Dazed And Confused The Yardbirds

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. “The song had all the feeling of our old material,” McCarty says. “That descending riff is very haunting; it creates an atmosphere. That’s the sort of music we liked, music that’s a little bit dark.”

Hoping this song would stir them out of their creative funk, the Yardbirds worked up a cover of “Dazed and Confused” at their next rehearsal. It was clear from the start this would be an opportunity for Jimmy Page to shine. As a replacement for both Clapton and Beck, the new guitarist had massive shoes to fill. On “Dazed and Confused,” he could show he was equal to the task.

“Anything with a riff like that would be a guitar showcase,” McCarty says. “We worked it up and added other bits. Jimmy added that other riff in the middle [a bridge borrowed from another Yardbirds track, ‘Think About It’]. He played all those nice little wah-wah things. It had all the trademarks of the Yardbirds sound.”

Their arrangement of the song also added something new to the band: a violin bow. Page had begun experimenting with running a bow over his guitar strings in the studio for an ethereal, swirling effect, and found the technique worked perfectly with such a trippy song. What would later become such an iconic part of Led Zeppelin was then just a young and unproven guitarist trying to bring something new to his instrument.

The Yardbirds quickly added “Dazed and Confused” to their live shows and even performed it once on a French TV show. But, in one of music history’s great missed opportunities, they never recorded the song. Though they enjoyed playing it, ultimately the song had not inspired the rejuvenating spark they’d hoped for. They never recorded another album with the Jimmy Page lineup, abandoning a session in New York after only three songs due to exhaustion.