Rememberin' Rollo
by Micheal Cocoran
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The two worst things that ever happened to me ended up being the best. An excruciatingly painful marriage yielded a wonderful son and, after time, a best friend in his mother. And way back in 1974, when I was 18, my mother died, my dad married a psycho a few months later, and then kicked me out of the house because I was making it hard on the newlyweds.
If all that turmoil didn't happen, if I didn't drop out of college sophomore year and reject the straight life, I probably would've never crossed paths with tattoo artist and philosopher Michael Malone and I would've been a quite different person today.
Malone, who passed away Wednesday in Chicago, taught me a lot of things (often at the price of derision), but two that continue to impact me daily are 1) If you say you're going to do something, do it and 2) cliches are easy to avoid.
Malone wasn't the most naturally skilled artist, but he worked harder than everyone else and saw deadlines as a challenge to his manhood. He'd rather work around the clock than have to tell someone the job wasn't quite done yet.
And then there was his way with words. Malone would never use an expression like "when pigs fly." He'd go into a big windup about how something would happen "when the little bacon butts are stacked up over LaGuardia." Going to the supermarket with Malone was like a two-hour excursion with his constant commentary. He could do 10 minutes on baking soda. I remember one day we were in tears laughing so hard as we perused the cheese section for "who cut the cheese?" variations. Who parted the provolone? Who gouged the gouda? Who broke the brie? Who carved the cheddar? Who lanced the limburger? Who mangled the mozzarella? Grown men giggling like lunatics.
I met Malone, who had not yet started calling himself Rollo Banks, through his then-girlfriend Kate Hellenbrand in January 1975. Kate was the editor of Sunbums, a biweekly alternative paper that sort of adopted me when I was 19.
Kate and Rollo were unlike anyone I'd ever known. They were streetwise, having lived the boho life in scary Manhattan neighborhoods, and they talked about cool stuff like Japanese movies and Randy Newman and, especially, about the tattoo world. Rollo had just taken over Sailor Jerry's legendary tattoo shop near the corner of Smith and Hotel Streets in Honolulu's seedy Chinatown. He was a heavy dude in the needle and ink biz.
I was just a shy, gawky kid who wouldn't say a word when I went to the dinner parties Rollo and Kate threw for visiting tattoo luminaries Ed Hardy, Thom DeVita, Paul Rogers, Miss Roxy and the like. Kate was my best friend; Rollo was just her intimidating boyfriend who told hilarious stories about people I'd never heard of.
After Kate and Rollo broke up I didn't see him much, but around 1978, I slipped a copy of a Xeroxed fanzine I had written called Honolulu Babylon under the door of the tattoo shop. A few days later I ran into Rollo in Chinatown and he was jazzed about the Babylon and full of ideas for the next issue. Two days later, he had drawn the cover, a topless hula dancer cracking a whip, and we were off and running. He became Rollo Banks, I was Yikes Crawford and we set out to create a publication with a simple message: "(Expletive) You!" That's how I went from kid to protege.
When Rollo was cool with you, which was about 95 percent of the time, he was the best guy to be around. But if you did something he didn't like, he'd rake you pretty good, often in front of an audience. We took long breaks from each other. I had to go out and see what I could do without his rather imposing shadow hovering above.
In 1982, I was living in Albany, N.Y., and Rollo asked whether I wanted to run a couple of his side businesses, Mr. Lucky T-Shirts and Mr. Flash Designs. We'd work every tattoo convention, and the thing other tattooers would always say about the flash (tattoo design sheets) was that Rollo knew what people wanted and kept his designs simple. One guy, Pete from Chicago, said he had a separate bank account for all the money he made putting on Rollo's Grim Reaper and the previous year he bought a new Cadillac with the proceeds.
After we ran ads in Easyriders and Outlaw Biker magazines, the T-shirt business started taking off. We had to mail everything first class, about three bucks a shirt, so we started talking about moving the company, and Rollo's tattoo business, to the mainland. I had just gotten a postcard from my friend Andrella, who was on tour with the Cramps (her boyfriend was guitarist Bryan Gregory), and she said the band had just played a great show at a club called Raul's in Austin, Texas, of all places. I knew that Lester Bangs lived here for awhile, so I figured stuff must be happening.
Around the same time, Rollo received a newsletter from his old friend Travis Holland's bluegrass band. They were based in Austin.
Middle of the country. College town. Music town. And a river runs through it. Austin just felt right so we moved operations to an old white house on the Drag that had a shoe repair shop in the front. There wasn't much tattoo business to speak of in Austin in the '80s, and Rollo would kick himself whenever a military payday, when he'd be booked solid in Honolulu, came and went without customers. Luckily, the tattoo shop was just a block away from the former Austin Chronicle offices, so Rollo had a constant flow of visitors down the back alley. He loved to hold court.
Just like with Honolulu, Rollo loved Austin and despised Austin. He mocked the worship of musicians here and made me write down some of his instant sayings, such as "life is what we do because we can't play the guitar" and "once you put on the clown suit, you can't take it off." That latter was aimed at Dino Lee, the theatrical rocker who tried to play it straight one night at Steamboat and got cracked in the head with a glass.
"The little town with the big head" was another Rollo fave. He drew the cover of the True Believers first album, and played conjunto music in his black 1958 Chevy, but other than that, he didn't have much to do with newer music.
After Rollo married Chron writer Margaret Moser in December 1984, I took over her gossip column and renamed it "Don't You Start Me Talking." Over the next three and a half years, I became a local literary star and a speedfreak. In my mind, the two went together — the best cure for writer's block was a couple of lines of crank. If my ego got too big, Rollo was there to knock me down to Earth. He nicknamed speed "talent" and that became the code in my druggie circle. "Hey, do you know where I can score some talent?" After awhile, the irony disappeared.
Rollo's not the kind of guy that ever went for sentiment. When his close friend Keith Ferguson (the only guy I've ever seen hold court when Rollo was in the room) died from drug-related causes, Rollo remarked that one thing he always admired about Keith was that he accepted his addiction and never whined about needing to stop. He was a man about it. Ownership of your actions, good or bad: that was big with Rollo.
When Margaret told me Wednesday that Rollo had shot himself, and I started thinking about what was going through his mind at the time. It never dawned on me that he was depressed. It was just "time to check out," as he stated his suicide note. We all have to die sometime, and Rollo was not going to let anything else pick his date. He was a man about it. Margaret told me he had been in a lot of physical pain, with the effects of diabetes ravaging his body. The jig was up.
The jig was up? Can't end a remembrance of my mentor (and de-mentor) with a cliché. Let's instead revert to a Rolloism: The old man just decided to take a dirt nap.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Read it on AUSTIN360.com
Back to Press Section
by Micheal Cocoran
Back to Press Section
The two worst things that ever happened to me ended up being the best. An excruciatingly painful marriage yielded a wonderful son and, after time, a best friend in his mother. And way back in 1974, when I was 18, my mother died, my dad married a psycho a few months later, and then kicked me out of the house because I was making it hard on the newlyweds.
If all that turmoil didn't happen, if I didn't drop out of college sophomore year and reject the straight life, I probably would've never crossed paths with tattoo artist and philosopher Michael Malone and I would've been a quite different person today.
Malone, who passed away Wednesday in Chicago, taught me a lot of things (often at the price of derision), but two that continue to impact me daily are 1) If you say you're going to do something, do it and 2) cliches are easy to avoid.
Malone wasn't the most naturally skilled artist, but he worked harder than everyone else and saw deadlines as a challenge to his manhood. He'd rather work around the clock than have to tell someone the job wasn't quite done yet.
And then there was his way with words. Malone would never use an expression like "when pigs fly." He'd go into a big windup about how something would happen "when the little bacon butts are stacked up over LaGuardia." Going to the supermarket with Malone was like a two-hour excursion with his constant commentary. He could do 10 minutes on baking soda. I remember one day we were in tears laughing so hard as we perused the cheese section for "who cut the cheese?" variations. Who parted the provolone? Who gouged the gouda? Who broke the brie? Who carved the cheddar? Who lanced the limburger? Who mangled the mozzarella? Grown men giggling like lunatics.
I met Malone, who had not yet started calling himself Rollo Banks, through his then-girlfriend Kate Hellenbrand in January 1975. Kate was the editor of Sunbums, a biweekly alternative paper that sort of adopted me when I was 19.
Kate and Rollo were unlike anyone I'd ever known. They were streetwise, having lived the boho life in scary Manhattan neighborhoods, and they talked about cool stuff like Japanese movies and Randy Newman and, especially, about the tattoo world. Rollo had just taken over Sailor Jerry's legendary tattoo shop near the corner of Smith and Hotel Streets in Honolulu's seedy Chinatown. He was a heavy dude in the needle and ink biz.
I was just a shy, gawky kid who wouldn't say a word when I went to the dinner parties Rollo and Kate threw for visiting tattoo luminaries Ed Hardy, Thom DeVita, Paul Rogers, Miss Roxy and the like. Kate was my best friend; Rollo was just her intimidating boyfriend who told hilarious stories about people I'd never heard of.
After Kate and Rollo broke up I didn't see him much, but around 1978, I slipped a copy of a Xeroxed fanzine I had written called Honolulu Babylon under the door of the tattoo shop. A few days later I ran into Rollo in Chinatown and he was jazzed about the Babylon and full of ideas for the next issue. Two days later, he had drawn the cover, a topless hula dancer cracking a whip, and we were off and running. He became Rollo Banks, I was Yikes Crawford and we set out to create a publication with a simple message: "(Expletive) You!" That's how I went from kid to protege.
When Rollo was cool with you, which was about 95 percent of the time, he was the best guy to be around. But if you did something he didn't like, he'd rake you pretty good, often in front of an audience. We took long breaks from each other. I had to go out and see what I could do without his rather imposing shadow hovering above.
In 1982, I was living in Albany, N.Y., and Rollo asked whether I wanted to run a couple of his side businesses, Mr. Lucky T-Shirts and Mr. Flash Designs. We'd work every tattoo convention, and the thing other tattooers would always say about the flash (tattoo design sheets) was that Rollo knew what people wanted and kept his designs simple. One guy, Pete from Chicago, said he had a separate bank account for all the money he made putting on Rollo's Grim Reaper and the previous year he bought a new Cadillac with the proceeds.
After we ran ads in Easyriders and Outlaw Biker magazines, the T-shirt business started taking off. We had to mail everything first class, about three bucks a shirt, so we started talking about moving the company, and Rollo's tattoo business, to the mainland. I had just gotten a postcard from my friend Andrella, who was on tour with the Cramps (her boyfriend was guitarist Bryan Gregory), and she said the band had just played a great show at a club called Raul's in Austin, Texas, of all places. I knew that Lester Bangs lived here for awhile, so I figured stuff must be happening.
Around the same time, Rollo received a newsletter from his old friend Travis Holland's bluegrass band. They were based in Austin.
Middle of the country. College town. Music town. And a river runs through it. Austin just felt right so we moved operations to an old white house on the Drag that had a shoe repair shop in the front. There wasn't much tattoo business to speak of in Austin in the '80s, and Rollo would kick himself whenever a military payday, when he'd be booked solid in Honolulu, came and went without customers. Luckily, the tattoo shop was just a block away from the former Austin Chronicle offices, so Rollo had a constant flow of visitors down the back alley. He loved to hold court.
Just like with Honolulu, Rollo loved Austin and despised Austin. He mocked the worship of musicians here and made me write down some of his instant sayings, such as "life is what we do because we can't play the guitar" and "once you put on the clown suit, you can't take it off." That latter was aimed at Dino Lee, the theatrical rocker who tried to play it straight one night at Steamboat and got cracked in the head with a glass.
"The little town with the big head" was another Rollo fave. He drew the cover of the True Believers first album, and played conjunto music in his black 1958 Chevy, but other than that, he didn't have much to do with newer music.
After Rollo married Chron writer Margaret Moser in December 1984, I took over her gossip column and renamed it "Don't You Start Me Talking." Over the next three and a half years, I became a local literary star and a speedfreak. In my mind, the two went together — the best cure for writer's block was a couple of lines of crank. If my ego got too big, Rollo was there to knock me down to Earth. He nicknamed speed "talent" and that became the code in my druggie circle. "Hey, do you know where I can score some talent?" After awhile, the irony disappeared.
Rollo's not the kind of guy that ever went for sentiment. When his close friend Keith Ferguson (the only guy I've ever seen hold court when Rollo was in the room) died from drug-related causes, Rollo remarked that one thing he always admired about Keith was that he accepted his addiction and never whined about needing to stop. He was a man about it. Ownership of your actions, good or bad: that was big with Rollo.
When Margaret told me Wednesday that Rollo had shot himself, and I started thinking about what was going through his mind at the time. It never dawned on me that he was depressed. It was just "time to check out," as he stated his suicide note. We all have to die sometime, and Rollo was not going to let anything else pick his date. He was a man about it. Margaret told me he had been in a lot of physical pain, with the effects of diabetes ravaging his body. The jig was up.
The jig was up? Can't end a remembrance of my mentor (and de-mentor) with a cliché. Let's instead revert to a Rolloism: The old man just decided to take a dirt nap.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Read it on AUSTIN360.com
Back to Press Section