called the cops once in almost 20 years.

Interview with Jeff in TIME Magazine

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:30:40 +0000

Most tattoo artists prefer not to share the tricks and tales of their trade, but not Jeff Johnson. In his newly released memoir, Tattoo Machine, the Portland-based inkman shares some of the weirdest, wackiest and most disgusting details of his profession, from cleaning up after chudders (look it up) to the time he tattooed a serial killer (he thinks). TIME spoke with Johnson about writing his first book, the grim reality of his work and the clash of tattoo generations.

Read the full interview

Reuters Features Tattoo Machine

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:12:39 +0000

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – The sad lament of every great tattoo artist is that their work will never be preserved for future generations — their canvases die and turn to dust sooner than almost any other medium.

But Jeff Johnson, author of “Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life in Ink” and co-owner of The Sea Tramp Tattoo Company in Portland, Oregon, still loves to go to work.

“It’s the people,” said Johnson, 39, of his 18 years in the business. “You sit down with strangers and hear where they came from, about their jobs, hear their stories.”

The people he sees represent a greater cross section of society than ever before with tattoos, once the domain of outlaw bikers and sailors, very much a part of the mainstream.

Article on Tattoo Machine in Toronto Star

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:08:05 +0000

When it comes to authoring books, tattoo diva Kat Von. D could learn a thing or two from Jeff Johnson.

In a magnificently written testament to the art of decorating the body, Johnson – a former Torontonian, now co-owner of the Sea Tramp Tattoo Company, Portland’s oldest tat shop – provides a definitive and authoritative take on his world.

Want to delve into the psyche of a skin engraver? Check. Need to learn the lingo and be able to differentiate between a “Swamp Panther” (a tattoo artist equipped for any situation) and a “Trojan” (a straightforward business-oriented tattoo artist)? Done. Looking for, as Johnson describes it, “a peek under the skirt of a fascinating profession?” No problem. Technique? It’s all here.

Lovingly wrapped in Johnson’s gift for riveting storytelling and flair for translating the vividly visual into prose, Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories and My Life In Ink is an unflinching look at a career that is short on glamour but long on pride.