Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction - Vinyl - Original Cover - RARE
£
36
$
48
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Description
The disc, cover and inner sleeve are reasonably good condition for ager - You can see condition in the pictures
Appetite for Destruction is the debut studio album by American hard rock band Guns N' Roses. It was released on July 21, 1987, by Geffen Records.
The album was released to little mainstream attention in 1987. It was not until the following year that it became a massive commercial success, after the band had toured and received airplay with the singles "Welcome to the Jungle", "Paradise City" and "Sweet Child o' Mine". It topped the Billboard 200 and became the best-selling debut album of all time, as well as the eleventh best-selling album of all time in the United States. With over 30 million copies sold worldwide, it is also one of the best-selling records of all time.
Although critics originally were ambivalent toward the album, Appetite for Destruction has since received retrospective acclaim and been viewed as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 2018, it was re-released as a remastered box set to similar acclaim.
Cover Artwork
The album's original cover art, based on Robert Williams' painting Appetite for Destruction, depicted a robotic rapist about to be punished by a metal avenger. After several music retailers refused to stock the album, the label compromised and put the controversial cover art inside, replacing it with an image depicting a Celtic cross and skulls of the five band members with (designed by Billy White Jr., originally as a tattoo), each skull representing one member of the band: Izzy Stradlin, top skull; Steven Adler, left skull; Axl Rose, center skull; Duff McKagan, right skull; and Slash, bottom skull. In a 2016 interview, Billy White Jr. explained, "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.”[16]
The photographs used for the back of the album and liner notes were taken by Robert John, Marc Canter, Jack Lue, Leonard McCardie, and Greg Freeman. The original cover was supposed to be on the 2008 vinyl reissue, though the record label replaced it with the "Skulls" art at the last minute.[17]
The band stated the artwork is "a symbolic social statement, with the robot representing the industrial system that's raping and polluting our environment."[18] In albums which were issued on double sided media (vinyl records and audio cassettes) the two sides were not conventionally labeled "A" and "B", but "G" and "R". Tracks 1–6 which compose side "G" all deal with drugs and hard life in the big city ("Guns" side). The remaining tracks, which compose side "R", all deal with love, sex and relationships ("Roses" side). In an interview with That Metal Show in 2011, Rose stated his original idea for the cover art was to be the photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding, which was on the cover of Time magazine in 1986, but Geffen refused it saying it was "in bad taste".
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