JOE PETAGNO

Joe Petagno (Portland, Maine, January 1, 1948) is an American artist, primarily known for creating images used on the covers of rock albums by bands such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Nazareth, Motörhead, Roy Harper, Marduk, Bal -Sagoth and Demonic.

Petagno was born in Portland, Maine, and left the United States in 1973. The artist worked with the graphic design collective Hipgnosis, and in 1975 he met Lemmy Kilmister, vocalist and bassist for the Motörhead group. Petagno designed the character "War-Pig" (also known as Snaggletooth, The Iron Boar, The Bastard or The Little Bastard) for the cover of the band's debut album and continued to design most of the covers for their subsequent albums. Petagno came up with the gang mascot concept after studying the skulls of wild pigs, gorillas and dogs.

The artist is also known for his science fiction book covers, most notably for the collector's edition of The Silver Locust (title given to the book Martian Chronicles in the United Kingdom) by Ray Bradbury.

He has also worked on covers outside of metal and rock. When Graeme Edge left The Moody Blues, he teamed up with Adrian Gurvitz to form The Graeme Edge Band. His two releases had covers illustrated by Petagno, as did Paradise Ballroom (1977), in which he used a woman to dance.

He also illustrated the covers of The Baker Gurvitz Army (1975) with all three members of the eponymous gang riding; and Elysian Encounter (1975) showing a kind of astronauts or religious figures wearing Petagno's characteristic early style.