Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz is bringing back body art for the reality show Best Ink's second season. He is guiding 12 of the nation's top tattoo artists in challenges as they compete for the top spot. The winner of the Oxygen Channel's show gets $100,000 and a cover story in Tattoo Magazine.
Wentz is in good company, with Sabina Kelley back for a second season; also, new judge Hannah Aitchison joins the cast.
Windy City Times talked with Wentz about tattoos and music on a phone interview before the show began.
Windy City Times: Hi, Pete. How are you? I'm calling from Chicago!
Pete Wentz: Nice! I like that.
WCT: You guys just put on a huge show here. It was amazing with everybody waiting down the block.
Pete Wentz: Oh, wow—thank you.
WCT: Are there any Chicago contestants on Best Ink this season?
Pete Wentz: Tylor is from Chicago. He came to see the band in Arlington Heights a long time ago.
Hannah one of the judges is from Chicago too. Hannah and I connected in Chicago and talked a bunch about it actually. I've gotten tattooed at her shop, Deluxe Tattoo from Tim Biedron in Chicago so we talked about that before.
WCT: Is that your favorite place to get tattooed in Chicago?
Pete Wentz: Yeah, definitely. There's a little bit of a transient vibe when you get tattooed on tour, you're here and there. But Chicago's obviously home base, so that is definitely an important place for me to get tattooed.
WCT: What did you get out of the experience of doing your first reality show?
Pete Wentz: That's a good question. So I feel like every once in a while, I get hit up to do whatever kind of reality show and they don't really make a whole lot of sense for me. This one did because I felt like it was authentic to my brand. I've been into tattoos for a while. I wanted to learn more and obviously I've been an enthusiast. I felt like after meeting with Joe and realizing that I'd get to learn a lot about the inner workings of a tattoo shop and more about tattoo culture—that was really important to me.
I think the other thing was to really present this as pop culture and pop art. Going into it, it was really important for me to be able to be involved from the ground up in the Flash Challenges, which are like the non-tattoo challenges. So we got to do some pretty crazy stuff. I'm really into street art so we got to hang these guys from the side of a billboard six stories up and let them spray-paint. I guess they kind of let us just do what we wanted to do as far as those wacky ideas.
WCT: Why do you find tattoos such an art form?
Pete Wentz: I think there are so many things that make them a fascinating art form. I think to be a walking canvas is a pretty cool thing. It's an actual living, breathing piece of art. It's interesting because everybody's body kind of has a different skin tone and shape so tattoos look different depending who it is, depending on when you got them. They all tell different stories I think specifically with this show, it focuses so much on the pop culture aspect and I think the pop culture aspect is part of it. So we go through everything from traditional tattoos to stuff that is more illustrative stuff to wacky stuff, animated tattoos, just kind of crazy stuff.
I think there's something in there for everyone. I feel like tattoos are such a subjective art form. The wearer makes the choice of how much they'll add to it and how far they'll go with it. I don't think that it's something that hides in the shadows anymore. I have friends who are doctors who have tattoos, I have everyone from friends who are in bands who have tattoos. It's kind of all over the place.
WCT: What do you remember about your first tattoo?
Pete Wentz: Oh man. My first one was brutal. It was on my back. I was 15 years old. I had snuck in the shop. I did a lot of goofing around. I definitely recommend waiting until legal age to get tattooed. Not just because you're probably doing some shady stuff. But also because I think people really have to grow into who they are and who you think you're going to be for a long time. When you're 15 you think 30 seems like it's going to be forever. But one day you will be 30 and you'll have that tattoo still.
WCT: Do you have one that means the most, personally?
Pete Wentz: Well, I think one of my most meaningful ones is probably the one that I have with Travie McCoy from Gym Class Heroes. I have half of a banner and he has half of a banner and they meet up on our wrists. His says "young hearts" and mine says "be free"—a Rod Stewart song—so that one's probably the most meaningful. I remember I actually told my son on the way to school, as soon as he learns to write his own name I'll probably get tattooed in his handwriting, at some point that'll happen.
WCT: How do you juggle the show and the band?
Pete Wentz: The great thing is we've had kind of a really cool group on the show. I mean it's definitely a group of us, me, Joe, Hannah, Sabina and then the contestants. The whole crew that worked on it, we filmed it all through October and I didn't really realize that I didn't have a lot of experience with reality competition TV. We filmed basically six or seven days a week. So how you see it is very real. Everything is actually filmed. I would usually film during the day and then head to the studio at night all through October.
The cool thing is I'm able to do a lot of the press for the album and do press for Best Ink at the same time. Thankfully the two kind of are married, when people think about tattoos they think of rock music and when people think of rock music, vice versa. So thankfully I didn't do like a reality competition show on being a celebrity food person or something. I did something that actually married well.
WCT: I read about you fighting against Prop 8 in the past so hopefully we will have gay marriage in Illinois soon.
Pete Wentz: Awesome—we're into it.
Best Ink runs every Wednesday on Oxygen.
