Tattoo Machine by Jeff Johnson

Jeff Johnson’s memoir about his 18 years tattooing at Sea Tramp is now available in bookstores!

Buy first and signed editions from Powell’s City of Books

Buy the book and read reviews on Amazon.com

From Amazon.com:

In Tattoo Machine, Johnson lifts the curtain on an art form that has undergone rebirth and illuminates a world where art, drama, and commerce come together in highly entertaining theater. A tattoo shop is no longer a den of social outcasts and degenerates–it’s a workshop where committed and schooled artists who paint on living canvases develop close bonds and bitter rivalries, where tattoo legends and innovators are equally revered, and where the potential for disaster lurks in every corner.

Discussing everything from his days as an apprentice to some of the greatest inkers in the trade to the incredibly vivid nightly spectacular over which he presides, Jeff Johnson has written a sometimes riotous, sometimes harrowing, and always riveting memoir about what it means to be on the front lines of a global art revolution.

Interview with Jeff in TIME Magazine – 7-27-09

Oregonian Feature on Tattoo Machine – 7-18-09

Toronto Star Article on Tattoo Machine – 8-21-09

Reuters Article on Tattoo Machine – 7-15-09

Video: Jeff talks about Tattoo Machine on AM Northwest – 7-23-2009

Radio Interview: Jeff on New Hampshire Public Radio – 8-3-09

[See more Reviews, Articles & Interviews for Tattoo Machine]

Editorial Reviews

“An amazing firsthand account of all things you wondered about tattoo shops. I loved it.”
—Gus Van Sant

“A wry, tender story about the tribulations of flesh and ink—and funny as hell. I’ve never understood why people get tattoos, but after reading Jeff’s excellent book I may just get one myself.
—Steve Dublanica, author of New York Times Bestselling Waiter Rant

“For everyone out there who is as fascinated by skin art as much as I am, Jeff Johnson’s memoir is a must read, a gritty, brutally honest account of his life and years in the tattoo business. Equally hilarious, alarming, heartbreaking, rebellious, and philosophical, Tattoo Machine gets inside your head and leaves an impression that goes deeper than any needle, one that will only be wiped away when you, dear customer, are dead and gone.”
—Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff

Katherine Dunn Reviews Tattoo Machine

Amazon.com Review

Katherine Dunn is the author of three novels, Attic, Truck, and Geek Love, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Read her guest review of Jeff Johnson’s Tattoo Machine:

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

From Publishers Weekly

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)
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