Dazed and Confused (The Yardbirds in '68 - Live at the BBC and Beyond)
by The Yardbirds
Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut album came out 50 years ago today. But if you’ve purchased it more recently, you might have seen the following writing credit under the song “Dazed and Confused”: “By Jimmy Page; Inspired by Jake Holmes.”
Those seven words may seem pretty innocuous on the page, but that phrase is the result of decades of controversy and litigation. Those words reveal questions of what counts as a cover song, how an artist needs to credit a songwriter from whom they draw material, and where the line lies between homage and theft.
Jake Holmes wrote “Dazed and Confused” for his debut album, “The Above Ground Sound” of Jake Holmes. A young California singer-songwriter, Holmes was hotly tipped by the industry to be the next breakout star in the folky Donovan vein. When he wrote “Dazed and Confused,” he knew immediately that it would be a big song. He just thought it would be a big song for him.
On August 25, 1967, Holmes was promoting his new album with a concert at New York’s Village Theater. Also on the bill were two bands with similar names: the Youngbloods (best known for their hit “Get Together”) and the Yardbirds. The latter band may have been the best training ground for budding guitar hotshots in history. Their first guitarist, a young buck named Eric Clapton, had left the band by this point, as had his replacement, Jeff Beck. The Yardbirds had recently hired the third guitarist in this incredible run, a promising session musician named Jimmy Page.
Though the Yardbirds’ series of guitarists seems amazing now, at the time of the show with Jake Holmes it felt like a drag. Tired from all the turnover, the band was struggling to find a rhythm with their newest member. “We were quite stale and stuck creatively” when Page joined, Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty remembers today. “We were still playing really similar things as we had with Jeff Beck. We had very few new things and running a bit low on ideas of songs to cover or songs that we wanted to do.”
Inspiration finally struck at that Village Theater show. Before his band’s set, McCarty stood at the side of the stage watching Holmes play. (Page may have stood there with him; memories differ.) “Now and then you go up and you see who’s playing with you,” McCarty says. “Jake Holmes was playing with two other guys. They were playing sort of jazzy things. I thought the music was quite pleasant, but didn’t think much of it. Then all of a sudden they started to play this riff. And I thought, oh that’s a very good riff, very haunting, quite interesting.”
The riff was Holmes’ new song “Dazed and Confused.” “The following day I went down and got his album at Bleecker Bob’s record store,” says McCarty. “I had a little record player on the road and I played it to Jimmy and the guys and then we said, we should work out a version.”
The band agreed, mesmerized by that same guitar line. text limit
