I love Inked Magazine because they gave me a link... They have a great magazine and website as well. I will include some info from the inked website below:
[INKED GIRL] x Alesandra Nicole x [EPISODE 2]
Jane’s Addiction flipped the switch and New York City’s Terminal 5 is electric. Dave Navarro is whaling away on his guitar at breakneck speed on a solo so long that Perry Farrell could take a bathroom break while he plays. But he wouldn’t want to miss this. Navarro’s arms are a blur; he looks like a third base coach waving a player home, but up top he’s not even wincing—it looks effortless, impossibly cool.
Jane’s Addiction has a new album, The Great Escape Artist, coming out, and Navarro is taping Spike TV’s Inkmasters, a tattoo competition akin to Top Chef or Project Runway that’s due to hit the air in January. In his downtime, the heavily tattooed guitarist gave INKED a tour of his tattoos, pointing out the significance of each with his black fingernails (he says they’re painted with a gel that lasts two to three weeks, even through furious guitar playing). “A lot of the things I do are things I did when I was a teenager,” he says. “The comment from my friends and family was, ‘He’s going to grow out of that. He’s going to give up on the rock music and the tattoos and the makeup and the nail polish.’ And I just never did.”
Jane’s Addiction has a new album, The Great Escape Artist, coming out, and Navarro is taping Spike TV’s Inkmasters, a tattoo competition akin to Top Chef or Project Runway that’s due to hit the air in January. In his downtime, the heavily tattooed guitarist gave INKED a tour of his tattoos, pointing out the significance of each with his black fingernails (he says they’re painted with a gel that lasts two to three weeks, even through furious guitar playing). “A lot of the things I do are things I did when I was a teenager,” he says. “The comment from my friends and family was, ‘He’s going to grow out of that. He’s going to give up on the rock music and the tattoos and the makeup and the nail polish.’ And I just never did.”
INKED: How did you get your first tattoo?
DAVE NAVARRO: Me and [onetime Jane’s Addiction] bass player Eric Avery were in a bar, getting drunk and talking about tattoos. We were really fascinated with them at that time because it seemed like an underground lifestyle. The drinks just flowed, we got the courage, and we ran over to Bob Roberts’s shop and got them. I was hooked. People asked me, “What are you going to do when you’re an old man?” And the answer was: I’ll be an old man with tattoos.
Do you have a preferred tattoo?
My favorite tattoo is probably my lower back, which says “Constance.” It’s my mom’s name and was done in the early ’90s by Charlie McDonald. It’s more than likely my favorite because of what it stands for as a commemorative piece for my mom, who passed when I was 15. Second to that is probably the portrait of my mom on my rib cagedone by Kat Von D. They are similar in nature, and both of those pieces are actually unusual for me because both of them required appointments. Generally speaking, I’m not the artwork-planning type. I prefer spur-of-the-moment tattoos, like, let’s just roll over and get something done right away. I like the instant gratification, hence I have a lot of smaller pieces.
What happens when the right artist isn’t nearby?
I guess my home shop is the Shamrock Social Club for a few reasons. One, it’s up on Sunset [Blvd.] near the Roxy and the Rainbow Room, and I’m up there with Camp Freddy [his cover band] all the time. Mark Mahoney has been doing work on me for years, and everybody is welcome at the Shamrock. But it still has the vibe of that old shop kind of feeling.
What’s your latest tattoo?
I was sitting at lunch with a friend of mine, and I said, “You know what, I want to go get stars tattooed right now.” And we just made a call at the shop: “Who’s working? Does he have any time?” We were in and out of there in half an hour. To me there’s a bunch of different thoughts and reasons why you get tattooed. Sometimes it’s for an aesthetic reason, sometimes it’s because you think an image is cool and you like it a lot. Sometimes there’s meaning behind things, stories and personal experiences you’re trying to commemorate and capture. So being able to just have a feeling and jam over and get something done to commemorate what’s happening in your life at that time is a pretty cool thing to do, and I love it.
You also run the risk of walking away with some shitty tattoos. Some of the shittier tattoos I have go down as my favorites because of the time and the experience, so it’s not about looking perfect. I had an artist once fuck up something really bad and I said, “Wow, dude, you kinda fucked that up.” And he said, “Well, it’s an imperfect art form, it’s all right.” I’ve never had anything lasered. I feel like at some point your body becomes like a walking diary and you’ve got to live with it.
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