I have to apologize for my lack of posts lately, but I've been off doing other things. I'm not going to do a long post today (I know what you're thinking...he always says that and five paragraphs later...). I was reading the latest issue of Classic Rock Magazine at the gym yesterday and there was an article on Jimmy Page and the making of Led Zeppelin I that was pretty interesting. Most folks who credit Zeppelin for breaking heavy metal ground don't pay much mind to the allegations of plagiarism that have dogged the mighty Zep for four decades now. It's not going to keep them out of the Hall of Fame Mark McGwire/Rafael Palmeiro style obviously, but it's an interesting discussion. As it was reported in Classic Rock's April issue, Jake Holmes is apparently the true writer of the legendary Dazed and Confused track on Led Zeppelin I. If you have never heard of Jake Holmes join the club. I was a mere seven years of age in 1967 when The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes was released to little fanfare. Apparently Jimmy Page saw one of his shows and was mesmerized by the track thus changing the course of history.Led Zeppelin I is littered with old blues numbers rearranged and borrowed. If you read the article there is a lot of interesting information about the origin of some of the tracks. The Willie Dixon stuff is clear and credited, but there were apparently some shenanigans regarding the crediting of songwriters on the rest of the tracks. Suffice to say Jake Holmes is still waiting for his first royalty check for Dazed and Confused. It was a different era when it came to crediting the original songwriters in those days. Some were under the impression that if you rearranged the song you could call it your own. Others figured the songs would never sell or be popular enough to warrant proper credit. Certainly no one really expected heretofore session man extraordinaire Jimmy Page to shake up the world. Zeppelin, of course, need not apologize for their stellar library, but since they clearly borrowed from blues greats (who, in fairness, borrowed from other uncredited and long forgotten deceased artists themselves, let alone each other) for their first three LPs it might be nice to do a little retroactive recognition of still living artists like Jake Holmes. He apparently got some bad information back in the day thinking he couldn't sue and Zeppelin would allegedly just like to keep a lid on their borrowed melodies. I could care less as a huge fan of theirs, but it's not like they need the dough. Long Jake Holme's version is pretty cool for clocking in under four minutes. Enjoy.
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Well, first of all they didn't borrow the melody, just the title. The more I listen to Jake's D&C, the less impressed I am with the idea that Zep "stole it." Inspired by it, absolutely. You could argue that by using the title, they were giving a node to Holmes. They also "took" the bare bones of the structure... but listening to the two side by side, frankly Zeppelin blows Holmes's version away in the first 20 seconds. It is not the same song - the lyrics are different, the guitar is completely different, and there are drums added, which are integral to Zep's version. The form is also far expanded, and far superior.
The descending bass line is much more pronounced in Zeppelin, they all riff off it in a way Holmes never approaches. I don't know what the law is, how much of a song can be "borrowed" before a credit is due, but while it's clear they were inspired by Holmes' version, theirs is not very close to his, even early on.
http://www.limelinx.com/files/e626532082c81ababf9135e81c1f5f2f
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eIwfym0TbY
I think Holmes deserves some credit, but I honestly think the talent and music of Zep's is completely theirs and owes very little to Holmes. The way Citizendium puts it sums it up nicely:
" 'Dazed and Confused' is a song rewritten and arranged by British rock group Led Zeppelin, based on an original composition by Jake Holmes, also titled 'Dazed and Confused'. Led Zeppelin's heavier and electric DC was considered so significantly different from the Holmes acoustic version that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) assigned the unique serial registration of 340128276[2] to its copyright, lodged by the newly created music publisher Superhype Music in 1968. Led Zeppelin's DC has since been widely covered and was an early performance highlight for the group."
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Dazed_and_Confused_(Led_Zeppelin_song)
There was a guest on Howard Stern a few months back, that was comparing all of the Zep tunes accused of ripping off someone else, then comparing it to the original song in question, was pretty amazing how many tracks were "inspired" by others. Wish I could remember that guys name, Denny or Dennis something.
PS Cathy - seriously? this is the same melody and chord progression, they borrowed far more than just the title. The Zep D&C should be considered a cover song.
Yes, seriously. :-) I suspect you might not have listened to Zeppelin doing a live, 25 minute version of D&C. They could hardly pull that off stealing 3 minutes of acoustic guitar. When did Holmes use a cello bow?
The "chord progression" is not all there is to it, at the risk of being boring. The walking bass line is taken from a form called a chaconne: "A chaconne is a type of musical composition popular in the baroque era when it was much used as a vehicle for variation on a repeated short harmonic progression, often involving a fairly short repetitive bass-line (ground bass) which offered a compositional outline for variation, decoration, figuration and melodic invention... The ground bass ... may typically descend stepwise..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaconne
You could easily say Holmes was inspired by baroque. Clearly he made it his own. Just as clearly he didn't do anywhere near the variation Zep did.
That's why I believe in 4o + years, he's never sued; he'd lose. He doesn't own the form. That leaves his title, and the idea of the psychedelic middle. Sorry, but, wasn't Jimi Hendrix there before Holmes on that? Holmes took from Bach AND Hendrix! What a thief! ;-)
If musicians were not inspired by other musicians, we would not have music. Why people pick on Zeppelin for doing what others have always done and still do constantly, even more so in the world of re-mix,dub, and sampling, I don't know. Jealousy? They made too much money? You don't hear members of Zeppelin crying about how much they've been stolen from over the last few decades.
They are musicians, that's what musicians do. They paid their dues on the ones they should have been more forthcoming about, which amounts to about .04% of their catalog. I can't get all worked up about it, but I am tired of people slagging them off for it. Let the music be your master...
Hey Cathy - John Jay here, writer of the post. Thank you so much for leaving comments. We love them. You should know Led Zeppelin is one of my top two or three bands lifetime and I didn't come here to trash them. I was merely responding to the article I read in Classic Rock Magazine. You should check it out. They said the same things you are saying about musicians borrowing work for generations and making it their own. You don't have to tell me that Zeppelin's Dazed and Confused is epic and bears little resemblance to the Jake Holmes version, but to say there are no similarities is patently false. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page both say they attended a Jake Holmes show and saw this performed live and it inspired Page to rework it. I'm glad he did. I'm not trying to paint Zeppelin as thieves at all. Most of the time credit was doled out the right way. Jake claims that he didn't know he had any legal standing based on all the borrowing that went on back then so he didn't pursue it. He's not even angry if you can believe what you read in the article. I didn't mean to get folks all riled up. I LOVE Led Zeppelin to death and always will; I just thought it made for an interesting post. It was not my intent to slag on your favorite band! Thanks so much for reading!
Thanks John, I appreciate it. I enjoyed the post and think people should know about this. I don't think there are no similarities, obviously the kernel of Zep's D&C is Holmes' song. I suspect Zep called theirs "Dazed and Confused" as a tip of the hat to him. "Hats off to Jake Holmes." :-) Holmes himself said he considers it like a baby raised by someone else.
Zeppelin then became very well known, and Holmes remained obscure, but, that is not Zep's fault. It was always there for people to find, it was just harder before the days of Google.
I only wanted to point out the kernel of Holmes' song existed before he wrote his, too, so his composition isn't so original it rises to the level of giving him a credit. If so, really the credits should read: Trad; Bach, Hendrix, Holmes, Page.
Where do you draw the line? The definitive rock version is Led Zeppelin's.
Sorry, I do get a little crazy when it comes to my favorite band. :-)
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