Shamrock Social Club

Mark Mahoney Spills the Ink

 

 Written by Whitman Bedwell
Photography by Will Kaner

 

Mark Mahoney is cool, in the way the term was coined by jazz musicians in the 1930s, before it was ripped off by the beatniks and overused into what it means today. Like those jazz musicians, Mahoney practices a craft — tattooing — which is still shrouded in secrecy and, up until very recently, viewed as illegitimate by most of the populous. While tattoos have become a sign of social status, especially when made by famous tattoo artists, Mahoney remains one of the few who holds to the original values of tattooing: tattooing for the sake of making tattoos. He’s an innovator who took tattooing to new places, way ahead of its time. The style with which he creates realistic, subtle and classic black and grey tattoos, and the way he has developed that style over his career, is one of the many reasons those aforementioned tattooers can be taken seriously as artists at all.

Fittingly, there is no place that better represents Mark Mahoney than his shop. Opened in 2001, the Shamrock Social Club is an institution of Sunset Boulevard; both an old school tattoo shop open seven days a week to walk-ins, as well as a place where serious tattoo people can get large and custom tattoos. The people who do get tattooed at the shop come from all aspects of life, and all are welcome. The truest way to explain the duality of the shop’s customers is through its mantra, “Where the elite and the underground meet.” It is perhaps the only place in the world where an outlaw biker, a movie star and a housewife will ever be in the same room at the same time.

Mahoney embodies both the craft and the art of tattooing. Even though he is one of the most successful tattoo artists of all time, Mahoney can still be found tattooing at Shamrock five days a week. Although his client list is comprised of CEOs and cultural icons, anyone can make an appointment with him, as long as they’re willing to wait a few months. And despite making the most beautiful black and grey tattoos with a style like no one else can, Mark Mahoney will tattoo a tiny heart outline on a wrist, if that is what his client wants.

Mahoney is not just one of a kind, he’s inimitable. He is a great tattooer, yes, but he is an even better person. I have never seen anyone for whom so many people, from gangsters to grandmothers, will go out of their way to a tattoo shop just to say hello. He is also, day in and day out, the best dressed person I have ever seen. During our twenty-minute conversation, he spoke about his personal history with tattoos, as well as his thoughts on its past, present and future. At least as far as tattoos are concerned, his words can be taken as gospel.

 

Whitman Bedwell: When, and how, did you first start tattooing?

Mark Mahoney: When I was in high school, we had this little greaser gang. We didn’t like the seventies so we made believe that it was the fifties. We beat up hippies and wore leather jackets and shit. The guy who was like the leader of the gang, who was a few years older than me, went down to get his first tattoo and I went with him. He was an artist and I was an artist and he was like, “Oh I want to be a tattooer.” He and that trip had an effect on me. From there it was on. He ended up joining the navy, and he got a guy in Florida who went by the name of Cool Hand Luke, to teach him how to tattoo. When my friend came back he gave me the little short, fuckin’, how-to and then I started working on his back. That was 1976 or something.

But you moved around a lot at first.

I lived in Massachusetts for a while and tattooed out of a Centaurs Motorcycle Club clubhouse, and then I moved to New York in late 1977. In both of those places it was illegal. It was different in New York, because it was the beginning of semi-celebrity punk rock downtown. It was all pretty much biker in Boston, and then it was all music types in New York. In 1980 I moved out to Long Beach. I worked down at the Pike with Rick Walters and Colonel Todd. Colonel Todd hammered into me all the things I hadn’t picked up from my friend in Boston or figured out on my own.

When did you start to create a style, specifically the black and
grey tattoos that you are now so well known for?

At the Pike I was doing mostly biker and sailor tattoos. But, I always drew with a fine line, and when I was a kid and I got a box of crayons, the black would be like three quarters of an inch long and the colors would be untouched. So, it always fit my style to do black and grey. It’s no wonder I have a complex about what I do, because in those days tattooing was illegal, my parents weren’t thrilled about my career choice, and then when I came to LA and saw that black and grey stuff, all the old time tattooers thought it was kind of a joke.

I started doing black and grey down at the pike. I had to get Colonel Todd to set up a single needle machine for me. Even he was starting to realize that there was money in it. He was never comfortable doing single-needle tattoos, but he would do a fine line with a tight three, usually of cholo designs and girl faces. From the time I got there in October to the next summer, he figured it out.

Which is crazy because for me, black and grey is just as classic type of tattoo as traditional is or Japanese is. It’s classic and it always looks good. Why do you think black and grey tattoos have caught on, on a much wider scale, than say traditional or Japanese style tattoos?

The irony is that the concern at the time was of how they were going to age. Basically, all the older guys didn’t think black and grey, and the fine lines in them, would age well. But having seen it for so long and seen them age for so long, I think it ages nice. I have a tattoo of the Statue of Liberty that Jack Rudy gave me in 1981, and that tattoo is beautiful at 35 years old. If it were a tiny face on a pinup girl with a seven-needle outline from WWII, it would look like a blob.

You said in an interview once that tattooing taught you,
“how to talk shit and lie.” That was in the eighties.
Do you still think that’s what you’ve learned from it?

I think I could already lie, and I think shooting heroin taught me that. I think talking shit is an important part of tattooing. When you’re not tattooing, it’s natural to talk shit about the competition. At the Pike, I learned how to hate the competition, and fire bomb them and shoot them.

Has it taught you anything since then?

I always knew it was the best thing that happened to me. I realized later, though, how meditative it is to do it. There are times when my back is out and I can’t even walk to the restroom in the house, and I’m laid out for two or three days. That fourth day will come and I have to push myself to work, and it takes me twenty minutes to get from the car into the shop. But once I get started I don’t feel any pain. It takes a big part of your brain or something, and I always tell the guys not to think too much. It’s important to try and get into a place where I’m not thinking, and I’m just doing it. I’m lucky to be able to get to that place every day. I feel like a monk or some shit.

I’ve heard you say before that people will tell you to do tattoos a certain way because that’s what everyone else is doing.
How do you stick to your aesthetic?

I feel really lucky that I had a couple of separate mentors. I got the old school, and pretty much the last of the old school, down at the pike from Colonel Todd and Bob Shaw and Rick Walters. I learned about machines and how to do a solid outline and how to put in color and how to do all different things and anything that walked in the door. Then I got to work in East LA with Mike Brown and Jack Rudy, which is the holy land of black and grey. I’m blessed in that sense, because I got to experience doing everything. I got to choose what I wanted. The stuff that I like to do has kind of always been the same. I like Jesus heads and women’s faces.

There are a lot of popular tattooers that only do their style of tattoos,
but you do whatever the customer asks for.

My philosophy is different than some people. I’m only going to live with that tattoo for a couple hours. No matter how much they pay me, that money is gone the next day, but they have to live with it forever. I think of it as their tattoo. It ain’t mine.

That seems to be one of those old school values.
What do you miss from back then?

The thing that attracted me to it the most was how dark and mysterious and scary it was. I miss those days. At first, going to get tattooed was scary. I didn’t have any idea of where those machines or needles came from. There were so many questions I had about everything, and you couldn’t ask. If you asked if there is a school for tattooing, one of the old timers would just say, “Oh yeah, reform school kid. Shut up.” That was just how it was. There was a veil between you and the tattoo world. There were no magazines or catalogs or anything. You had to really want it to get it. That part of it was cool.

It was so small back then, too. When I got to the Pike, Todd estimated that there were less than a thousand full time tattooers working. There were some carnival guys that would tattoo a little bit and then roust about the rest of the year. As far as real, professional tattooers, there just weren’t that many. Now, there are probably a thousand tattooers in West Hollywood, ya know. That part has changed, and I miss when it was small.

Do you see any good that has come out of tattooing
becoming more widespread?

It’s cool that my kids don’t have to be ashamed. They can be proud and whatever. I remember when my oldest daughter was little, two or three times, her teachers in grade school would ask me to speak at career day. And between the time they asked me and the actual day, which was like a week, the principal got wind of it and cut me off. When my younger daughter got to school, it was different. I could talk about tattoos a little bit.

I know that you’ve been offered to do
the tattoo reality shows.
Why do you turn them down?

I’m a noir film fan, and when you put too much light on anything, it isn’t as cool. There needs to be a little shadow, and it needs to be a little mysterious. Also, tattoos are personal, and fitting it into a show takes away from that. I think there probably could be a way of doing it that is cool, but they haven’t figured it out, yet.