Guns N Rose, Album cover Appetite for destruction. By Robert William

Guns N Roses: Appetite For Destruction

Cover designer: Robert Williams
Album: Appetite For Destruction
Artist: Guns N Roses
Record Label: Geffen Records

Although this great album has a very simple but iconic cover of the 5 band members skulls placed on a crucifix, it was the bands second option after the first cover proved to be to controversial. The original cover was created by artist and Juxtapoz magazine founder Robert Williams. The artwork titled ‘Appetite for Destruction’ depicted a robot rapist about to be punished by a metal avenger. After MTV refused to play any of their videos the band compromised and moved the offending cover to the inner sleeve. I guess with MTV being the big make or break stepping stone for most bands around the 80’s and early 90’s and especially with Headbangers Ball being one of the most popular shows on MTV during the heyday of Metal and Hard Rock, it could have potentially been career suicide for the band. But for me i still think the second cover is more iconic.

Robert Williams (b. March 2, 1943) is a well-known controversial painter and founder of Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine.
Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine is a magazine created in 1994 by a group of artists and collectors including Robert Williams , C.R. Stecyk, Greg Escalante and others to both help define and celebrate urban contemporary art....
Williams began as part of the trail-blazing Zap Collective
Zap Comix
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. Traditionally much of this work was, and still is, humorous, and is intended primarily for entertainment purposes....
Apocalypticism is a worldview based on the idea that civilization, as we know it, will soon come to a tumultuous end with some sort of global event, usually war....
, and film noir
Film noir

Williams' formal training in the arts began at Los Angeles City College
Los Angeles City College
Los Angeles City College, known as LACC, is a public community college in the Hollywood, Los Angeles, California section of Los Angeles, California....
and culminated at Chouinard Art Institute
Chouinard Art Institute
The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .Born in Montevideo, Minnesota, Chouinard studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and in Munich, Germany....
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