The Old Guy Carrying the Sticks on the Cover of “Led Zeppelin 4” Has Been Identified

I don’t think anyone ever expected this mystery to be solved, but here we are:  The old guy carrying the sticks on his back on the cover of “Led Zeppelin 4” has been identified!

Legend has it that Robert Plant found the picture at an antique shop.  It was in black-and-white, but they had it colorized and slapped it on the cover of the album, which came out in 1971.

And recently, a researcher from the University of the West of England just happened to find that same picture in a photo album from 1892.

With a little digging, he was able to determine that the man’s name was Lot Long, or possibly Longyear.  He was a “thatcher” who died in 1893, the year after the picture was taken.  He was 70 years old.

The photographer, one Ernest Howard Farmer, died in 1944, almost 30 years before the photo became famous.

You can dive deeper into how they figured it all out in this piece from Rolling Stone.