Air Zeppelin
Painted with Mimaki JFK 2002513 Flatbed with outdoor-rated UV ink on birch wood, 7×7 in.

A mash-up of the first Led Zeppelin album cover and an amalgamation of several different key art designs for the Air Supply LP The One That You Love. The original image used on the cover of Led Zeppelin I was a highly contrasted, B&W version of this film still taken from newsreel footage of the tragic Hindenburg air ship explosion over Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937. James J. Seeley shooting for Hearst’s News of the Day is the most likely author, though the Pathe & Universal footage (both now in the public domain) each collected multiple reels from a variety of sources. The cover concept was selected to symbolize the perfect combination of heavy and light, combustibility and grace attributed to Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page‘s playing, and band manager Peter Grant chose the spelling to avoid it being mispronounced “leed.” It was Keith Moon, drummer for The Who, who suggested that a supergroup with Jimmy Page would go over “like a lead ballon.” Conversely, photographer G. Maxwell & Alpha logo designer Ray Barber helped to establish the look of 1980s soft rock (under the art direction of Howard Fritzson) with Air Supply’s sixth and most successful release, The One That You Love. Air Supply and Led Zeppelin: two bands with two words in their name which, when combined, cover the distance of the entire English alphabet in much the same way that their individual interpretations of arena rock are also polar opposites.