Deviations from Select Albums 2: 58. Led Zeppelin

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After decades of utopia under rule by space aliens, the children of the Earth have now lost their identity and culture. They are gathered here in order to be taken away to the star where
the aliens came from. And this happens before the Earth explodes, never to exist again. So goes the story of Childhood's End, a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke from 1953.

Attempts to adapt the novel into a film have been made without success. Director Stanley Kubrick expressed interest in the 1960s, but collaborated with Clarke on 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968) instead. In 2014, the Syfy Channel announced they were producing a six-hour television mini-series of Childhood's End, which will be broadcast in December 2015. Full article

Led Zeppelin's surreal cover for Houses Of The Holy, featuring golden-haired children crawling across an apocalyptic landscape, is one of the most iconic images in rock history. But
while the sleeve design is familiar, what no one knows is that the young boy who appears in the photo montage is television presenter Stefan Gates, of BBC2's Cooking In The Danger
Zone, who was just five when he and sister Sam were innocently snapped in the nude for the shoot on the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. The cover art was the brainchild of
Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson of legendary album-sleeve designers Hipgnosis. They took several multiple-exposure shots of Stefan and Sam to create the image of more children
clambering over the rocks. More

Here's the original album cover art design.

No. 94, Billboard, The 300 Best-Selling Albums of All Time; No. 117, The Virgin All-Time Album Top 1000; No. 148, Rolling Stone, The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

No. 28, Music Radar, The 50 Greatest Album Covers of All Time; No. 50, Rolling Stone, The 100 Greatest Album Covers.

Album cover art design by Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson (Hipgnosis), photography by Aubrey Powell. Album produced by Jimmy Page. Atlantic 1973.

Gavin Edwards, Rolling Stone: "The epic scale suited Zeppelin: They had the largest crowds, the loudest rock songs, the most
groupies, the fullest manes of hair. Eventually excess would turn into bombast, but on Houses, it still provided inspiration."

In February 2010, Stefan Gates presented a half-hour BBC Radio 4 documentary entitled Stefan Gates's Cover Story, about his part in the making of the album cover. Gates claimed
in the documentary to have felt there was something sinister about the image, although his sister disagreed. He also admitted never having heard the album. The programme ended
with Gates returning to Giant's Causeway (in Northern Ireland where the photos were shot) and listening to the album on a portable player, after which he claimed that a great weight
had been lifted from him. More