(Album ©1987, Geffen Records)
Here’s another record that 
I’ve already written about on this blog. This is one of the all-time great albums, and it really came out of nowhere, shocking the rock music world that was deeply stuck in the hair metal era. At first glance, this appeared to be part of that genre, but in reality it was a dark, gritty reaction to the increasingly glossy, overproduced, increasingly not heavy metal scene. I remember hearing “Welcome to the Jungle” for the first time, seeing the video on MTV in my dorm at college and being worried that this was a reaction to hair metal, but it was overcompensating and getting too dark.
Luckily for me, the tune stuck with me and by the next day I had bought the CD and was listening to every track, over and over. It was so exciting, so raw, and yet catchy and melodic. Guns was really a blues-based hard rock band in the vein of Aerosmith or Humble Pie that happened to come out of the LA scene that had spawned Motley Crue, Ratt, Poison, and countless other hair metal bands. The songs were about gritty things and the underbelly of the LA scene, and the band’s image was equally gritty. And the album cover captured that perfectly – a sticker-like tattoo design featuring skull icons of each band member.
This album cover is not the original one – the album was originally released with an ultra-violent and rape-y Robert Williams painting entitled “Appetite for Destruction” on the cover. After getting some initial feedback that some record stores wouldn’t stock the album with that cover, the Geffen marketing department replaced it with this, a tattoo design by artist Billy White, Jr., which was originally going to be on the inside sleeve. Instead, the two images swapped places, with the original painting to the inside sleeve.
I love this image as a cover and as a piece of art, depicting the band as five skulls, creating personalities through subtle costuming. I like the Celtic textures on the cross, which are apparently a nod to the band Thin Lizzy, who both Axl and Billy White were big fans of. The banners on top and bottom frames the image like a classic tattoo. That was appropriate for an album that would also become a classic. And if you want to know how I know all these things about this album cover, I read this article about it.
This ended up being the third-best selling debut album of all time, with 18 million units sold and seven singles released. It’s absolute must-hear rock-n-roll music, sounding as vital today as it did more than 30 years ago.
