CARAVAN OF PAIN

Alderman, the author of Get Off: The Sordid Youth and Unlikely Survival of a Queer Junkie Wonder Boy (2020), describes his long-shot attempt to launch a tattoo-themed rock tour in this memoir.

Staging a festival that combined heavy metal and the art of tattooing was not on Alderman’s bucket list back in 1998. He had some tattoos of his own, and he’d previously worked as a promoter and club owner, but he describes the impetus of the Tattoo the Earth tour as a moment of crisis during a period of stress rather than a long-held vision: “I thought it might be an aneurysm, or my head rocketing completely off my shoulders, but what came out was the idea for Tattoo the Earth.” At the time, tattooing had not yet become a ubiquitous form of expression—it had only just become legal again in New York state in 1997. With his friend and noted tattoo artist Sean Vasquez, Alderman set out to recruit other luminaries of the art form, including Filip Leu and Bernie Luther. The hardest part, though, would prove to be booking the bands: Alderman set his sights on the biggest names in heavy metal, including Metallica, Slayer, and, later, a new group whose debut album, in 1999, went platinum: Slipknot. Alderman had no idea just what it would take to turn his late-night impulse into a reality, but the resulting ride, during which he struggled with a health scare, was a wild one, and the Tattoo the Earth tour finally launched in 2000. The author’s prose is red-blooded and energetic, as in this passage in which he describes his enthusiasm over the Bernie Luther–created sleeve he got while recruiting artists for the tour: “My tattoo made me feel like I had a bionic limb, and I held it awkwardly and stared at it, trying to get used to its power.” Over the course of the book, the author offers some typical but still diverting music memoir escapades: celebrity encounters, industry negotiations, and carnivalesque episodes from the pit and backstage. It’s most notable, however, for offering readers a rare chronicle of the era in which tattooing went from an underground activity to a part of the mainstream—a shift that Tattoo the Earth can lay claim to having energized.

A highly entertaining account of one of rock’s most colorful tours.