The article traces musician Jorma Kaukonen's decades-long relationship with tattoo art, which began after he settled in San Francisco in 1962 and joined the countercultural scene that would produce Jefferson Airplane. It matters as a window into how the city's tattoo pioneers, working alongside musicians of the era, helped push body art from an underground curiosity into a recognised art form, with Kaukonen's own ink providing a personal thread through that history.

Kaukonen got his first tattoo from Lyle Tuttle, the San Francisco tattooist who had also inked Janis Joplin, Cher and members of The Allman Brothers, choosing a Pre-Columbian pottery stamp design and later an eagle's head. After forming the blues-rock offshoot Hot Tuna with bandmate Jack Casady in the mid-1970s, Kaukonen and his then-wife Margareta sought out Don Ed Hardy, who had opened Realistic Tattoo Studio in 1974 and become known for large-scale, Japanese-influenced back pieces; the couple had Japanese-style tattoos done there as Hardy's reputation drew musicians, artists and bikers from across San Francisco's scene.