Lyle Tuttle made tattoos cool when he inked legendary rocker Janis Joplin in 1970.
When he passed away last year at age 87, Tuttle was a bona fide legend in modern tattooing. He helped the tattoo world expand into a $5bn a year business catering to everyday folk along with celebrities, sailors, soldiers, and outsiders.
“Show me a man with a tattoo and I’ll show you a man with an interesting past,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2002.
“Tattoos are like plaques or postcards. They are a montage of your life. They tell stories.”
Read on to learn more about the life and art of the incomparable tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle.
Early Life and Career Beginnings
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Lyle Gilbert Tuttle. Born October 7, 1931. He moved to the Ukiah Valley in Northern California as a child with his cattle farming parents to escape drought in the Midwest.
As a young teen Lyle saw illustrated troops returning from World War II with decorated skin – these soldiers and sailors offered a glimpse into the world outside Ukiah.
Tuttle jumped on a bus to San Francisco and got his first piece of body art, the quintessentially traditional heart inked around the word “Mother” for the princely sum of $3.50.
His tattooist was San Francisco legend Ralph “Duke” Kaufman, who Tuttle dropped out of school to work for soon after getting etched for the first time.
Tuttle served with the Marines during the Korean War then honed his needle craft with pioneering Long Beach artist Bert Grimm in the mid-1950s, before tattooing solo in Anchorage Alaska, a place devoid of tattoo artists.
In 1960 Tuttle returned close to home, opening his first shop, the iconic Lyle Tuttle Tattoo Shop on Seventh Street in San Francisco.
“Tattoos are merely another physical form of expression,” Tuttle told Time Magazine in 1970. “A way to say something intimately with your body.”
Tattooing Janis Joplin and Fame
Lyle Tuttle’s Business Card Image: BobbyJim CC BY-3.0
“She wanted a tattoo, she said, so Tuttle drew a pattern around her left wrist, like a bracelet. She said it hurt like hell, but, what the hell, she wanted another. So Tuttle placed a small heart on her left breast. “Just a little treat for the boys,” she called the tattoo. “Like icing on the cake.” – San Francisco Chronicle, August 19, 2018
When Lyle Tuttle tattooed Blues starlet Janis Joplin in 1970, he didn’t realize that it would usher in a new era of tattooing celebrities that continues today. He gave Joplin her first tattoo, a bracelet on her left wrist. ‘after a few drinks’ Joplin added a tiny heart tattoo on her breast.
“After I gave her the heart … and the wrist bracelet (tattoo), I started getting all the hippies,” Tuttle told The Chronicle. “Great for business. I tattooed at parties at her house, met all the rock stars.”
This led to Tuttle inking other stars who came through San Francisco at the height of the Free Love period such as Joan Baez, the Allman Brothers, Henry Fonda and Jim Croce. The tattoo on Cher’s butt you can see in the iconic Turn Back Time video clip was another Tuttle special.
He ended up on the cover of Rolling Stone and in Life Magazine, as a tattooist to rock n rollers and celebrities.
“One group was really weird,” he told Time. It “grooved on the cosmos−each one was tattooed with specified planets, and together they made up a kind of an astronomical map.”
When Joplin, who Tuttle described as a “bright spirit” died of an accidental heroin overdose less than a year after getting tattooed by Tuttle, it unwittingly started the celebrity tribute tattoo. Hundreds of young women distraught at Joplin’s death came to Tuttle for their own versions of Joplin’s ink.
“It was not my great artistic talents that got me where I`m at today,” Tuttle said in a 2015 television interview with CBS Morning News. “But I was in everybody`s favorite city.”
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Lyle Tuttle Tattoos and the Women’s Liberation Movement
The Mean Streets of Ukiah Image: Bob DassCC BY-2.0
“I’ve seen a lot of pubic hair in my time.” – ABC News Australia, 2015
When Tuttle’s own body of tattoo art was featured in a 1972 issue of Life magazine it was part of a feature that celebrated his tattoo work on women.
He was outspoken on the issue of a woman’s place in tattoo at a time when New York had outlawed tattoo art. He frequently credited the women’s liberation movement for opening the tattoo industry and “taking it out of the back alley.” It also was brilliant for business, it seemed like every woman he met in the late early 1970’s wanted to get their first tattoo from the tattoo artist that inked Janis Jolpin.
“Women’s liberation! One hundred percent women’s liberation! That put tattooing back on the map,” Tuttle told Prick magazine, “With women getting a new found freedom, they could get tattooed if they so desired. It increased and opened the market by 50% of the population – half of the human race! For three years, I tattooed almost nothing but women.
Most women got tattooed for the entertainment value … circus side show attractions and so forth. Self-made freaks, that sort of stuff. The women made tattooing a softer and kinder art form.”
Tuttle also retained his trademark sense of humor about tattooing in San Fran during the height of the free love and women’s liberation.
“I was in more panties than gynecologists because a favorite spot for ladies to get tattooed was inside the bikini line,” Tuttle told CBS Morning News.
Tuttle’s tattoo shop provided an interesting, but neutral site during American society’s huge cultural shift of the early 1970s. This snippet from the 1970 Time story depicts his place in history quite brilliantly:
“Tuttle’s place is considered neutral ground when it comes to sociological or political disputes. He still marvels at the congeniality of two recent customers who chatted and chuckled together through simultaneous tattoo sessions. One, a black man in a beret, was having a panther tattooed on his back. The other walked out with a red and blue Confederate flag unfurled on his white shoulder.”
His Own Ink Collection
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In some ways Lyle Tuttle was almost as well known for his own body art as much as his ability to tattoo others.
Perhaps his most celebrated of Lyle Tuttle tattoos was big tattoo on his back featuring two traditional American Eagles duking it out above the caption “Duel in the Sun.”
He was an old school tattooist who believed that no one should have “travel marks” on their hands, feet, or face, but the rest of him was completely covered in elaborate traditional ink.
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After he had covered just about every inch of his body – except his face, feet or hands – with ink, and saw the change to body art expression over the years, Tuttle advised in the ABC News story: “don’t get one, stay unique.”
“Tattooing used to be a compulsion. In my era, I just had to have a tattoo…Now it’s a trend and a fad, and trends and fads end.”
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Late Career: A museum and tattoo convention star
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Tuttle with photo portrait of Horst “Tattoo Samy” Streckenbach Image: Diana Kohrs CC BY-SA 4.0
“I’ve been a tattoo artist in San Francisco for 70 years and in 70 years I’ve seen a lot of tattoo history,” Tuttle told Newswire in 2018. “I’ve seen it go through World War II, I’ve tattooed on all seven continents, I got my first tattoo in 1946 and I’m still goin’…”
The Seventh Street tattoo shop served as Tuttle’s home base until the San Francisco Earthquake damaged the building beyond repair in 1989.
He moved the Lyle Tuttle Tattoo Shop to 841 Columbus Ave, and despite officially retiring in the 1990s, kept working on the occasional piece, collecting tattoo artifacts for his shop/tattoo museum, and observing the local tattoo community until his death on March 25, 2019.
In his later years, Tuttle served as an unofficial tattoo historian – his tattoo shop on Columbus also housed a tattoo museum to tattoo artifacts known as the Lyle Tuttle Collection – where he could show off the amazing array of different tattoo memorabilia he collected over the years.
Tuttle could also be found judging at whichever tattoo convention or exhibition was happy to have a legend hold court, telling stories about the good old days.
He also taught classes on tattoo machine repair and maintenance, and contributed to scientific articles on tattoo related subjects, including cosmetic tattooing, medical body art, and wider social issues.
Tuttle used his boundless creativity to become the first person to have ever tattooed on all seven continents, including Antarctica, where he got a penguin inked onto his forearm in 2014.
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Lyle Tuttle’s Legacy
“The granddaddy of modern American tattooing” – SF Chronicle, March 26, 2019
Lyle Tuttle was a truly legendary tattoo artist. Throughout the tattoo world he was known almost as much for his own tattoo collection as he was for his skill with needle and ink.
Along with Norman ‘Sailor Jerry’ Collins and Don Ed Hardy he would be a walk-up starter as part of any tattoo historian’s Mount Rushmore.
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