Finding from: http://sailorjerry.com/en/norman-collins/quotes-and-letters/
Norman Collins
SAILOR JERRY WAS BORN NORMAN COLLINS, BUT CHOSE TO DEFINE
HIMSELF ON HIS OWN TERMS. HE SIMPLY
WASN'T ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE BORN TO LIVE A MIDDLE-OF-THE-ROAD LIFE AND HE KNEW
IT. BACK IN THE 1920'S, WHEN COLLINS
CAME OF AGE, TATTOOING WAS AN EXPRESSION THAT BELONGED TO AN EMERGING AMERICAN
COUNTERCULTURE. IT WAS A MARK OF NOT
BLINDLY FOLLOWING THE MAINSTREAM - OF CHOOSING TO LIVE OUTSIDE THE LINES.
Collins left home as a teenager to travel the country by
hitchhiking and train hopping. He wasn't alone. At that time, a substantial
number of Americans, young and old, were bypassing the so-called American Dream
for a different kind of existence. For some, this was prompted by hardship and
necessity. But for Collins and others like him, it was about wanderlust and
freedom. They traveled by freight train, took temporary work and camped along
the way. This was when Collins started learning his craft, working primitively
with only a needle and black ink, creating designs freehand, one poke at a
time.
He eventually landed in Chicago and two things happened that
changed his life. One, he hooked up with local tattoo legend, Gib 'Tatts'
Thomas, who taught him to use a tattoo machine. (For practice, he paid bums
with cheap wine or a few cents to let him tattoo them). The second was joining
the Navy. The United States Navy was a place where a young man who'd been
crossing the country on freight trains could up the ante on his adventure and
cross oceans. It was during this time, Collins developed a lifelong love of
ships. He would eventually earn master's papers on every kind of vessel you
could get tested for.
When Collins mustered out of the Navy, he settled in
Honolulu. Back then, Hawaii was backwater cluster islands, but within a few
years, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and everything changed. At the height
of WWII, over 12 million Americans served in the military and, at any given
moment, a large number of them were on shore leave in Honolulu. The
circumstances of war fed a cross-section of American men into environments that
usually only existed on the fringes – places like Honolulu's Hotel Street, a
district comprised almost exclusively of bars, brothels and tattoo parlors.
This was where Collins, as Sailor Jerry, built his legacy.
WELCOME TO HOTEL
STREET
WWII was a great equalizer. It was a time when serving in
the military brought together every layer of society. It was a rare time in
American history, when people from all stations of life ended up on the same
ships, the same platoons, the same battlefield — and in the instance of the
Hotel Street District in Honolulu, they ended up in the same neighborhood on
shore leave.
Soldiers and sailors wanted to grab all the experiences they
could before they shipped out. Whether a man was raised in a Park Avenue
mansion or a farmhouse in Alabama, while on shore leave, he was fixated with
one of three things (or most likely all three of them). To paraphrase the words
of an iconic Sailor Jerry tattoo (as requested by our lawyers), these soldiers
were out to have some drinks, enjoy the company of women and get tattooed.
Lines for bars were so long that you had only minutes to finish your drink
before having to make room for the next guy. The mix of shenanigans and bravado
that characterized the mindset of an American serviceman on shore leave is a
deep thread in Jerry’s art. From “Man's Ruin,” an image of a vixen in a
cocktail glass surrounded by a dice, cards and dollar signs – to a picture of a
bloody knife sticking though a heart with the words “Death Before Dishonor” –
Sailor Jerry's tattoos dealt with issues that were at once practical and
elemental. Hotel Street may have been a place that would make a preacher blush,
but it was also a place where truths were expressed. War, whether you're for it
or against it, tends to filter out the crap and this is one reason why Sailor
Jerry's work is so compelling.
CAJONES AND ARTISTRY
"If you don't think you have [salty term for male anatomy]
enough to wear a tattoo, don't get one. But don't try to make excuses for
yourself by knocking the fellow who does!" Signed, "Thank
you...Sailor Jerry," this note was placed prominently in Jerry's Hotel
Street shop and it gives you some idea of the attitude that he brought to his
work. He was aware that his clientele weren't miscreants just out to paint the
town red, they were men serving a higher cause. Or as he put it, "The
tattooed barbarians that live and die on world battlegrounds."
Ironically, Jerry was deeply influenced by the culture that
started the war in the first place - the Japanese. The most proficient and
sophisticated tattoo artists of the times were the Japanese masters known as
Horis. He became the first Westerner to enter in regular correspondence with
these masters, sharing techniques and tattoo tracings. By fusing American and
Asian sensibilities, Jerry created his own style of tattooing - iconic and
artistic, irreverent and soulful, radical and beautiful.
Jerry was continually frustrated by other artists (who he
called “brain pickers”) copying his work. He refused to do big chest or back
pieces on customers who had tattoos by artists he didn't respect. His letters
to fellow tattoo artists are a testament to his devotion to the craft of
tattooing. He goes over detail after detail, from techniques for shading to the
“possibilities of tone and texture” to “crash” effects. Jerry was in a constant
quest to deepen his own skills. “My slogan is,” he states, “I haven't done my
best yet, only my best so far.”
Yet tattooing was just one dimension of Jerry’s life. He
continued to pursue his maritime interests as captain of a three-masted
schooner that toured the islands. He had his own radio show called Old
Ironsides on KRTG during which he alternated between political rants and
reading his own poetry. He taught himself to be an electrician, which helped
him innovate his tattoo machines. He played in a jazz band. He toured around in
a canary yellow Thunderbird and he was out on his Harley when he had the heart
attack that would take his life (after collapsing in a cold sweat, he got back
on his bike and rode home). The day before Jerry died, he wrote a letter to
friend and fellow tattoo artist, Paul Rogers, joking that he was going to “down
some ground seahorse meat, pulverized ratshit, snake skin, lizard eggs, dried
snails and dried bat skin and by go we will see who is the best doctor in the
end.” He asked that upon his death, his shop be passed on to his protégés, Don
Ed Hardy and Mike Malone (aka Rollo Banks). If neither took the place over,
Jerry left instructions it was to be burned to the ground. Malone took
possession of the shop and ran it for almost 25 years.
In a sense, Jerry was
always battling something, whether it was conventional thinking, the mediocrity
of copycat tattoo artists or the government meddling into his affairs. He never
knuckled under to anyone or anything. To quote from a letter Jerry wrote to
protégé, Don Ed Hardy, commenting on a yin yang dragon design, “keep them
fighting, it's the way that Yin Yang functions — if there is no opposition of
forces there is no evolution of life!
"In this business, the minute you get to thinking
you're top dog, you quit trying and are on the way out fast."
May 24, 1971
"I am my own worst competitor and also my own most
severe critic and it's a hell of a spot to be in!"
Aug 24, 1971
"People are only supposed to believe the legends not
understand them."
Aug 18, 1971
"I'm always willing to listen to somebody else's
ideas…because we can always learn more."
Aug 12, 1971
"Sometimes I wonder how I ever got mixed up in all this
in the first place."
Jun 22, 1972
"If a design is good enough, it will find its own
buyer. We don't have to sell it."
Jun 28, 1971
"There are millions of skins, but only one Hori
Smoku"
Jun 28, 1971
"You must understand the feeling of originating as
opposed to imitating."
Jun 8, 1971
"I'm not a bit conceited, though I have every right to
be!"
May 24, 1971
"Bold simplicity is the keynote to good design."
Nov 20, 1970
"I don't have a single design that can't be improved
on; every so often I get the urge to "renew" to keep ahead of the
tattoo masters!"
Nov 20, 1970
"I haven't done my best yet…only my best so far."
Sep 15, 1969
"If you like my style of work, fine, come to me, but if
you want to make me over into your kind of stylist, forget it!"
Jul 12, 1972
"I have been studying Japanese comic books-some of
these guys can really portray motion and action. I think we can learn a lot
from them."
Jul 20, 1971
"I was the first one to start using purple, white,
yellow and blue-now they are all trying to do it. Color is here to stay. Good
color that is!"
Feb 18, 1971
