If you say you don’t know who Derek Riggs is, we can probably forgive you. But if you say you don’t know his work, you are clearly looking for a fight.
The creator of arguably the most iconic mascot in all of music, Riggs’s art made him at one point practically the 7th member of Iron Maiden and his work has appeared on everything form your cousin’s lower leg to a goddamn 757.
Metal Band Art understands the kind of royalty we’re talking about and has released both parts of their interview with the man. Here is a snippet about his fallout with the band:
Whenever Iron Maiden comes up amongst my art friends, we always lament the fact that you do not do artwork for them anymore. Is there any chance you would ever do anything for them again?
It doesn’t look like it. Our ideas about what make a good CD cover are getting further and further apart. Also over the last few pictures they have become increasingly dishonest to work with. They have taken to promising one amount of money and then, when the picture is done they only pay about half of that. For the aircraft picture “Fright 666″ they wanted to only pay me if they used it. So they expected me to do three or four weeks work for nothing just incase they felt like using it. How kind of them. They got the short answer, and they had to pay me in advance to get me to finish it off.
Here are parts One and Two and satiate your evil hunger even more with a stop by Derek Riggs Dot Com to see how truly incredible the man is.
