It would be an understatement to say that Guns N’ Roses’ debut album is direct.

Arriving in the late 1980s during the peak of the hair metal scene, Appetite For Destruction hits like a punch to the face, and signalled the end of a rock music era which had somehow managed to lose the rebellion and danger which have always made the devil’s music so appealing.

GN’R encapsulated these two things than any band.

For a while, it seemed like everything these guys touched turned to chaos; from controversial lyrics (“Turn around bitch, I’ve got a use for you”), to their crazy on-stage (and off-stage) behaviour, and the internal tensions which would ultimately cause the demise of the group.

Even their album covers have cool stories, and today I’m going to tell you one.

Many of my readers are young rock music aficionados, so if you were not alive for the release of this album (1987) you might only know of the iconic skull design which is now symbolic with Appetite For Destruction, but the original LP featured a big knife-wielding monster attacking a gun-toting robot which has seemingly just raped a woman in the street.

Fuck.

Well, if the the head honcho’s at Geffen were wondering if their new band was gonna be trouble, they weren’t left wondering for long!

This design came from Robert Williams, one of the leading exponents of alternative comics back in the 1970s.

As part of the Zap Comix Collective, his work became a reference point for youth counterculture, and he was probably best-known for his 1979 book The Lowbrow Art Of Robert Williams, which was “borrowed” from a West Hollywood library in 1986 by a certain W. Axl Rose.

One of the book’s most visually shocking images features in a comic called ‘Super Cartoons’. The artist titled it ‘Appetite For Destruction’, and it is said to represent the rape of mankind by technology and the media.

This image struck a chord with young Axl, and when GN’R landed their record deal he reached out to Mr. Williams to ask permission to use it as the album cover. Interestingly, Williams was hesitant at first because he believed that the gratuitous nature of his art may inadvertently handicap any potential success of the band’s music.

Williams: “They managed to get hold of my home address and phone number, so I received a call from Mr. Rose asking if it would be okay for them to use my art for their album cover.

I suggested they all come to my studio and see me before making their final decision.

Truth be told, I was hoping to be able to persuade him to select a different piece of artwork other than Appetite For Destruction, because I just knew it was going to cause them all sorts of problems. I had already gone through lots of legal trouble while working on underground comic books, and I know that when you use artwork like this, well, it’s just asking for trouble.”

In an early display of Axl’s trademark stubbornness, the frontman said he wasn’t remotely interested in choosing another image, and reassured the artist that he was more than happy to face any backlash which the painting may lead to.

With that out of the way, Williams granted them permission.

Williams: “At the time they were just an unknown band, playing clubs and bars and the like, so I gave them a 4×5 transparency of the design, and I charged them the price I would’ve charged any punk rock shit band.

After a few weeks they called me again, and this time he asked if he could name the album Appetite For Destruction. I guess they hadn’t been able to decide on what to call it, to sum up what they were trying to do, better than the title of the piece itself.”

The artist’s warnings about the image were correct.

Appetite For Destruction was released on July 21, 1987, and the offices of Geffen Records were immediately overwhelmed with criticism from media outlets and record stores, many of whom were flat-out refusing to sell an album which featured such an offensive cover.

Then things got even worse, when MTV contacted Geffen to inform them that they would not be adding any of the band’s music to their daily rotation schedule.

Talk about a rough start to life.

About a month after release, Appetite had only sold 28,000 copies worldwide and was viewed as a commercial failure. Refusing to give up on the money which they invested in the band when they handed them a recording contract a year earlier, Geffen informed GN’R (specifically Rose) that the album sleeve needed to be re-designed before any more prints would be made.

The enigmatic frontman had already shown signs of volatility when being told what to do, so the alarm bells were most definitely ringing as they awaited his response to their ultimatum.

And not just at the fact he might flip out, but also at what he might select next. You see, prior to choosing the controversial artwork shown above, Axl originally wanted to use a photograph of the mid-air explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger as the cover art, so God only knows what they were expecting him to come back with for the third attempt!

Axl: “I figured, it’s on the cover of Time Magazine, so we should be allowed to use it, too. It wasn’t meant to be derogatory… that photograph just blew my mind!

The record company did not share my enthusiasm (laughs).”

I can only imagine the relief which must have filled the Geffen office when they were presented with Axl’s brand new artwork; a skull-and-crossbones image which features each member of the band.

While undoubtedly less shocking than Robert Williams’ creation, the image still does a good job of capturing the mood and feel of the music, and it certainly helped GN’R to draw a line in the sand separating themselves from the masses of watered-down glam rock bands who sat at the top of the rock pile (for now).

It was drawn by Billy White Jr.

An art student from Long Beach, White Jr was a regular guest at the band’s infamous “Hell House” apartment during 1985 and 1986. After becoming a keen admirer of his work, Rose asked White Jr to sketch out the now legendary logo on a piece of paper, and he loved the final product so much that he got it tattooed on his forearm later the same year.

Most of the image was Axl’s own idea, but White Jr added some of the finer details to it, such as the Celtic weave (a reference to Thin Lizzy, one of Axl’s favourite bands), and the worn flag which displays the name Guns N’ Roses.

When give the ultimatum by Geffen, he decided that the tattoo would make a great album cover, so he had White Jr add the Appetite For Destruction banner to the bottom of the image and handed it over to the record company.

The artwork has gone on to become one of (perhaps THE) most recognized album covers of all time.

As for Billy White Jr, he enjoyed a modestly successful career as an artist before passing away in 2023. The piece of paper which featured his original pencil artwork for Rose’s skull and crossbones tattoo was auctioned off in 2009 for $6,875, and the rest is history.

GN’R would continue to court controversy with their album covers throughout their career.

Possibly the most famous of those came in 1991, Axl Rose decided to pay Estonian artist Mark Kostabi a whopping $75,000 to produce the artwork for their hotly anticipated follow-up to Appetite For Destruction.

The artist submitted a couple of two-tone images (the first in red and yellow, and the second in blue and purple) which had been named “Use Your Illusion” by his brother Paul Kostabi (and just like with Appetite, Axl liked the name so much he asked permission to use it for the album itself).

Anyway, it turned out this expensive artwork was merely a re-coloured segment of Raphael’s famous painting “The School of Athens”. This caused uproar in the art world, as it was the first time an artist had simply re-touched another artist’s work and then presented it as their own piece.

To make matters worse (/even funnier), the band discovered years later that these images were in the public domain and could’ve been used for free!

Ouch!

The band also baited the media on 1989’s mini-EP GN’R Lies: The Sex, The Drugs, The Violence, The Shocking Truth!, referenced ex-drummer Steven Adler’s cocaine habit on “The Spaghetti Incident?”, and let’s not forget Chinese Democracy, when Axl decided to sleeve one of most eagerly-awaited rock albums of all time with a simple photograph from China of a bicycle leaning against a wall which had the band’s name spray-painted across it because, in his words, “That looks fucking cool.”