The most influential rock band in the history of humanity impacted the world not only with their music and lyrics but also with their iconic album cover artwork. Each Led Zeppelin album cover is an extended visual comprehension of the deep messages the Band intended to share with the world. The art enhanced the Band’s ethos, their creative vision and artistic sensibilities. The conscious thought put behind the album covers makes each of them a classic masterpiece. The artworks have had an everlasting impression on the world. Here are 21 most interesting facts about them.
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Led Zeppelin I (1969)
i) The Debut Cover: The debut album cover of Led Zeppelin I (1969) is a powerful photograph by Sam Shere. On 6th May 1937 in Manchester Township, New Jersey, a vast airship LZ 129 Hindenburg burst into flames while trying to dock at Naval Air Station Lakehurst. It resulted in the deaths of 36 people. Sam had captured the dramatic explosion of the airship in the midair and the photo became the most influential image of all times.
ii) The Impactful First Cover: ‘The image must symbolize the band’s explosive entrance into the rock scene. And not a lead balloon going down’, atleast that’s what Jimmy Page thought while selecting the first album cover. Jimmy, Led Zeppelin’s guitarist told Time Magazine in 2016 that the idea was to use the impact of the photograph as a graphic interpretation. George Hardie created the cover illustration from the iconic photograph by translating it in ink using a radiograph pen.
iii) The Turquoise Print: The album cover initially featured 2000 copies with rare turquoise pressings of the Led Zeppelin and Atlantic Records logos. Which were later switched to the colour orange. Record collectors highly seek these early copies. In 2012, an original turquoise version sold for $1450, equivalent to over one lakh twenty thousand in Indian currency.
iv) The Graphic Designer of Led Zeppelin I: George Hardie designed the first album cover for Led Zeppelin. Back then, he was studying at the Royal College of Art in London. George was paid only $60 for designing the cover of the album that sold over a million copies. In a 2016 interview he said that as the debut cover, he was not happy going with the Hindenburg photograph. Since the cover was not his original work, he never included the artwork in his degree show. George Hardie also worked with the famous English Art Design group Hipgnosis for the timeless covers of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’.
Led Zeppelin II (1969)
v) The German-themed cover: The cover artwork is based on a photograph of the German Air Force’s Jagdstaffel 11 Division from World War I. The German air-force division known as the Flying Circus was led by Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen. Also famously known as the Red Baron, widely considered the ace-of-aces of the war. The Red Baron shot down more than 80 aircraft before meeting the same fate, at the age of 25 in 1918.
vi) The Story of Led Zeppelin II cover: The album cover design was by David Juniper, a fellow student of Jimmy’s at Sutton Art College, Surrey. David loved Led Zeppelin’s music and when given the work to design the second album, he had full creative independence. He experimented with collage/ photography and airbrush illustration. He combined the abstract ghostly Zeppelin shape along with a faded sepia WW1 photo of German Aviators. Juniper replaced all the faces in the photograph and replaced them with the Band Members. Also added some other celebrities like Miles Davis, astronaut Neil Armstrong and a girlfriend/muse of Andy Warhol.
vii) Plot Twist: In the original photograph, we see Baron Manfred von Richthofen aka The Red Baron sitting in the cockpit of the plane. Interestingly, Juniper’s version of the cover artwork completely omits Baron Manfred von Richthofen. Plumes of smoke emanating from the silhouette of the Zeppelin airship obscure the original space.
viii) The Brown Bomber: Led Zeppelin II was nicknamed ‘The Brown Bomber’ referring to the sepia tinted cover. The Bomber especially because of the notably explosive music within. Long with the portrayal of the bombing squadron, and the outline of the Zeppelin airship.
Led Zeppelin III (1970)
ix) The most Wildest Cover: Led Zeppelin released their 3rd album, Led Zeppelin III, on 5th October 1970. The album cover is renowned for being the most playful. Featuring a surreal collection of seemingly random images on a white background which are related to flight or being air-bound. Additionally, behind the vinyl album cover was a unique rotating laminated wheel called a volvelle. It contained random psychedelic images and photos of the band members that appeared through holes in the cover.
x) Aviation as the main Theme: This album along with the first two have a theme of being in flight or aviation. This cover too features an assortment of images with a number of them related to the theme of flight. Zeppelin airships, UFOs, butterflies, birds, hot air balloons, fighter planes and dragonflies included.
xi) The Psychedelic Art Movement inspiration: Richard Drew, also known as Zacron designed the cover. He first met Jimmy Page while studying at Kingston College of Art in 1963. About the visually complex artwork Zacron says, “an album cover is not sound packaging, but an area of visual communication. An opportunity to put visual art and audio art together in a joint arena.” The artist took his inspiration from the psychedelic art movement of the late 1960’s. Which very well reflected the band’s whimsical and experimental nature. The cover took four months for Zacron to finish.
xii) So Mote Be It & Do What Thou Wilt: Freemasons and modern pagans use the ritual phrase ‘So mote it be’. While ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ serves as the first part of ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’, the ethos of Aleister Crowley’s 20th Century religion of Thelema. These were the inscribed words on the vinyl of some early editions of ‘Led Zeppelin III’.
Led Zeppelin IV (1971)
xiii) The Legendary Led Zeppelin IV or The Untitled Album (1971): Perhaps the most iconic of all, the band released this nameless album on the 8th of November. The front image features a 19th century oil painting of a man carrying a bundle of sticks on his back. To create the photo, the artist placed the artwork on the wall of a semi-demolished house, juxtaposing it with the distant Birmingham housing that appears on the back cover. The Art represents the change in the balance referencing the conceptual balance of country and city. The old man on the painting as the farmer/countryman as a symbol for nature and the tower and the flats as the city or the civilization which is threatening nature with concrete, exhaust and destruction. A way of saying that we should look after the earth, not rape and plunder it.
xiv) The Reason for Sans Name & Title: There was a compelling reason behind the choice to not put any name or title to the 4th Album Cover. Jimmy Page explained that they didn’t intend the cover to antagonize the record company. He said he designed it as a response to the music critics. Critics who believed that it was hype and not talent that drove the success of The Band’s first three albums. So the decision was taken to strip everything away and to let the music do the talking.
xv) The Hermit: The inside of the Cover is the illustration of ‘The Hermit’ from the Tarot of the Rider-Waite deck. Barrington Colby MoM, who is supposedly a very mysterious man, receives credit for the album art. Barrington Colby MoM, with MoM standing for Man of Mystery, has hardly any other illustration of Colby available elsewhere. Many speculate that Colby might be Jimmy Page himself, a former student of Art.
xvi) Symbols & Typeface: Without using a traditional title, each band member chose their own symbols to feature on the record. Page designed the most intriguing symbol himself, ‘ZoSo,’ based on a renaissance icon for Saturn or Capricorn. Bonham’s symbol is a trio of interlocking rings, derived from German type designer Rudolf Koch’s Book of Signs. Jones’ symbol is a single circle intersecting three Vesica Pisces or a triquetra. Plant’s symbol, a feather inside a circle, represents the fabled ‘lost continent’, ancient Mu civilization.
Inside the sleeve of the album the lyrics of Stairway to Heaven were printed. The typeface inspired from a magazine called The Studio from the 19th century. Jimmy Page liked the lettering so much that he arranged for someone to create a whole alphabet.
Houses of the Holy (1973)
xvii) Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis fame, inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End,” designed the cover showing siblings Stefan and Samantha Gates, aged five and seven respectively, climbing the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. The ethereal image gives the album a mythic quality. The surreal cover depicts naked, golden-haired children climbing 50 to 60 million years old basalt hexagonal columns created from an ancient volcanic fissure eruption. Given the nudity, the image wasn’t accepted in some conservative parts of the U.S. and the world.
Physical Graffiti (1975)
xviii) This double cover album was nominated for the best album package Grammy Award in 1976. But it lost to a Jim Ladwig design for ‘Honey’ by Ohio Players. It’s a photograph of two New York City tenement buildings located at 96 and 98 St. Mark’s Place in East Village. Designed by Mike Doud and artist Peter Corriston, the windows on the cover reveal varied famous faces, adding a layer of urban storytelling. Faces that were on the cover were JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, astronaut Neil Armstrong, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, King Kong, the Virgin Mary, Judy Garland, members of Led Zeppelin, Peter Grant, body builder Charles Atlas, Queen Elizabeth, Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, Marcel Duchamp and Pope Leo XIII.
Presence (1976)
xix) The cover was designed by Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis and it was his idea to feature a ‘Black Object’ on the cover. A mysterious black obelisk, almost alien figure, that appears in various mundane settings symbolizing the band’s pervasive influence and otherworldly presence in the music world. The producers produced 1,000 individually numbered 12″ replicas of ‘The Object’ during the album promotion. Collectors now highly seek these replicas. In February 2013 one of the Object fetched $2,000 on eBay inspite of being chipped.
In Through the Outdoor (1979)
xx) This eighth and final studio album was the innovation of Hipgnosis legend designer Storm Thorgerson. It was a set mimicking a Bourbon Street bar, inspired by the 1965 film ‘The Saragossa Manuscript’. An interwoven story with numerous characters, designed with six variations of the same cover photo, each featuring different perspectives of people in a bar as a main character burns a Dear John ‘love’ letter.
Coda (1982)
xxi) A bare minimalist cover with the band’s logo and album title by Hipgnosis. This was a simplistic sleeve for the compilation album that released two years after Led Zeppelin got disbanded after John Bonham’s death. This was also Hipgnosis’ final album, the art design group dissolved and went their separate ways post this cover.
The ethereal artworks of Led Zeppelin albums cover have transcended their role as mere packaging to become iconic symbols of the band’s legacy. They have influenced generations of artists and left a lasting impact on the world.
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