If you drank too much one day and got a tattoo of something incredibly ridiculous, we know a name in the music world that will support and comfort you for your move: Machine Gun Kelly. He is with you, with more than eighty tattoos on his body. Yep, you didn’t read it wrong; more than eighty tattoos.
The artist, who started getting tattoos at the age of 14, continues to get tattoos when he is not working on music or when he is free. Actually, he might also get a tattoo when he is working too. Some of you might have seen the photo of him rehearsing while getting a tattoo last year.
For MGK, there are many different passions in life, and the two we know are music and tattoos. In May 2022, he shared a photo of himself with all of his tattoos covered up for a movie, and probably no one would have recognized him like that. So ink seems to have become an integral part of both his body and his identity, and many, if not all, also have a story of their own.
The tattoos of the names of his albums, his daughter’s name, the sign of anarchy, which he says he carries with pride, the address of his house to remind him that he has a home if he is homesick while running from tour to tour, the bus that hit him, and dozens more, cover MGK’s body. Of course, music is also something that has found a place for itself on this canvas, and he has proudly inscribed both his inspirations and his own works into his body. One of the names he tattooed as his inspiration was Anthony Kiedis. Now let’s tell you the story of this one.
You would probably expect Anthony Kiedis to be a musical inspiration, but no, his battle with drugs is what actually inspired MGK. Machine Gun Kelly read Kiedis’s ‘Scar Tissue’ when he was trying to cope with the same problem, and it gave him precisely what he needed: to hear from someone who had experienced the struggle that the battle can be won. He wanted to immortalize the lines that affected him on his body, and that’s when he got the RHCP tattoo. The musician shared his feelings about this tattoo in a conversation with Untitled Magazine in 2013.
“The reason I got the RHCP tattoo is,” the musician said while starting to share the story of his Kiedis tattoo, “because that’s when I was going through my issue with drugs, and I was reading ‘Scar Tissue’ by Anthony Kiedis. I didn’t end up going to rehab because everyone around me was not encouraging rehab. They were encouraging just like, ‘Get through it on your own.’”
He continued, “Anthony Kiedis’ story just helped me so much, and it helped me stop with the whole thing. I mean, it was a part of it. Obviously, that book didn’t f*ckin’ stop that, but it had a big enough effect on me that I wanted it on my body. So I ended up putting the Chili Peppers things on there.”
In fact, all his tattoos are like a visualized summary of MGK’s life; his body has turned into a canvas on which the picture of his life has been immortalized. These tattoos have also been an essential part of his stage persona, which is why we have a hard time recognizing him when he posts a photo of himself after getting his tattoos covered up with makeup. Let’s just wait and see what his next tattoo will be!
