Billy White Jr. the tattoo artist who designed the iconic cross image on the cover of Guns N’ Roses’ 1987 debut album Appetite For Destruction has died.
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“RIP Billy White Jr. OG designer of GNR cross logo and long-time friend of the band,” wrote Slash revealing the artist’s death. “You will be missed.”
Guns’ Duff McKagan later commented, “Ah…shit!” at the loss of their early collaborator.
White Jr. was an art student in Long Beach, California when he was introduced to the then-unknown Guns N’ Roses by his cousin in the mid-1980s. Soon after, he designed a tattoo for singer Axl Rose featuring a Celtic 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,” White said in 2016. I said ‘Sure,’ and we talked. The cross and skulls that looked like the band was Axl’s idea, the rest was mine—the knot work in the cross was a reference to Thin Lizzy, a band Axl and I both loved.”
Rose had White’s design tattooed on him by Robert Benedetti at Sunset Strip Tattoo Studio while he was recording Appetite for Destruction.
“I wanted something that would always remind [me] of something that was once there, a symbol of it,” said Rose in an interview about the tattoo. “So I got the cross tattoo and Geffen liked it so much that we decided to use it for a cover.”
Originally, the band’s album cover featured a more controversial “metal avenger” image illustrated by Robert Williams, which was pulled after Geffen Records claimed it was hurting sales. The label later compromised and placed Williams’ artwork in the inner sleeve, and White’s design was used as the cover instead.
“Axl called again, and said [my design] was going to be on the cover of everything because the Williams painting got rejected,” added White. “I was okay with that!”
Released July 21, 1987, Appetite for Destruction sold more than 30 million albums worldwide with White’s art one of the most iconic images in rock cover art. White’s original paper-on-pencil tattoo sketch of the tattoo that became the album cover sold at auction in 2009 for $6,875.
Read the entire story behind the Appetite for Destruction album cover, HERE.
Photo: Marc S Canter/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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