written by Chuck Foster

JIM ROSE CIRCUS. The name alone causes the spines of some who have dared attend his performances to shiver and tingle. It’s a name that most fans instantly associate with other cult phenomena of our time, like Aleister Crowley, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But who is the madman behind this infamous circus of freaks? Sadist, masochist, collector of human skulls and shrunken heads? Does he bite the heads off bats on Christmas Eve and drink their blood to satisfy some dark lord? These were questions that came to mind when I decided to contact him last month. But my raging curiosity of this worldwide icon craved more than that. I wanted to know what incidents in life caused a little kid from Eugene, Oregon to pursue such a bizarre path. What he had to say was as interesting and unique as the man himself.

Before Jim ate fire or performed any other act deemed “abnormal” by our timid Christian society he was a typical kid, other than being born cross-eyed and very premature. He related that his first crib was a shoebox, a “lady’s size 7” his mother often said. When speaking of his eye problem, he said he didn’t know what was so interesting about his left eye but his right eye had to look at it all the time. He admits these early physical challenges caused him to avoid most kids his age.

Like most children Jim found Christmas to be his favorite time of the year. He said that it was the one time in the year that brought a smile to his face. “It was pretty typical, usually missing a tooth during those years and believing in Santa Clause with the family.” Christmas had a huge impact on Jim and what later would become his career. On his eighth Christmas St. Nick brought him his first bike, even though it was stolen two days later. His dad replaced it the next day, which led a young Jim to develop a passion for bikes, speed and eventually a little danger.

Teen problems soon followed though. By the age 15, Jim had become the rebel, the bad boy, a self-described “trouble maker”. He says that it was “the logistics of XMAS, the presents, being with family” that pushed him away. At this point there were a number of thorny paths that Jim could have tumbled down, but his 18th Christmas steered him in another direction. He got his first motorcycle.

This had a huge impact on Jim having grown up idolizing the recently deceased Evel Knievel. A bicycle ten years earlier, a Suzuki motorcycle at 18. This got his wheels turning and burning with a new passion for life. He soon became a dare devil stunt man at the Arizona State Fairgrounds. Who knows where this could have led Jim if he had not taken a nasty fall jumping 27 cows. “I cleared the cows but I must have landed on some spent cud and went wobbly, and crashed. That’s why when I’m speaking with you today I have the posture of a jumbo shrimp.” A crushing break it would seem then, but would there be a circus today if he had landed that jump? Maybe not.

Having moved to Arizona from Eugene in his teens, Jim Eventually attended The University of Arizona where he picked up a degree in political science. Like most politically active youngsters he headed east, to the battlefields of Washington DC. Once there he began working for liberal causes and doing open mic type stuff. This is where the teen daredevil, young activist and premature freak first combined. He remembers the moment well. One night while attending the open mic his wife BeBe said, “you know you should add some stunts to some of your spoken word material.” He then added fire eating and the human block head in and around his stories. The seeds of Christmas’ past had finally pushed through the rocky soil.

Then the couple headed off to Europe to roam the country for a few years. BeBe was from a circus family in France, her brother being the director of the Royal Deluxe, the largest circus in Europe. Her circus background fueled the young Jim Rose in his pursuit of bizarre entertainment, leading to his first true one-man show that he performed during their travels. Eventually the couple returned to the States, Seattle, Washington to be exact. “We came back and noticed that there was a whole generation that had never seen these kind of stunts, kind of a lost generation.” Jim and BeBe felt the void and decided to fill it with fire – literally!

“There used to be a Middle Eastern restaurant on Pike St. called Ali Babbas. And I had this one-man show I had been doing across Europe... So I brought this vibe over to the US and tried to get booked everywhere, and everyone looked at me like I had killed the Lindbergh kid. So no one wanted to book me.” As a regular to Babbas Jim asked about doing his show there since they put on a belly dancing show every Thursday night. They agreed.

“I put up 50 posters and it sold out. As a matter of fact there were people pressed up against the window on the outside. Some of Nirvana were there, some from Soundgarden were there, and some of Pearl Jam. They were all pressed up against the window because at the time none of them had broke so they didn’t have any money and couldn’t afford the entry fee. I started the show off by saying to those outside watching I’ll leave the curtain open but you have to give me one dollar a piece. So I went outside with a plastic bat and started hitting them all over the head with this plastic bat, taking a dollar from each one of them. And that was kind of the show for the people on the inside and that’s how the first show started.” That was 1991 and a $6 cover. My god, have things changed.

Jim quickly took advantage of his overnight success. He began booking one show after another, eventually landing a bimonthly show at Seattle’s legendary Crocodile Cafe. “And then like-minded monsters began standing up in their crypts and came to audition. Before I knew, it just took off. We were offered a tour up in Canada and became a big hit in Canada. Then the Sally Jesse Raphael show put us on and then Entertainment tonight. Then Perry Farrell of Lolapalooza, Janes Addiction, saw us on the Jesse show and they got in touch with us and we got on Lollapalooza.” Having been distanced from the emerging grunge movement while in Europe Jim was unfamiliar with the bands. “I remember my first day there somebody pointed to a big crowd and said ‘there’s Jane’s Addiction’ and I said, ‘well, I hope she gets treatment.’”

Things have surely changed since then. On the Jim Rose Circus site (www.jimrosecircus.com) you’ll find Jim hanging out with celebrities galore, way too many to list. But one does stand out more than others, his biggest inspiration, Evel Knievel. “He came up to me a few years ago and said, ‘Hey Jim, I was at a garage sale and I got this for you. And I know you’d want it.’” The gift was an Evel Knievel Commemorative Coin of his famous Snake River jump. This memory seemed to leave a talkative Jim Rose with a loss of words, as the loss of a friend often does. So we moved on.

Christmas certainly had a huge impact on Jim’s life, so I asked about Christmas today at the Rose house? “They’re pretty typical gifts, but I do have a tradition. I play practical jokes around the Christmas season. On January third I pick out one friend every year and I’ll run an ad in the local newspaper where he lives and it will say, ‘I’ll buy your used Christmas tree for 5 dollars a piece.’ And then I’ll put their address in there. And I mean people come up. Sometimes the boy scouts will get together and bring hundreds of these trees and when the person doesn’t give them 5 dollars they just get mad and throw them in the yard. I’ve seen friends just leave town with a sign in their yard, saying ‘It was just a practical joke played on me. I’m not buying Christmas trees.’ And they come back 5 days later and their whole yard is full of them, they’re even thrown on top of their roof. It’s a great one to do to a friend.”

I asked Jim what was the oddest gift that he’s received over the years. “It runs the gambit. I mean, it’s everything from a shrunken head to a normal sized head. Yeah, the shrunken head, probably the most outlandish.” When I asked him what he’d give George W. Bush for XMAS, he laughed loudly and said, “Well, it wouldn’t be a get out of jail free card!” Amen brother. Amen!

Having spawned from a one-man show I asked him how different it is today compared to sixteen years ago when he started. “Well, you’ve got to keep getting bigger and you’ve got to be innovative because it used to take two years of touring around the world before there would be any, for the lack of a better word, imitator troupe starting up. Now a days, the minute you advertise or you do one show that ends up on YouTube you have people doing your stuff almost word for word, like almost immediately. So luckily, the Jim Rose Circus has established a brand name. And we can keep going, but boy, it’s got to be tough for some of these younger troupes.” A very truthful and modest answer, but without the likes of Jim Rose and his band of freaks there might not be any young troupes. As with most ventures in life, the circus is a game of give and take too.

I asked Jim the big question last: when are you coming back out west, meaning Seattle? Well, fans, he doesn’t know. As we spoke he was at his agent’s house fishing for Reds off his patio in St. Petersburg, Florida. He had recently sold his house on a salmon river in southern Washington, so his definite plans for the future are tattoo conventions and a regular gig in Las Vegas next year.

As my questions ended and a subconscious pressure crept in on me to let this man get back to his fishing for Reds, we talked on, almost like we had known each other for years. We talked about Reds and Grouper and Stone Crabs and cheap Florida oysters. We talked about the housing bubble busting and politics. He eventually closed with, “Well, thanks for considering me, Boss...” I was a bit speechless, and only wished him and the Rose family a Merry Christmas. I wish I had said thanks for taking the time some five years ago to sign my Jim Rose T-Shirt – the only autograph I have ever asked for.

I was left with one impression of Jim Rose: For a man who will be remembered years after his death and who News Week once claimed to be responsible for tattooing and piercing becoming a trend, you would never guess the child-like deepness of his modesty. In this ego-inflated industry of entertainment, that alone may make Jim Rose the biggest freak of all. A title that I’m sure sits well with him.

To check out this interview in its entirety, go to www.theseattlesinner.com. And do check out the Jim Rose Circus on-line at www.thejimrosecircus.com. It’s a real freak show!