Billy White Jr., artist who designed the iconic cross symbol on the Guns N’ Roses album cover desire to destroy, already dead. Slash announces the sad news InstagramPay tribute to Bai Yi.
He wrote, sharing a photo of Billy: “RIP #BillyWhiteJr and designer of the GNR cross logo and longtime friend of the band. You will be missed.” Duff McKagan commented on the Slash post: “Ah Damn it!”
According to reports planet radio, White was originally asked to design a tattoo for Axl Rose, and he came up with the idea of making a cross out of each band member’s skull. White, then an art student at Long Beach University, met GN’R in 1986 through his cousin.
“Axl called one day and asked if I could get him a tattoo because he saw a drawing I had painted on my cousin’s wall,” White told the now-defunct Culture in a 2016 interview. Creature website. “It looks like the band’s cross and skull were Axl’s idea, the rest was mine—the knot in the cross is a reference to Thin Lizzy, a band that both Axl and I love.”
White’s initial pencil sketches were eventually fleshed out into full-colour designs on Bristol paper using watercolor, grunge, and ink. Another artist, Andy Engel, refined the design and placed it over the inner sleeve of the original extrusion. desire to destroy.
As we all know, the original appetite An LP cover featuring Robert Williams’ controversial drawing of a robot just committing an act of violent sexual abuse led to the album being banned by some retailers.
Geffen quickly made the swap, putting White’s cross graphic on the cover and Williams’ art on the inner sleeve. While the original banned record might be collectible, White’s ubiquitous cross design would become one of the most iconic album covers of all time, and arguably the definitive Guns N’ Roses icon.
Below you can see Slash’s tribute post. Our condolences to White’s family and the Guns N’ Roses camp at this time.
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