Unmasked Led Zeppelin’s “Led Zeppelin II” Album Cover

Led Zeppelin II was released in October, 1969, and became the first Led Zeppelin album to hit #1 in the U.S., unseating Abbey Road by The Beatles for the top spot. It was the first recording with engineer Eddie Kramer (famous then for his work with Hendrix) and his expertise, combined with their desire to “keep it raw” in the studio, though this laid-back “keep it raw” philosophy resulted in an amazing 8 month recording process, and stunningly resulted in a record that influenced nearly every rock record that followed.

While it wasn’t Sgt. Pepper, there has been a certain amount of mystery following the artwork for years.

The album sleeve design was from a poster by David Juniper, who was simply told by the band to come up with an interesting idea. Juniper was a fellow student of Page’s at Sutton Art College in Surrey. His design was based on a photograph of the Jasta 11 Division of the German Air Force during WWI, the famed Flying Circus led by Manfred Von Richthoven, the Red Baron.

After the picture was tinted, the faces of the four members of the band were airbrushed on from a 1969 publicity photograph, as well as the faces of band manager Peter Grant and tour manager Richard Cole. The woman in the picture is Glynis Jones, the mother from Mary Poppins. Her presence in the photo is an obvious play on the name of recording engineer Glyn Jones. Contrary to popular belief, the guitarist Blind Willie Johnson is not featured on the album cover. There is only one known photo of Johnson in existence, and it is not the same face as the one shown on the album cover. The cover also pictured the outline of a Zeppelin on a brown background, which gave the album its nickname “Brown Bomber.”

The cover art for Led Zeppelin II.

The World War I photograph on which the album sleeve was based.

“The combination of collage, photography and airbrush illustration was groundbreaking for me, because the traditional airbrush technique was very tricky, especially when compared to today’s digital equivalents,” said David Juniper. “The cover imagery was completely experimental and I liked the combination of the abstract ghostly Zeppelin shape along with a faded sepia WW1 photo of German aviators. All the faces were replaced or altered with sunglasses and beards on some of the pilots.”

“In amongst the four band members airbrushed in from a publicity photograph are Miles Davis or was it Blind Willie Johnson (it couldn’t have been Blind Willie, as there is but one photo of the artist, and this is not him), a girlfriend and muse of Andy Warhol, Mary Woronov, Peter Grant, Richard Cole, and the astronaut Neil Armstrong. The original photo of the Jasta Division of the WWI German Air Force came from an old book about the Sopwith Camel, which was a famous British bi-plane from WWI.”