![]() Often legal permission is required only from the photographer or rights holder, not the subject, which can cause unease. The bleary-eyed cigarette smoker on the Arctic Monkeys’ debut album is the band’s Sheffield acquaintance Chris McClure, while the doe-eyed child on U2’s albums Boy and War is Peter Rowan, the younger brother of Bono’s friend Guggi. Some artists are lucky enough to know the right faces. Faces, whether the artist’s or someone else’s, are ideal. The Spotify app might not offer the same visual spectacle as a 12-inch sleeve but it still demands images that can pack a visual punch as tiny digital squares. This has not come to pass for various reasons, from the surprising tenacity of vinyl to the growing importance of merchandise to an artist’s bottom line. ![]() When physical music sales collapsed 20 years ago, it was widely predicted that both the album and its sleeve were doomed and music would be consumed from now on as just an ugly string of file names. Individual fans can decide whether this discovery enriches the artwork or spoils the enigma. Now the historian Brian Edwards, having chanced upon the original photograph while researching another topic, has seemingly identified the man as Lot Long, a Victorian thatcher from Wiltshire, and the photographer as Ernest Farmer. The old man in the centre, bent double by his cargo of bound branches, resembles a sinister apparition from an MR James ghost story. Commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV, it has also been dubbed “Zoso”, after the occult runes on the cover. Led Zeppelin’s untitled fourth album has always exerted particular fascination. ![]() The mystery figure on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV is now thought to be this Wiltshire thatcher.
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