SHOWCASED BY WILD BILL
Outlaw Biker and Biker Lifestyle and Thunder Roads Magazines’s Network, Bill soon found shooting cover photos the most rewarding. His chrome 66 Shovelhead has been the centerfold and on the cover of more magazines than any other motorcycle to date. Bill was on the front page of the first Tattoo magazine ever printed: Tattoo #1, and he shot 38 of the photos inside the magazine. Unfortunately, tattooists were not given credits at that time and Bill fought for years with the editors to get not only photo credits but tattooist credits as well. Bill went on to become the studio and cover photographer for Skin Art Magazine, Tattoo Expo, Tattoo Tour, Tattoos for Men, and Tattoos for Women with over 40 magazine covers and centerfolds to his credit. Billy Tinney, from Easyriders Magazine was Bill’s mentor in the world of photography. Bill got so close and spent so much time with Billy he would refer to him as his “dad”. Bill’s whole body is covered in mostly black and gray tattoos by Ed Hardy. Why so much black and gray? Bill says it seems to be so much more realistic, showing the detail and true depth and dimension of the art work. Bill is both a tapestry of artwork and an artist, winning awards in both categories, not to mention awards for his business. Bill received the Best Tattooed Male award four times at various Tattoo Conventions. He has attended over 50 shows and has an entire wall of trophies that he has received. The shop was named Sacramento›s Number One Tattoo Studio by the Sacramento Business Journal, and Sacramento Magazine named his studio “Best Tattoo Studio” ten years running. Bill won the logo contest in 1984 for the anniversary logo for Roseville’s outgoing mail cancellation mark, so all the outgoing mail in Roseville bears his artwork. With a love of electronics and tinkering passed down from his father, Bill built his first tattoo machine at age 14 out of wood and a doorbell buzzer. Working out of a little tattoo shop in his bedroom closet he started to use plastic and then aluminum for his machines. Believing that a steel frame would have a loss in quality because the magnetic memory (becoming magnetized) would distort the electromagnetic field generated by the coils, he decided to never use anything but aluminum machines during his tattoo career. The aluminum machines he was building were some of the lightest around. Many other tattooist from various states and countries requested tattoo machines he had built. He has over 100 machines in his collection, mostly aluminum, single coil or custom one-of-a-kind machines. He has become somewhat of “a connoisseur of fine aluminum machinery”. Bill moved into an upstairs storefront on Lincoln and
April 2014
ThunderRoadsTennessee.com
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