BIFFY Clyro fans are travelling thousands of miles to get tattoos at the same Glasgow studio which inks the members of the band.
Die-hard Biffy fans have come from as far afield as the US, Spain and France to get tattooed by Kevin Younger at his Lucky Cat tattoo parlour in the city’s west end.
Fans usually ask for album covers or lyrics so they can be “a little bit closer to Biffy”.
Kevin himself has even been flown by Simon Neil and his bandmates to overseas gigs where he has tattooed them just before they take the stage.
Over the past decade he 47-year-old has tattooed all the band members, and estimates to have inked 90% of lead vocalist Neil’s designs.
He said: “Simon first came in about ten years ago and has been coming back ever since.
“When I first met them they were a relatively small band playing small gigs, and they haven’t changed one little bit since then.”
“A lot of people come in just because they know that the band come here. Some fans have been lucky enough to meet Simon when they come in to get their work done.
“I’ve done a lot of artwork from CD covers and some people even ask the band members to write them out lyrics which they then get tattooed on.
“I had someone fly in specifically from Barcelona to come and get a tattoo done here. We’ve had European Biffy fans, fans from America, and someone came up especially from London.”
One French fan, known just as Marine, travelled to the tattoo studio from Nantes to get a puzzle design inked on her wrist. She said: ““I couldn’t expect more than getting a Biffy Clyro tattoo of a Biffy Clyro song in a room full of Biffy Clyro items.”
Another lucky fan – who had also come in to get a puzzle piece inked onto his ribs – had to wait a bit longer as his idol Simon Neil was already in the chair.
Andrew Wilson, from Ayr, was stunned to find his hero already there. He said that “it made a great day even better”.
Maryleen Guevara caught Simon Neil after a gig and asked him to handwrite her the lyrics to ‘The Joke’s On Us’.
She then got the exact writing – ‘stab my heart it won’t stop beating on, cage my mind it won’t stop tripping in’ – permanently inked onto her body by Kevin. She said: “I’m incredibly in love with it.”
Kevin is so well-liked by the band that he has even been flown out to Vienna to ink them.
“Simon is totally obsessed with tattoos,” he said. “I’ve been flown out to concerts to tattoo him backstage – it’s great fun.
“It’s always sore to some degree but they never complain. The biggest tattoo I’ve done on Simon was a combination of three images on his back which took a total of six hours.”
