How Def Leppard Ended Up With An Album Cover That Was Offered To Pink Floyd

Publish date: 2024-05-08

Of course, not every idea Hipgnosis presented to Pink Floyd was an immediate winner. The band was gearing up to release their 1970 album, "Atom Heart Mother," and needed artwork. So, Hipgnosis presented them with several options. One — and the choice the band would ultimately go with — was a simple photograph of a cow standing in a field. The ideas that were scrapped consisted of a woman entering a doorway and another of an upside-down diver (via Louder).

For Pink Floyd's purposes, the cow was the right choice. The final album cover, which included the photo of the cow and nothing else — no band name, no album name — piqued the interest of music lovers and wound up being a big success for the band. "It was [Pink Floyd's] first ​​big success in America," Aubrey Powell recalled in a 2017 Rolling Stone article.

Fortunately, Hipgnosis didn't let those unused ideas go to waste. The woman walking through the doorway would be used for the 1971 album "The Asmoto Running Band" by Principal Edwards Magic Theatre. A decade later, the upside-down diver would come to great prominence on the cover of Def Leppard's 1981 album "High 'n' Dry." The diver turned out to be a good fit for the album's title, and it would go on to be a massive success with hits like "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" and "Let It Go" (via Def Leppard Tour History).

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