Snaggletooth, an icon of Motörhead legend

There is a face growling from the coverswhich seems to spit metal, whiskey and frenzy, becoming an icon and part of a rock and roll legend. AND Snaggletoothand more than a logo it is a figure that it seems to have a soul and a growl of its own. Today, December 28, on the tenth anniversary of the passing of the iconic Motörhead frontman, Rockol dedicates a special to Lemmy Kilmister with a celebratory “mixtape” (available at this link), and it is impossible to tell his legacy without starting from that creature that, since 1977, visually embodies everything that Motörhead have been. Born for the cover of the eponymous debut album, Snaggletooth – also referred to as War-Pig – is the exact graphic translation of Lemmy’s soul: ungainly, ferocious, irreducible, yet surprisingly iconic.

Directly inspired by Kilmister, Snaggletooth took shape from pencil by Joe Petagnowhich transformed a visceral intuition into an unprecedented symbol in the history of rock. “Inspiration came simply from being a naturally pissed off bastard!”, Petagno said in an interview: “And Lemmy is exactly like that! So it was inevitable that it would be some sort of alchemical marriage of a more ‘primordial’ nature. I did a lot of research on the types of skulls and found that a gorilla–wolf–dog hybrid combination would have worked wellwith the addition of oversized boar tusks. Lemmy added the helmet, chains, saliva, spikes and roughness.”

The result was a disturbing hybridin a mix between dog, gorilla and wolf, with disproportionate boar tusks, a broken tooth – like Lemmy’s – and, at the suggestion of the frontman himself, helmet, chains and spikes. An entity more than a simple design, destined to evolve over time. Not everyone was convinced at first. In a chat included on the DVD for the thirtieth anniversary of “Inferno”, Eddie Clarke recalled having “shuddered” at the first viewing, judging it excessive and in bad taste, only to later become deeply fond of it. As the years passed, however, Snaggletooth became a constant, almost obsessive, presence on the band’s covers, accompanying every musical mutation without ever losing its identity.

Over the years, Snaggletooth has remained a symbol of Motörhead, with Petagno creating countless variations of it for the covers of albums following the first. Only two of the original covers of the band’s 22 studio works (history of all Motörhead albums here) do not feature any version of the symbol. One is “On Parole” – although the reissue later remedied it with a black Snaggletooth on a white background – and the other is “Overnight sensation”. Even where he seems absent, Snaggletooth is actually present. On the cover of “Ace of Spades”, for example, Phil Campbell wears a Snaggletooth pin and on that of “Iron Fist” there is a metal glove with four rings in the shape of a skull, one of which is himself, while the back of the album reveals a metal sculpture of the symbol, with attention to the smallest details.

The bond between Petagno, Motörhead and Snaggletooth was officially broken on September 21, 2007when the artist announced that “there will be no more ‘heads’ made by my hand”, announcing the end of his collaboration with the band due to irreconcilable differences between him and the band’s then management, Singerman Entertainment. Petagno declared: “It has been a long, exciting and industrious journey, full of art and intuition, differences in repetition and creative innovation. I feel like I’ve accomplished something unique in the history of Metal over the last 31 yearsgiving life, again and again, to a fragment of my imagination: uan image, or rather an entity, that has taken on a life of its own and that I believe goes even beyond the music it was created to represent. I’m damn proud!” In response, Lemmy Kilmister commented: “As many of you know, we’ve been working with Joe Petagno for 31 years. We have always treated Joe fairly and I would like to point out that at no point did my manager make the demands that Joe thinks were made – this is a colossal misunderstanding. We have always loved his art, of course, and if he now decides to stop working with us, we have no choice but to rely on someone else. However, if he doesn’t want to discuss it personally and try to make things right, I think it’s a great tragedy. If Joe continued with us, no one would be happier than me. If it’s goodbye, Joe, I wish you the best, but I hope, even at this point, that we can reconcile and continue our collaboration.”

Snaggletooth has never been just a logobut a living being, born from the imagination and become an immortal icon of rock history, just like Lemmy.