Freddy Corbin - Tattoo Age - VICE - 3 of 4

FREDDY CORBIN: Where your thumb is. Push an arrow. I'm on! MALE SPEAKER: Little green light. Yeah. FREDDY CORBIN: I'm on. MALE SPEAKER: There we go. FREDDY CORBIN: OK. MALE SPEAKER: Ready to come. FREDDY CORBIN: And then you got the zoom. See? Forward, backward, the zoom thing? MALE SPEAKER: Yep. FREDDY CORBIN: OK. Folks-- MALE SPEAKER: We're zooming. We're zooming. FREDDY CORBIN: I love ya. It's going to be a good thing. OK, so you can turn it off. Da, da-- MALE SPEAKER: Hey, you're going second, right? FREDDY CORBIN: Da, da. MALE SPEAKER: The biggest nerds in the world. FREDDY CORBIN: OK. I leave Malibu to my brother. All the Jesus *** to Eileen. And everything else goes to John. EDDY DEUTSCHE: Last will and testament right here. Al, you get everything, baby. MALE SPEAKER: Right on. EDDY DEUTSCHE: Everything. MALE SPEAKER: Igor? IGOR MORTIS: I want Eddy's machines. EDDY DEUTSCHE: And Igor can have a couple machines. But you get to pick them. And Freddy-- FREDDY CORBIN: But you're going to be dead. MALE SPEAKER: You can't leave *** to each other. MALE SPEAKER: Guy? GUY ATCHINSON: Amy gets everything except the tattoo ***, which I'm giving to Mad Jack. MALE SPEAKER: All right. And Igor? IGOR MORTIS: I'm taking it all with me. EDDY DEUTSCHE: He doesn't have anything. That's why! IGOR MORTIS: Bad omen. FREDDY CORBIN: Just don't get nervous. I know you're going to jump 9,000 feet. Just don't get nervous. MALE SPEAKER: Ahh, right on the pad. MALE SPEAKER: Eddy! Was it fun? MALE SPEAKER: He doesn't remember. He missed most of the jump. MALE SPEAKER: Yeah. MALE SPEAKER: Smiling all the way down. FREDDY CORBIN: Go nuts. You can pull all my videos off the shelf. Here's some water. I need some for work. Here. Now he's going to want this. Go ahead. It's cheap. Now this is a cool photo. This is doing the last tattoo at Realistic. That's Howie the Cosmic Commander. This would probably be about June or May of '91. And you'll recognize those screens in the tattoo time. Realistic Studio was opened up in '74. I had the honor of working there in '90 and '91. And what it was was Ed went over to Japan after hanging out with Jerry in Hawaii and stuff, and when he came back he wanted to open up, basically, the United States' first appointment only non walk-in tattoo shop. There was no sign. You couldn't see it from the street. That's where Bob Roberts worked. Greg Irons worked there. Phillip sat in there. Leo Zulueta worked there. What happened was, Realistic, the lease was coming up, and Eddy wanted to move to San Francisco. And we wanted to work together, but we didn't want to work in that back room format. We wanted a walk-in tattoo shop. We, basically, were going to open up a shop and we were going to hire Igor Mortis and Dan Higgs, and that's where the whole Temple Dude tattoo came from. Because we were going to work a convention, I think in New Orleans together, but we weren't going to really be able to talk about the shop yet. But we felt, out of respect, we should go to Ed first and ask Ed if he wanted to own the shop. And we were driving across the Bay Bridge he actually brought it up, so what are you going to do Fred? Your lease is coming up. I been wanting to talk you about that. I got this idea. He drove from the bridge to Columbus and was like, this is where I wanted to open up when I first got back. And the next morning he had the place rented. That's how he operates. He just gets *** done. So we opened up Tattoo City on July 1 of '91, and I worked there till about '96. If I were to be really truthful, it was really difficult working with Eddy Deutsche and Ed Hardy, because I had only been tattooing a few years. And Eddy was amazing from the gate. And Ed Hardy was the best tattooer in the world. Like living in a fishbowl. We opened up Tattoo City and people are coming in and just expecting me to be able to-- I want a back piece of this, and I want this. And I wasn't ready to do big tattoos like that yet. There were some that I could do. I could do a big Jesus head back piece or a big rock of ages maybe because they were simple enough. But I couldn't do wind bars or Japanese water back then, and stuff like that. I still had to learn how to do all that stuff. I did feel a lot of pressure, to be honest, to be able to do anything because I worked for Ed Hardy at Tattoo City. I think a big dynamic of one of the reasons that I got into drugs even was because there was so much pressure. I never got into *** and stuff because I had a career going. Like, I work for Ed Hardy. I didn't take this *** lightly. I'd start popping Valiums at the end of the day. And I'll say, it kind of helped for a while, because you're working all day and you're tattooing somebody, that's a pretty serious thing. You know what I mean? It's not like a haircut. It doesn't grow back. And I remember the first time I used to-- this was before cable-- I used to love David Letterman. And I'd watch David Letterman and I remember smoking a joint and taking a couple Valiums and feeling that feeling, that kind of calmness and serenity. Like, oh, wow. This feels really good. And I got into-- when I started getting my ribs tattooed I started taking some dilaudids and some morphine pills. And my brother, unfortunately at the time, was getting into *** and using ***. And there was nobody shooting up, there was no junkies hanging around, it was like, let's just buy a little bit and smoke it on some foil. And it seemed at the time, not innocent, but not harmful. It didn't seem as harmful as it really was. And ironically Ed had given me a month off because I was doing so good. I mean, we had closed Realistic and opened up Tattoo City and I was working my *** off. He said, Freddy, you've been doing so good. You should take a month off, dude. And that was the month I got strung out. Because I just laid around my house and covered the windows and slept for-- would just go into my room and not come out. And I would try the 90 meetings in 90 days thing. It's just not me. And then I would go through periods of just giving up even trying. I had gone to Amsterdam and I was living in the Red Light District and I was using a lot. And some crazy *** went down. My brother got in a car accident. My brother was a paraplegic. I called Ed and let him know what was going on and that's kind of when I got canned at Tattoo City and stuff. I wanted to tell Ed that I was strung out because I really, really respected him. But Ed's business. So I always knew that Ed would be like, well, Freddy, I love ya and I appreciate you telling me but you gotta go. And I was fine with that. But I wanted to kind of go to him-- it sounds silly in retrospect-- but I wanted to kind of get clean and then go to Ed and say here's what's been going on. But in the midst of my grandiose plan of trying to do this and figure out all this crazy ***, because it's like you're getting caught up in a *** storm. He basically canned me. And then, from what my mom tells me and Eddy and stuff, that he was really concerned at first. It was like, what are we going to do? We gotta get him into rehab. But by the time I was walking through the gate, he was yelling at me and screaming at me and all kinds of ***. So I think he just got kind of angry. Then it was like all eyes on me. Around the world. What's Freddy going to do kind of ***. It's just really good gossip. That's pretty much it. It's like, I think there's a couple dynamics. There's it's great gossip. There's the hater aspect. And then there's the concerned friend aspect of it, too. There were people that really loved me that were concerned about me. There were a lot of people that were stoked. I don't mean stoked to see me go down, but like, I had '66 Chevelle. I was young, I was making money, I was working for Ed Hardy. I was kind of rolling. JASON MCAFEE: I don't really know if I think that's the way people wanted to see it go for Freddy. Even though he might say that, I don't really think so. I think people love him and never really want to be like, yeah, *** Freddy's *** up. Or Freddy ***' blah, blah. I think that could be his own little thing going on with him. I didn't know about the Tattoo City thing, and why he got fired, or the stuff with him and Ed, or drugs or whatever had been going on with him. He was very open about it. He's a very open person, and was very like, hey, man, just want you to know, this is what's happened and you might get ***. And people are always going to be like, oh, Freddy Corbin because he's messed up or whatever. But he's been through some bad ***. People dying, his brother getting in an accident and being paralyzed, his brother dying recently. Things just with his whole life. Like, he's had a pretty rough run. And he's come out on top and been amazing. There's something about him, that his soul and his heart is just so genuine and so real. And no matter if he was drugs or not or weed or whatever the *** he was doing, there's this part of him that you just care about and I love no matter what. FREDDY CORBIN: Of course I wanted to do the right thing, whatever that was. So I got off dope. I stayed clean for a little while, but not long. And then I ended up going back to Amsterdam and kind of just bailing the whole scene. I continued to use in Amsterdam for a while, and even here in Oakland for a little bit, and then just wasn't happy. It just wasn't working for me. Just staying well and just darkness, just living in darkness. So my friend Vinny was always really cool about being really supportive in a non-judgmental kind of way, was always there for me as a friend. And even my wife Lisa, who was then my girlfriend, as stubborn as we both can be, and as much as we're on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to things like religion or going to India or *** like that, she was always there for me, too. So the two of them are really instrumental in me kind of getting my *** together. LISA CORBIN: A lot of us have gone through the similar things. It is helpful to have other people because they can kind of call you on your ***. But there are times when we were all just like, what can we do? At a loss. And there are times with Freddy that were very scary. Knowing Freddy has been a journey, and sometimes I've had to hold on with the tightest ropes I've ever had to hold on to in my entire life. And I go through all that doubt of, what am I doing? Am I crazy? But there was always something there. There's always that bond. There was always that connection. And it's just been amazing to see him pull through that. There must have been something deep down that made him want to live. And then we have Sonny, our awesome son. And he's just sort of taken, I think, some of that energy and put it into him and they have a beautiful relationship. Makes me jealous sometimes. FREDDY CORBIN: [HUMMING] Ready for the dip? Can you dip? Oh, that's the sound. I guess you do the right thing, good things happened. Because I was always petrified of having a kid, because I had been strung out for so many years. So it was just like, I wouldn't be a good father. I could never do this or how would this work? The two things that petrified me the most were getting clean and having a kid. And I eventually was able to get clean. Sonny, my son, has just been the coolest thing in my life. Because I think when we were talking earlier, I said I could have never imagined having a kid, and I can't even imagine what it would be like to not have him. And I named him after Sonny, kind of. But Sonny was such a notorious ***-up, Sonny Tufts, that it was like, did you name him after Sonny? Well, not really. I really just kind of learned how much I loved that name and how endearing it was to me because of my friend and because of knowing him so long and stuff like that. JASON MCAFEE: I tell him all the time. I'm just like, dude, from when I met you to now, it's insane. When I met him, he lived three blocks up in this dark, ***, ***' depressing apartment. it was just this den of, like, you sat on a couch and you would melt in it and almost fall asleep. I would get there and just be like, 11:00 in the morning coming to work, and I was just-- And just to see where he's come from to like, getting married, having a baby, owning the two successful shops. His house, his life, he's changed so, so much. And definitely, it's Sonny. Seeing him be a dad is unbelievable. I've never seen someone attack it so strongly and so passionately and become-- he's a rad dad. FREDDY CORBIN: Look at you. There you go. Do it. Do it. Yes. Yay! Yeah. You conquered. TIM HENDRICKS: It's hard to tame a free spirit, and he's the ultimate free spirit. So I think this is one way of doing it organically and naturally, is having a kid and having a family. He's still Freddy. Nothing changed about him. I admire people like that. He's an extremely fun time. Freddy could have fun in a cardboard box. MAX SCHAAF: The weirdest thing to me is, he goes to Burning Man. And he's like, it was insane, bro. And I never want to go to Burning Man. I just don't have any desire to, but when Freddy tells you about it you're like, what? What? Oh my god, really? Because he's just that cool. FREDDY CORBIN: I feel like Burning Man prepared me for India, because at Burning Man, anything goes. You could be talking to some really cool ***' people that are just really down, and the next thing you know you've got some crazy dude tripping on acid who's flailing and not knowing where the *** he is, or whatever, because there's no rules. And India is the same way. India is no rules. We have this term. It's like, both and. It's profound, profane, and then a little bit more. India is so intense. You could see a dead person in the street. There's lepers. There's people begging. There's poor kids begging, running around with no pants on. There's just a lot of poverty. A cliche that people say is that India is the most beautiful and the most horrific place that you'll every go. And it's true. So you'll be out boating and you'll see a carcass floating by. A bloated human body will just-- I've seen a dog with a hand in it's mouth cruising off like, I got some food. It's just bizarre. First time I was there, I was like, if I stayed at this one hotel, I could maybe bring Lisa and her mom here. Her mom's really cool. And I'm just like, why am I wasting my time trying to turn them on to something that I think is really cool? My wife has no desire to go to India. It's too dirty for her. She won't even go camping. If there's not a toilet, she's not interested. LISA CORBIN: Freddy's spiritual side is very separate from our relationship. It's not something that we share or do together. So his trips to India, or Burning Man, or Brazil, or the tea ceremonies, or the parties that he goes to, like the alchemy parties. Freddy, I think, maybe got opened up to different things, but I think he's always been a spiritual. JASON MCAFEE: His spiritual side is, all over the place, in a good way. I think Freddy believes and dabbles in a little bit of all of it. There's obviously a lot Jesuses here and a lot of Christian stuff and all this stuff. And he even sometimes will say that's what he is and what he does, is he's a Christian. But he believes so much in Buddha and all these other kinds of religions and forms of religion that I think he takes pieces from all of it. He's definitely got a lot of spirituality. Wherever it comes from, I couldn't really pinpoint. FREDDY CORBIN: I don't feel bound by any dogma of any religion whatsoever. And I consider myself a Christian because I'm down for Jesus and I believe in what he was here for, as well as Buddha or Martin Luther King or Gandhi or anybody of that nature. I'm just kind of into positive energy. And I think we're all God's ***' children. We're all brothers and sisters no matter what religious sect or color or size or sex or whatever. Huh, Son? And don't trust the government. LISA CORBIN: I think, actually, when Freddy's brother passed away because of his involvement in his spirituality, it really helped them through it. Because I think that he was in a place where he was able to accept it and felt that it was maybe the universe had actually let things happen in a way that was best. He handled it in a way, I think, that was the best-- I don't know. He got through it and I think he got through it because of what he believes in. And it didn't send him over the edge, because a lot of those things-- Freddy lives on the edge. A lot of us have lived on the edge. And it's one of those things. Death can be one of those things that might put you there. FREDDY CORBIN: My brother was kind of a lone wolf. I was one of his few friends so I decided to do his funeral on the Ganges, just take his ashes to India and do it there, do his little funeral there. And it's-- they call it a puja. So you do a puja for the dead and then you do a puja for the people that you love that are alive. And so the first day was a lot of burning, and certain incense and smoke and stuff. And then the ones for your living loved ones, a lot of flowers, water. The living day one, I had to hold this pitcher of water over the shiva lingam, which is basically like a *** and *** statue. It represents fertility and the cycle of life. I had to pour this huge pitcher of water over it. They fill it up and then I'd have to hold it. And then they fill it up again. And by the third time, I'm kind of holding my arm. I came home and I said to Lisa-- because she had been wanting to get pregnant for a while. I came home and I said to Lisa, I said, well, if you're ever going to get pregnant, it's going to happen now, babe, because I had to hold this *** water thing over these flowers. And I was just kind of joking about it. And she said, well, if I get pregnant, I'll turn Hindu. She literally said that. And right after we got married and got locked into this house, she turns up pregnant. And I'm convinced that definitely helped. I'm not saying that was the cause of it. Obviously, *** had a lot to do with it. But I think stuff like that helps, and my beliefs. That intention is a big part of anything that we do. Peel it. All right. That was cool. [MUSIC PLAYING]