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JOHNNY Depp calls him a brother, David Beckham and Lady Gaga call him a close friend.
And during award season it’s a standing joke when collecting gongs that celebs thank God and Mark Mahoney for guiding their glittering careers.
A spiritual guru he may be, but he is regarded as the greatest tattooist of all time, entrusted with inking the best-known bodies on the planet.
Mark’s famous Shamrock Social Club tattoo parlour in Los Angeles is the epicentre of a trend for a black and grey style that has exploded around the globe.
Nowadays if you see a tattoo on a top music artist or movie actor, chances are 59-year-old Mark is the one to have inked it.
And it’s England footie legend Beckham, he says, who is his toughest customer. Mark reveals: “I didn’t know anything about soccer, I didn’t know who he was, just that he was this handsome guy who comes in to get tattooed by me. But he really is a special individual.”
Mark admits the former England ace is immune to intense pain of going under the needle.
Tough
“I have a a handful of people who will get tattooed all the time, but not as much as David,” he says. “He is the only one who doesn’t feel pain. He sits amazing and is the ideal customer. He makes for good conversation at the same time.
“He has great skin but he gets it in the sun too much. He can take the longest session I’ve ever done.
“It’s as if he’s at one with the universe when he’s getting tattooed. He is very tough.”
Depp described Mark as being like family and “a brother who he trusted with everything”, something Beckham must have felt when he brought son Brooklyn in for his first inkings recently.
Russell Brand claimed he kept getting tattooed just so he could be in the company of Mark. When told this, Mark grins: “I am still trying to figure Russell Brand out myself. I do see him a lot, though.”
Other names to pass through the Shamrock Social include Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Marilyn Manson, Cate Blanchett, Adele, Mickey Rourke, Zayn Malik, Lana Del Rey, Rita Ora and Jared Leto.
And now Mark has come to the UK for the first time for a sold-out twoweek residency at London’s new artinspired Mandrake Hotel, which already has fans clambering to catch him in action.
“Tattooing is an art form,” he says. “But I like that my art can’t be sold. The money side of things lessens it, I think.”
Mark grew up in a workingclass background in Massachusetts, USA, before starting work at Buddy Mott’s Tattoo Spot in Newport, Rhode Island.
He worked around the motorcycle clubs of New England and he worked out of a room in New York in the 1980s. Then he went to California where his life changed forever after he developed his signature black and grey style. He explains: “I liked that tattooing had this outlaw reputation and it’s mysterious.
“It was a locked door. Back then it was a wall that needed to be broken down, which people don’t understand now as there are tattoo shops on every high street.
“When I started it was all bikers and sailors and there was black thick lines with shading.
“When I came to California I started fine line black and grey tattoos and it was much more like the way I drew. East Los Angeles only had one s was tattooing back t these were guys worki their garage. So I w enough in 1981 to g there.
Religiou
“They didn’t want single needle back t was doing it on the sly.
“It was a Latin thing religious thing from ons, and mostly the ga wanted it.
“The 1980s were the