How Lady Gaga left her mark on a New Jersey tattoo shop

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How Lady Gaga left her mark on a New Jersey tattoo shop
April 21, 2011
by Lisa Rose
nj.com

Shotsie’s Tattoo in Wayne isn’t the sort of place where one would expect to find a Lady Gaga shrine.

The artists at the shop are rockers who prefer gritty guitars over dance beats. They know little about the star except that she once wore steak on a red carpet.

Throughout her ascension to the top of the pop culture strata, none of them recognized her as a former client.

The staffers were surprised to find her release form in their files late last year. They framed the document with a collage of magazine photos.

In August of 2006, the lady formerly known as Stefani Germanotta visited Shotsie’s to get an upside-down peace sign on her left wrist.

Gaga, who plays at the Prudential Center in Newark tomorrow, was zapped by owner/artist, Gary “Gar” Walsh.

The discovery of the form jogged his memory of the singer.

“She told me I should remember her but I tattoo thousands of people who say the same thing,” says Walsh, 54. “She was going on about how she was going to be a star. She was giddy and laughing. She was like, ‘This is great. I’m gonna make it. You’re gonna make it.’ ”

He adds, “It was funny because I must have rolled my eyes at some point.”

The wrist is one of the most painful places to ink, according to Walsh. Clients often ask him to close the door because they fear they may weep. Gaga didn’t cry and the door was open.

“She did fine,” says Walsh. “She was saying she was going to get famous endlessly through the tattoo.”

The budding performer chose the peace symbol in honor of John Lennon and asked Walsh to draw it upside-down because she envisioned herself waving at audiences someday.

“Everybody who wants the tattoo upside-down, I always warn them,” says Walsh. “I give them one shot, ‘It’s upside-down, you’re gonna regret it.’ She wanted it upside-down so other people could look at it. She wasn’t interested in looking at it herself.”

While Walsh is tickled to see his work in pictures of Gaga, he hasn’t hopped onboard the fan train.

It was news to him that she has a new album, “Born This Way,” hitting shelves on May 23. The heavily hyped collection features guest appearances by Clarence Clemons and Brian May. On the cover, Gaga is depicted as a human-motorcycle hybrid.

“It’s not my kind of music,” says Walsh, “I actually listen to country and western music, like Wilco and Dwight Yoakam.”

The songstress was a dark-haired college girl when she made a scene at Shotsie’s. Her form contains a New York University e-mail address and an old cell phone number, both of which have been blocked out.

Although the Manhattan native signed the document as Stefani, she penned “Gaga” in two spots at the bottom of the form and drew little stars as punctuation.

“I didn’t notice that she wrote ‘Gaga,’ ” says Walsh. “And the stars, a lot of people sign their name with stars. My ex-wife used to put a shooting star next to her name.”

Although customers remark about the display, which went up five months ago, Shotsie’s hasn’t been stampeded by Gaga followers, aka Little Monsters.

“It’s not like fans are lining up asking for peace sign tattoos,” Walsh says. “I don’t think anyone has come in just because of Lady Gaga.”

The singer got her Jersey tattoo during a study break from the recording studio. At the time, she was working in Parsippany with producer/ex-boyfriend Rob Fusari (Destiny’s Child, Will Smith). They co-wrote her early hits “Paparazzi” and “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich.”

Walsh had drawn boxing gloves on the producer’s arm in memory of his prize-fighting father. Fusari returned to Shotsie’s with Gaga for the peace sign.

“She was a little hyper and he was so calm and mellow,” says Walsh. “When she was flitting around, going to the bathroom, he took me aside and said, ‘You should really remember this because she is going to be a big star.’ ”