Led Zeppelin IV - the cover secret unveiled

 

The man depicted on the cover of Led Zeppelin's 'IV' album has been revealed as a 19th century thatched roof builder.The portrait is most likely that of Lot Long of Mere in Wiltshire, photographed by Ernest Farmer.

As the BBC reports Brian Edwards, of the University of West England (UWE), found the original photo while searching through an album of photographs for further research." I immediately recognized the man with the sticks - he's often called that," he said.

The Wiltshire Museum has acquired the photograph and plans to include it in an exhibition next year.

Released in 1971, Led Zeppelin 'IV' has sold more than 37 million copies worldwide and includes the big hit 'Stairway to Heaven'.

A historic fan of British rock band Led Zeppelin, told BBC Radio Wiltshire 'it was a real revelation'. The cover had previously been described as a photograph of a painting, which had been discovered by the band's lead singer, Robert Plant, in an antique shop near guitarist Jimmy Page's home in Berkshire.

But the framed image of the man with sticks on his back that you can see on the cover is actually a colorful photograph that you don't know where he is yet, the one that was discovered is the original black and white photo.

Brian Edwards – who is part of the regional history centre at the UWE in Bristol – explained how he found out that the original photographer was Ernest Farmer, who died in 1944. The only clue in the photo album was the name of photographer Ernest, but Edwards discovered hundreds of Victorian photographers with that name.

She said the quality of the photos suggested that they were taken by a professional, and so she looked at pharmacies, as many of them were involved in photographic production.

Edwards thus discovered a chemist who worked in Salisbury, near where the photo was taken, who had a son named Ernest Farmer, and then found his handwriting online. Farmer was the first director of the school of photography at the then newly renamed Regent Street Polytechnic, now the University of Westminster.

“Part of the signatures correspond to some spellings of the photo album,” he said. “The black and white photograph has a thumb imprint in the corner and it looks like it's the original,” Edwards added.

The photo album contains mainly views and architecture from South Wiltshire and Dorset has a dedication and is titled “Reminiscences of a Visit to Shaftesbury. Pentecost 1892. A gift to Aunt Ernest's.”

Brian Edwards then began researching the haystacks of that period and said his research suggested that the man depicted was Lot Long, who died in 1893 and who was building thatched roofs for houses at the time.

The director of the Wiltshire Museum, David Dawson, has announced that the exhibition in the spring of next year, where the photograph will be exhibited, will be titled 'The Wiltshire Thatcher: a Photographic Journey through Victorian Wessex, and will celebrate the work of Ernest Farmer'. “We're going to show how Farmer captured the spirit of the people, villages and landscapes of Wiltshire and Dorset that were so at odds with his life in London.

“It's fascinating — Dawson added — to see how this theme of rural and urban contrasts was developed by Led Zeppelin and became the centerpiece of this iconic album cover 70 years later”