Painting Metal -- Joe Petagno
“I was always at the extreme end of things, provoking the status quo etc. I mean, let’s face it, my work is not for the faint, so it goes without saying that I was going to get along with like-minded individuals and Metal is full of them.” — Joe Petagno in 2012
Joe Petagno, who turns seventy-two years old today, is a legend in the field of rock album art. Since the early ‘70s, he’s done art for hard rock and metal bands. Those bands would include Nazareth, Led Zeppelin, Bal-Sagoth and, of course, Motorhead. His lifetime total of rock album covers is somewhere north of one hundred and fifty.
Joe started getting paying art gigs around LA when he was a mere twenty years old, swiftly rising to the top of the SoCal Underground scene. By 1973, when he headed for the UK to seek even greener pastures, Joe’s portfolio included work for Rolling Stone magazine, West, Bruce & Laing and Alice Cooper.
Upon arriving in the Sceptred Isle, Petagno contacted Storm Thorgerson of the rock art powerhouse, Hipnosis. As Joe puts it:
“I called Storm Thorgerson (one of the Hipgnosis masterminds) and asked him if he would be interested in collaborating. He said my reputation preceded me and that I would be more than welcome. For two years we collaborated on a lot of work together, including the Swan Song logo for Led Zeppelin, tour comics for Pink Floyd, covers for Roy Harper, Nazareth, etc. All the while working with my own clients doing scores of SciFi book covers, record sleeves, and editorial work.”
Joe’s connections with Hipgnosis resulted in him being tapped to do Led Zep’s iconic Swan Song logo art. Not long after, in 1975, he was contacted by a certain Lemmy Kilmister. Lemmy had just left/was fired from Hawkwind and Petagno was doing some art for them at the time. Kilmister thought Joe might be just the bloke to come up with the mascot for the new band Lemmy was forming, called—at that point—“Bastard”. Here is how Petagno remembers it:
“We discussed matters over a few drinks. He wasn’t clear on exactly what he wanted, something like a knight or a rusty robot as I remember, a biker patch that could be displayed on the back of a denim vest.
“On the way home I stopped off at the library in Chelmsford. Taking my cue from outlaw biker patches, I was looking for skulls and bones when I inadvertently came across a book of animal skulls, then it hit me; an animal skull would work better than a human skull.
“When I got home and began sketching, I thought; why not invent a new skull, a hybrid? I started playing around with mix and match sketches dog – lion, wolf and so on. In the end I settled on a dog or wolf and gorilla cranium and gave it over-sized wild boar teeth. I hung a chain from the horns left to right under it and a small human skull to designate size, adorned it with an iron cross as a sign of bravery and then topped it off with a few spikes. When it was finished, I knew I had created something unique and timeless in Snaggletooth. It was the ultimate anti-everything symbol.”
And that’s how Joe Petagno created the most enduring mascot in the history of heavy metal, Motorhead’s Snaggletooth.
While Petagno provided the vast majority of Motorhead art over the course of three decades, he made his big move into the wider realm of extreme metal with the cover for Bal-Sagoth’s classic 1996 CD, Starfire Burning Upon the Ice-Veiled Throne of Ultima Thule. From there, Joe was rolling hot, maintaining an average of three or four metal covers a year, more or less up to the present day.
In 2004, Petagno released his long-awaited art book, Orgasmatron. I’ve heard rumors of another art book devoted exclusively to Snaggletooth, but it doesn’t appear to have been published yet. In 2010, Joe severed his long-time relationship with Motorhead, a situation that Lemmy blamed squarely upon Petagno’s lawyers. While unfortunate, that didn’t stop Joe from continuing to produce great art. His work also appears in 2015’s …And Justice For Art. Check it out here.
In my opinion, Petagno’s work in the heavy metal field can stand with that of any of the other artists I’ve covered in the “Painting Metal” series. He is technically excellent and also highly imaginative. Joe can depict both ferocity and dread with the best of ‘em. Let’s hope he keeps right on doing what he does best.
Feel free to check out the gallery of Petagno art below. Joe’s page at the Encyclopaedia Metallum is here and his mind-boggling entry at Discogs is here.
Happy Birthday and Happy New Year, Joe!
Previous installments in the "Painting Metal" series:
Painting Metal – The Art of Derek Riggs
Painting Metal -- Michael Wm. Kaluta
Painting Metal – Jim Fitzpatrick
