Who is the boy on the cover of U2's album "Boy"?

Question

He also looks like the one on "War". Is he related to one of the band members, or just some random kid? Also, what is he doing now?

Answer 1

The boy on the cover is Peter Rowan (actor) (brother of Bono's friend, Guggi). He also appears on the covers of Three, War, The Best of 1980-1990, and Early Demos.

The photographer, Hugo McGuiness, and the sleeve designer, Steve Averill (a friend of bassist Adam Clayton), went on to work on several more U2 album covers.

The image had to be changed to a distorted picture of the band for Canada and the United States, due to fears that the band would be accused of child pornography.

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PETER Rowan, the boy who U2 made famous on the cover of an album is seeking his fortune at the other end of the camera. But now the "boy" the band plastered over early albums has grown up to map out a career of his own. "I'm working as a general commercial photographer at the moment, but I want to do more Rolling Stone magazine kind of stuff," he said last night. Peter shot to fame on album covers in 1980 and 1983. Then his brother Guggi was the lead singer of The Virgin Prunes and a close pal of U2 singer Bono. Bono suggested the cute, innocent-looking six-year-old child would make a good picture for an album cover and the rest, as they say, is history. Peter featured naked from the waist with his arms behind his neck on the front cover of Boy and was also pictured on the band's first single Three. When he was nine, he was photographed with the famous American army helmet for the band's third album War, which is also being used on the front cover of the band's Greatest Hits album. "It feels good to see my picture staring out at me from shop windows," said Peter. "I never really thought about it that much before, but now it's kind of hard to escape from it." And he added: "It's fairly true to say that I am more famous for those U2 pictures than anything I have done since. "But I hope to change that soon enough. It would be good to work for U2, but this time at the other side of the lens." Their new album is expected to be sold out by the end of the week. "It was better than anything we have had for a U2 album, and certainly better than when Titanic went on sale," said a Virgin spokesman.

Answer 2

From a U2 FAQ (and, yes, he is on War as well):

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His name is Peter Rowen. He was a kid who lived across the street in front of Bono's house in Dublin. He's the brother of Derek "Guggi" Rowen, and Strongman - both of which were in the Virgin Prunes. Peter later became skate-board champion of Ireland, works in a skate-board shop and has also had various acting parts, notably in The Commitments and The Snapper. In The Commitments, Peter plays the kid who wants to audition for Jimmy's band, and is carrying a skateboard in his arms as he yells to Jimmy from the street below. More recently, Peter was one of the pallbearers at the funeral of Bono's father, Bob, who died August 21, 2001. (He joined Bono, Edge, Larry, Guggi, and Bono's brother Norman as pallbearers.) [SL, Ge, CB, M2, PC]
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Answer 3

Peter Rowan, younger brother of Bono's friend Guggi