(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Thu 9 April 2026 6:59, UK
Jimmy Page has made no secret about his inspirations over the years. In truth, it would be pretty hard for him to hide some of them.
Theft, to him, is almost an engine of originality. As he once stated, “I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.”
In his view, you can play the same notes and still sound different. That is pretty much the tenet of individualism that rock ‘n’ roll thrives on. As Nick Cave once said, “The great beauty of contemporary music, and what gives it its edge and vitality, is its devil-may-care attitude toward appropriation.”
He adds, in a very Page-like spirit, “Everybody is grabbing stuff from everybody else, all the time. It’s a feeding frenzy of borrowed ideas that goes toward the advancement of rock music – the great artistic experiment of our era.” There’s no issue with that.
However, the trouble starts when that appropriation is a little bit too direct, and the original creator is left in the shade. You could argue that this was the case when it came to the Led Zeppelin classic ‘Dazed and Confused’, which Page lifted from poor old Jack Holmes. The anthemic slacker track might have altered the course of counterculture, but its shadowy backstory proves far more questionable than the end result.
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Led Zep’s classic was released in 1969, but the tale stretches back two years prior to that. At the time, Page was in the Yardbirds, and they were headlining a show at the Village Theatre, the famed venue which later became the Fillmore East in New York City.
That night, Jake Holmes opened the show and blazed up his stoner anthem ‘Dazed and Confused’ (listen below). Page was peeping behind the curtain and found himself flawed by the sludgy folk gem that staggers and saunters in a style that preserved the zeitgeist in amber. It was ‘stoner rock’ before there was even such a thing.
Pairing psychedelia and the traditional sensibilities of the Byrds, Holmes honed a track that seemed to defy any known genre. Crammed with modular dirge, the sound alone would’ve been something that piqued the muse of Page, but the way the melody waxed and waned, perfectly intwined with the fractious, somnambulant lyrics, made the song sound like a cornerstone of the counterculture movement.
Page was seemingly so stirred he got his notebook out. In the years that followed, the Yardbirds would perform their own version but never record the track. Holmes never had a hit with it, and the anthem seemed to be forgotten. At least that was the case until Led Zeppelin’s debut album arrived.
There, in plain sight, on a record that would go on to sell over 10million copies, was that fateful song from the Fillmore. As Holmes would later bemoan, “That was the infamous moment of my life when ‘Dazed and Confused’ fell into the loving arms and hands of Jimmy Page.”
‘Infamous’ is the operative word here because what happened afterwards has always placed a problematic asterisk on Page’s legacy. The guitarist obviously changed the track, but even with these tweaks, the source is still self-evident. Yet, when Led Zeppelin released the song, there was no mention of Holmes’ long-forgotten version in the credits.
He kindly wrote to the group asking for a co-credit, but he never received a reply. All the while, his own career faltered, and he moved into writing jingles and tunes for commercial purposes – songs that were a world away from ‘Dazed and Confused’. Rather fittingly, he would also write for others, such as the great Harry Belafonte, but his own day in the spotlight seemed to just be that one night in New York under the watchful eye of Page.
He didn’t fuss much in the wake of his blanked letter, and Led Zeppelin’s version took on a life of its own. Richard Linklater would even borrow the title for his coming-of-age movie set in 1976, proving how seamlessly the song captured the zeitgeist to come. All the while, almost nobody knew that Holmes was the true originator.
In 1990, when murmurings of a primitive version of ‘Dazed and Confused’ were beginning to surface, Page distanced himself from the whole thing when Musician Magazine asked him about it. “I don’t know about all that,” he explained. “I’d rather not get into it because I don’t know all the circumstances. What’s he got – the riff or whatever?”
Adding, “I haven’t heard Jake Holmes, so I don’t know what it’s all about anyway. Usually, my riffs are pretty damn original.” In truth, he also had the arrangement, title, and lyrical melody.
However, in June 2010, he finally got Led Zeppelin to pay attention to him when he sued the band, citing copyright infringement and the matter was swiftly resolved out of court. However, the bigger question that the whole debacle raises is just how rife plagiarism, or to put it kindly for Page, unreferenced liberal appropriation was in the days before internet sleuths could catch you at it? What other works out there should rightfully cite someone else as the originator?
Holmes was, to some extent, he got his undisclosed settlement and didn’t even have to go to court in a suit for it, but there’s no doubt whatsoever that the motif of this crooked is resticted to Page alone. How many other Holmes are there out there who deserve their moment in the sun?
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