"Dazed and Confused" - Holmes vs. Zeppelin

It is easy to hear that Jimmy Page stole the song “Dazed and Confused” from Jake Holmes.  Jimmy Page heard the song at a gig he was at with his previous band “The Yardbirds” and Jake Holmes was there performing “Dazed and Confused”.  I guess after he heard this song and the lyrics he decided that he would take that same song and use it in his debut album with his new band “Led Zeppelin”.

According to “2 Loud 2 Old Music” the writer explains, “I say stole, because Page didn’t credit Holmes as the songwriter with the Led Zeppelin release” of their version of “Dazed and Confused”.  Jimmy Page copied the song by using the same lyrics and the same music arrangements in the song and then changed the order of the lyrics in their version of “Dazed and Confused”.  Jimmy Page also added some verses to the song to convert it from a three minute and forty-five second song to a song that was now over six minutes long.  Although the song sounded the same, Jimmy Page transformed the song by adding a violin bow to his guitar in the song as well as drums, which was not a part of the original song from Jake Holmes.  Jimmy Page took the bluesy feel from the original song and well as the “acid rock” tone of the song and created a version that took the song to “an entire new stratosphere”, says “2 Loud 2 Old Music”.  By combining these two aspects of the original he definitely brought the song to a different level, however, I do not believe it was enough for him to conclude that he changed the song enough to not have to credit the original writer, Jake Holmes.  It took Jake Holmes over forty years to finally sue Led Zeppelin for stealing his song, which was settled out of court, which I learned from part one of the video series entitled “Everything Is A Remix”.

                     1972: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin bows his guitar while performing in Amsterdam. | Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns

Although Jimmy Page added a new dimension to “Dazed and Confused”, he plagiarized the song by using the same lyrics and music, which influenced his version of the song.  Led Zeppelin copied the song without making fundamental changes to the song. I do not believe that just because the song is a more dramatic version of the original it could be called just that.  Jimmy Page could have asked Jake Holmes to use his song and provide royalties or he could have given him credit for writing the song in the cover. Without giving credit to Jake Holmes for writing the song, Jimmy Page crossed the line and fooled his fans with a great song.


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