Tattoos as Personal Narratives, Goth Culture Influence, and Creative Legal Expressions

What if your tattoo could speak volumes about your life story and passions? 

Join Jessie McGrath and Baba as we chat with a fascinating guest who's not just a lawyer but an aficionado of dark and alternative culture. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Discussion on Tattoos and Music
• 6:30 Tattoos, Music, and Personal Style

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I was in some dark places at different times in my life.

Speaker 2: 0:03

And that alley in Hollywood that we first talked about she was tagging.

Speaker 1: 0:10

Oh, yes, okay. So, just so everybody knows, every time I see Bob and I walk in and I'm with a friend or something, he goes hey, hookers.

Speaker 2: 0:18

And I keep saying Hooker is my favorite thing to call women, especially if they're fun, because they're fun and I'm always like it's kind of a compliment I'm not a hooker, I don't charge, I'm a slut, exactly but um, so you came up with this idea that was just so freaking incredible about my sucks that it's done.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Now I I would love to keep working. I'm looking at this now and I'm like, yeah, I know what I was doing there and there, fuck yeah, it's all gone. Right there, it wasn't done yet. That was Second setting.

Speaker 1: 0:59

That was like the third setting at that point. But yeah, there was still some more shading and other stuff that needed to get. It was more that needed to happen and because you, the the flowers are not done on a lot of that, there's some more that are down, down, lower, that are. There was a lot more color in it still yeah, it's bright as fuck now and it's, it is just so so good.

Speaker 2: 1:22

And and Jesse had no problem getting naked in the shop.

Speaker 1: 1:27

It was a closed shop, it's a tattoo shop.

Speaker 2: 1:29

It was not closed. Fucking door was open. Door's always open.

Speaker 1: 1:34

Yes, and you also pierced my nipples, so that was sitting out there in the open and my ta-tas were hanging out.

Speaker 2: 1:40

The girls from Oxy get their nipples pierced right there.

Speaker 1: 1:44

And so you really like tattooing on me, I guess because you've seen pretty much every side of me.

Speaker 2: 1:50

I would never, ever. I can't fucking stand bruce springsteen. I would never, ever have suggested anything. Bruce springsteen, you came to me with one of them and I was like, okay, all right, let's see. So I made exceptions in my personal preferences because of the shit you've come up with.

Speaker 1: 2:07

And what we're talking about on my thigh here is I have a verse of Bruce Springsteen's Brilliant Disguise.

Speaker 2: 2:15

See, I never even heard of that. And Baba had no idea what the song was, and it was something that I really listened to a lot when I was going through my side note, me and Jesse talk a lot about music because we both loved it and all the stuff that she's done and the stuff that I've done. So that's, we are always talking about music.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Go ahead and, and and. We've talked about a lot of things because we spent a lot of hours together, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:42

But the one thing we seem to agree upon always is music. You know, your first show was Leonard Skinner right.

Speaker 1: 2:51

My very first rock concert was Leonard Skinner See that Just shortly before the crash that killed Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines, and your first public event was the Crucifixion of Christ.

Speaker 2: 3:02

Right, I don't go quite back that far. I heard you waved at him and got mad because he didn't wave back. He had a tattoo. Lyle Tuttle did it. Lyle told you about that one Born to lose.

Speaker 1: 3:21

So I actually the verse that I took was we stood at the altar. The gypsy swore our future was right, but come the wee, wee hours, we'll maybe baby. The gypsy lied and we did. Gypsy lied bigger and then. So when you look at me, you better look hard and look twice. Is that me?

Speaker 2: 3:38

baby.

Speaker 1: 3:38

We highlighted a bunch of certain words, or is that a brilliant disguise? And that was Lutter.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Disguise is bigger too right.

Speaker 1: 3:44

Yes, and the brilliant disguise is larger size. And then you added in the rose, which is nuts, and it was like this is a perfect example of of how we kind of work together and and come up with these things.

Speaker 2: 3:58

yeah, and I appreciate you, I like how you you're, you're not. You don't settle for what you should get you, you get what you want, like isis, yes, yeah, you're just like, I want this. And I'm like fuck, yes. And oh, look, there's me drawing on you. That is, I'm drawing the uh, the justice, this is. This is perhaps my favorite tattoo, and but my left hand, if you look close, those are the words and my two fingers are covering the rose yeah, that's the bruce springsteen one.

Speaker 1: 4:28

This is the one you're working on, my uh, my combination of goth and uh, the lady justice uh version of that, and that's a for me.

Speaker 2: 4:40

That's my favorite one, that special tool right there. See that that nobody has but me. It's called a ballpoint ballpoint pen. All these other motherfuckers are like I need my ipad and I need this and I'm like ballpoint pen.

Speaker 1: 4:53

And so I had talked with you and we'd been thinking about this for a while and I said I wanted a goth version of Lady Justice. And so I had gone online and had seen a couple of things and we had kind of talked back and forth and you hand drew this on my body right so it fit, and then I think we have a picture, the actual finished version and she got so much softer too, like right then is right after I did it.

Speaker 2: 5:24

So a lot of people don't know that when you're doing grays gray tones you have to do it twice as dark as you want to be, because the water will wash out and it'll be really light. So that came out a lot lighter, see.

Speaker 1: 5:35

And so this is. I don't know if we can see on the camera that it's very much. It's just an incredibly beautiful.

Speaker 2: 5:44

I love that piece and we weren't what we were supposed to do.

Speaker 1: 5:47

On the jacket, yeah, so so I have a 1960s Wrangler jacket that I kind of tie dyed and she got in her forties. Um, it was my great uncles and I kind of made it into like a Reverend Jim from taxi, uh, with with the, the chlorine stains and all of that. And so I oh, you did that I did.

Speaker 1: 6:13

That was part of it oh no, no, I did that in, but I did that in like 1982 or something like that. So I was college, for I think it was for a Halloween party and I was going as a Reverend Jim from taxi.

Speaker 2: 6:30

So do people know why you got lady justice? Um, do they know?

Speaker 1: 6:34

your background. Um on on the podcast. So, yeah, they know I'm a lawyer and they know that I'm uh cool.

Speaker 2: 6:42

They, they, they don't, I think, get the goth version of that and that's from the club that I had gone to and had kind of immersed in that. See, goth is just such a generic word Like most of us didn't really use goth. Or Adam would play dark music Dark yeah. People were like wait, this ain't a goth song.

Speaker 1: 7:05

No.

Speaker 2: 7:06

Britney Spears is toxic, but if you listen to the lyrics and forget that it's her, it's a dark song that could be played by anybody. Yeah, it was a dark. It was all about darkness.

Speaker 1: 7:20

And so I started, which is not bad and I started, you know, getting that and it was just. I loved those two things and how they came together and how it was a part of my life. I wanted to represent that in a tattoo.

Speaker 2: 7:35

People are like I didn't know you were a goth, I'm not goth. We used to call it death rock back in the days. That just scared people. Invented goth Goth is what you see at Hot Topic. So invented goth Goth is what you see at.

Speaker 1: 7:48

Hot Topic. Oh yes, I have my own little kind of semi version. Yeah, you have no idea this chick's style. So we've worked together on a lot of these different things and every now and then you do something and you post it and I'm like, yeah, I know this fucking hooker, this hooker.

Speaker 2: 8:11

I'll draw something and post it, being like I'm working on this and she'll be there within 24 hours, or call me being like I'm getting that, take it down, and then she gets it and I never get to tattoo it again. I started drawing flash, and Flash are designs that are for everybody. They're not customs, they're a page. They're custom because I drew them, but anybody, I'll do them more than once.

Speaker 1: 8:34

And you have a page that has multiple different versions. Yeah, a bunch of designs.

Speaker 2: 8:38

So you steal those before I get to put them on a big sheet and get them for yourself. So now I can't do them, but I mean I love the fact that I did them.

Speaker 1: 8:49

And I love the fact that I you got about four of them. I have like four of those, yeah, yeah.