Jimmy Page faces a fresh lawsuit over the song “Dazed and Confused” in the wake of the band’s recently released documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin.
American musician Jake Holmes' track of the same name appears on his 1967 debut album, The Above Ground Sound. Soon after its release, the song was picked up by the Yardbirds after they toured together, and the band — then featuring Jimmy Page — began performing their version during live shows.
Page liked the track so much that it made its way onto Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut album two years later. The liner notes listed Page as the sole songwriter. When Holmes wrote to Page seeking a correction, his request was reportedly ignored.
In an interview with Furious, Holmes says his show at the Village Theatre in New York on August 25, 1967, with the Yardbirds “was the infamous moment of my life when 'Dazed And Confused' fell into the loving arms and hands of Jimmy Page.” He says he “had no idea” the band had adopted the track until they returned to New York a year later.
Over the years, he has also drawn parallels between Page’s descending guitar riff and the riff that ices his original version.
A lawsuit filed in 2010 retained Page as the sole writer but added the credit “inspired by Jake Holmes."
Tensions between Page and Holmes had simmered down, but Holmes is now suing Page and Sony Pictures, the firm behind the new doc, for incorrectly crediting the song, which features in the film.
Homes’ complaint has been filed in California, and it also claims that two early live recordings of the song were used without his permission or any payment.
The complaint says Page and Sony Pictures have “willfully infringed the Holmes composition by falsely claiming that the Holmes composition is the Page composition, by purporting to license use in the film of the Holmes composition as if it was the Page composition, and by collecting license fees for use of the Holmes composition in the film."
What that ultimately means is that, though the Zeppelin version of the track includes the “inspired by…” tag, the Yardbirds version of the song is merely down as being “written by Jimmy Page.”
Page — who released a signature version of Gibson’s SJ-200 acoustic last year — has also been accused of releasing other live recordings of Holmes’ song without proper credit. If Holmes’ lawsuit is successful, he's set to receive $150,000 for each copyright infringement.
Comments from Yardbirds’ then-drummer Jim McCarty in 2023, made during an interview with Something Else, do little to hide that the band had lifted Holmes’ track for their own ends.
“As usual, I wandered backstage to watch the support act and heard some quite pleasant folky songs,” he recalls. “Then they played this song in a minor key with a very haunting guitar run down, and I immediately thought it would suit us.
“I went down to the record store in Greenwich Village, bought Jake’s album, and we worked out our version — later to be recorded by Zeppelin, becoming one of the classics of all time."
Although the Holmes-versus-Zeppelin narrative is one of rock’s most notorious lawsuits, the scene isn’t short of others. Gibson and Dean remain locked in disputes over Dean's use of the Z and V body shapes, and Gibson issued a cease and desist to Trump Guitars for its use of the Les Paul body shape last year.
John Fogerty, meanwhile, says his legal wranglings with his ex-manager caused his songwriting inspiration to “wither and die.”
Kiss were also subject to a lawsuit in the late '90s when a cut from their reunion album left the Alice Cooper camp seething.
