To me, it was more important what was behind the obelisk. There’s a definite presence there.’ That was it. The record-jacket designer said 'When I think of the group, I always think of power and force.
Powell has stated that the object was intended to represent the “presence” of Led Zeppelin and it ultimately gave the record its title, as Jimmy Page explains: “There was no working title for the album. Despite Peter Grant prodding Powell and strongly maintaining “we’ll have what we want”, the designer eventually managed to persuade them to keep the Giant's Causeway image on the front. Upon being presented with the artwork in the carpark of London’s Victoria Station, Jimmy Page immediately wanted the inner sleeve and the cover switched. The inner gatefold was taken at the medieval Dunluce Castle near the Giant’s Causeway and depicts a silver man holding up the young girl. It’s not something that was, in any way, devious.”ģ0.
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Naked children on the cover? But it was done with such innocence.” Defending the sleeve, he added: “When you look at the Louvre’s paintings, it’s full of naked children. Powell remarked to Rolling Stone: “If you did an album cover like that now, you couldn’t release it. In parts of America, the album was issued with a strip of paper around the cover to obscure the children’s bottoms. Page commented years later: “John Paul Jones and John Bonham just said, 'Oh, we'll pick these, you know, sure, whatever,' they weren't that interested.”Ģ9. Jones (a single circle intersecting three vesica pisces) and Bonham (three interlocking rings) picked their symbols from German type designer Rudolf Koch's Book of Signs. Page designed his own ‘ZoSo’ symbol based on a renaissance icon for Saturn or Capricorn, while Plant based his feather design on a symbol for the fabled ‘lost continent’ of Mu. Instead of a title, each band member chose their own personal emblem to feature on the record. So, we stripped everything away, and let the music do the talking."Ģ0. It was designed as our response to the music critics who maintained that the success of our first three albums was driven by hype and not talent. Explaining the reasoning behind this, Jimmy Page told Brad Tolinksi in 2001: “The cover wasn't meant to antagonize the record company. Led Zep’s fourth album is completely devoid of the band’s name and album title on the cover. Zacron said of the visually complex artwork in 1970: "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."ġ9. Behind the vinyl album cover is a rotating laminated wheel – known as a volvelle – containing more random psychedelic images and photos of the band members that could be maneuvered to appear through holes in the cover. The square format became a visual theatre in which images could appear to move and have their own energy, some moved beyond the boundary."ġ6. The work created a surrealist environment, changing relative concepts of scale and subject matter. According to : "Each component became a formal abstract element, interacting with all the images to make a unified whole. Both the inside and outside of the gatefold cover feature a smorgasbord 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. I didn’t put it in my show because it wasn’t really a proper idea, and there wasn’t enough original thought in it.” Led Zeppelin II (1969):ġ5. He explained to Eye On Design: “I didn’t think Led Zeppelin was a very good bit of work, apart from millions of copies being around, and the fact I was paid $60. Eventually creating an illustration of the Hindenburg photo at Page’s suggestion, the then Royal College of Art student didn’t include the artwork in his degree show. He showed Jimmy Page a number of album cover ideas including “a multiple sequential image of a zeppelin” based on a club sign in San Francisco but they were rejected. Although he helped create one of the most iconic album covers of all time, Hardie doesn’t rate it highly. Highly sought after by record collectors, an original turquoise version fetched $1890 (around £1450) on eBay in 2012.Ħ. Weeks later, the colours were switched to the now familiar orange version. The very short-lived initial ‘Led Zeppelin’ pressings – estimated to be less than 2,000 copies - featured the album title and Atlantic Records logo in turquoise.