According to consequence.net, Billy White Jr., the artist who created cross logo on the album cover for Guns N’ Roses‘s Appetite for Destruction, has died.
Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash shared the sad news on Instagram, while paying tribute to the White.
“RIP #BillyWhiteJr og designer of GNR cross logo. & long time friend of the band. You will be missed.”
According to Planet Radio, White was originally set to design tattoo for Axl Rose, who created the idea of the cross with skulls of each band member. White was an art student at Long Beach University at the time and crossed paths with Guns N’ Roses through his cousin in 1986.
During an interview with Culture Creature back in 2016 White described the moment when he created Appetite for Destruction’s cross with skulls.
“One day Axl called and asked if i could draw him a tattoo, after he’d seen a drawing I’d done on my cousin’s wall. The cross and skulls that looked like the band was Axl’s idea, the rest was me — the knot work in the cross was a reference to Thin Lizzy, a band Axl and I both loved.”
White’s original pencil sketch was created into a full-color design on Bristol paper using watercolor, gauche and ink. A separate artist, Andy Engel, made refinements to the design, which was then placed on the inner sleeve of the original pressings of Appetite for Destruction.
The original Appetite for Destruction LP cover featured Robert Williams’s controversial painting of a robot who has just committed violent act of sexual abuse, which is a sleeve that resulted in the album being banned from certain retailers.
Geffen quickly made the change by placing White’s cross design on the cover and sticking Williams’s art on the inner sleeve. While the original banned pressings may be collectible, White’s cross design would become one of the most iconic album covers of all-time and is the definitive Guns N’ Roses iconography.
Leave a Comment