Extract from ABC News
A music industry mystery has been solved after more than half a century, when a researcher stumbled across the original photo pictured on the cover of Led Zeppelin's most successful album.
Key points:
- Led Zeppelin IV was released in 1971 and went on to become one of the best selling albums of all time in the US
- The man in the cover is believed to be a thatcher called Lot Long, who died in 1893
- The photo will feature in an exhibition in Wiltshire next year
The identity of the man on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV, the album featuring Stairway to Heaven, has been unknown since its release in 1971.
That was until University of West England researcher Brian Edwards was flipping through a photo album and "instantly" recognised a familiar face.
"I instantly recognised the man with the sticks — he's often called the stick man," Mr Edwards told the BBC. "It was quite a revelation."
The photo is believed to be a "late Victorian coloured photograph of a Wiltshire thatcher", according to Wiltshire Museum, which acquired the photo.
The man is believed to be Lot Long, born in Mere in 1823, who at the time of the photograph was a widower. He died in 1893.
The photo is believed to have been taken by Ernest Howard Farmer, the first head of the School of Photography at what is now part of the University of Westminster.
"Part of (Farmer's) signatures matches some of the handwriting in the album," Mr Edwards said.
"The black and white photograph has a thumbprint in the corner. It looks like it's the original."
Mystery spurred on by photo bought at a junk shop
The mystery surrounding the album cover was not completely accidental.
Dave Lewis, author of Zeppelin fanzine and website Tight But Loose, wrote in a 1991 biography of the band that their fourth album was "deliberately played down".
"To further throw the media … the sleeve design was wordless except for a barely decipherable Oxfam poster hanging amidst the urban decay depicted on the front," Mr Lewis said.
"This cover print was actually bought from a junk shop in Reading by (lead singer Robert Plant). A tarot card illustration of the Hermit formed the inner gatefold illustration."
Led Zeppelin IV went on to become the band's best-selling album, and remains one of the best-selling albums of all-time in the US.
The cover itself — as a side effect of the success — has since become iconic, even being commemorated by the UK's Royal Mail in 2010, as part of a postage stamp collection featuring the 10 most memorable album covers of the past 40 years.
The museum now plans to showcase the photo in 2024, as part of an exhibition called The Wiltshire Thatcher: A Photographic Journey through Victorian Wessex.
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