Free Republic

A researcher in England has uncovered a copy of the original photograph featured on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV —and revealed the identity of its subject. ... more than 50 years after the album’s release, Brian Edwards, a historian at the University of the West of England, discovered an original copy of the image while perusing auction house news releases on the internet, according to the Guardian’s Nadia Khomami. Edwards is also a big Led Zeppelin fan, so when he came across a Victorian photo album that included the image of the stick man, he instantly recognized it. The...

Exactly 52 years after the release of Led Zeppelin’s fourth studio album—widely referred to as Led Zeppelin IV—the identity of the man gracing its cover has been revealed, The Guardian and The New York Times report. The cover artwork famously features an elderly man hinged at the waist, weighed down by a bale of long twigs strapped to his back. Now, a research fellow in South West England named Brian Edwards has discovered that the original source of the scene: a late Victorian era photograph of a Wiltshire thatcher named Lot Long. A visiting research fellow with the regional history...