Two-panel photo of colour traditional tattoos on an upper arm and forearm, including a blue rose, a woman's face, a skull cross, a winged heart labelled Rocker and a shield reading Victory or Death.

Traditional rock-themed arm tattoos

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

The photo shows a blue rose with a partly visible ribbon banner, a woman's face with dark hair and red lips, and a purple cross decorated with skulls and a lettered banner on the upper arm and forearm. The right panel shows a winged heart with a Rocker banner above a red and yellow shield with a Victory or Death scroll. The bold black outlines, flat colour fills and banner lettering are typical of traditional tattooing.

Traditional Upper arm Forearm Rose Cross Skull Heart Wing Shield Banner Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lead guitarist had lost a boot somewhere between the services and the cattle grid, and Nell was still hunting for it under the amplifiers when the van stalled in the lay-by outside Stoke Ferrers. Vic leaned out of the driver's window with rain running off his nose and said the petrol gauge had been lying since Tuesday. Everyone had known that. Nobody had said it.

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They pushed the van the last half mile. The Grotto Ballroom sat at the end of the lane like a chapel that had given up on God and taken up bingo, and its manager, a woman called Mrs Pardoe who wore a fur gilet in May, met them at the stage door with a clipboard and a face like a shut bank. Tonight's crowd was forty people and a stag party. The band played anyway. Nell stood in the wings and watched the stag party learn every word of a song none of them had heard before, and that was the moment she decided she was staying in the trade.

Afterwards they sat on the loading ramp eating chips out of newspaper. Vic took a crumpled photograph from his wallet, a bass drum skin painted with a winged heart and the word ROCKER, and said his mum had driven it to a rally in 1979 and never once been told off for it. Nell laughed until the chips went cold. Then the missing boot turned up in the drum riser, dry as a biscuit, and they drove home in the dark with the heater finally, miraculously, working.