<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the dirtiest tricks in the music business evolved when record label owners and publishers began routinely adding their names to the credit line on songs.\u00a0 Most artists went along with it because they were anxious to get a record out, not that they were exactly given a choice.\u00a0 Many times they were not aware of the practice until they saw the printed record label.\u00a0 In the early days, most of a musician\u2019s income came from live performances so they viewed a record as another form of advertising for their shows.\u00a0 When records began selling millions of copies, it did not take too long for the songwriters and performers to notice the suits were making the big money and they were not.\u00a0 The \u2018musicians vs the suits\u2019 battle over songwriting credits (and thus, royalties) is as old as the industry itself.\u00a0 What is a little surprising to me is how often musicians have done the same kind of thing to other musicians.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Many articles and books have been written about the genius of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page.\u00a0 One of the most persistent tags bestowed upon him, for lack of a better word, is \u2018thief\u2019.\u00a0 Oh, they do not use this word specifically, but however they couch it, the implication is pretty clear.\u00a0 Author Mick Wall notes in his book, <\/span>A Biography of Led Zeppelin<\/span><\/i> – <\/span>When Giants Walked the Earth <\/span><\/i>(2008 St. Martins Press), Page may have been \u201cquite permissive when it came to borrowing other people\u2019s material,\u201d but the \u2018borrowing\u2019 has been overshadowed by his innovative arrangements and production techniques.\u00a0 As we will see, Wall isn\u2019t picking on Page nor is he giving him a free pass;\u00a0 he is just providing details most casual record buyers would not be aware of if they do not know the history of some of the songs in question.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first eponymous Led Zeppelin album (released in 1969) contains a track that would become a showpiece of Zeppelin\u2019s live shows.\u00a0 Wall traces back the history of <\/span>Dazed and Confused<\/span><\/i> all the way to its original writer as a typical example of how fluid a songwriter\u2019s credit can be in the music world.\u00a0 The credit given on the LZ album simply says \u2018Jimmy Page\u2019 but as Wall explains, the song was originally written and recorded by a 28 year-old singer-songwriter named Jake Holmes.\u00a0 The song included a walking bass line and lyrics whose eerie atmosphere led many to assume the song was about a bad acid trip (Holmes says it was actually about a real-life love affair that went south).\u00a0 The song first appeared on Holmes\u2019 solo album <\/span>The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Holmes was appearing with his two-man acoustic band at The Village Theater in New York\u2019s Greenwich Village on a Friday night in August of 1967, just a few months after he had written <\/span>Dazed and Confused.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Holmes was opening for The Yardbirds who were on tour in America and, according to Wall, \u201cYardbirds\u2019 drummer Jim McCarty and Page were watching spellbound from the side of the stage as Holmes performed the song.\u201d\u00a0 McCarty later recalled he went out the very next day to buy Holmes\u2019 album specifically to hear <\/span>Dazed and Confused <\/span><\/i>again.\u00a0 McCarty claimed Page bought his own copy for the same reason.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Jimmy transitioned from the end of The Yardbirds to the formation of Led Zeppelin, he had a sound in his head.\u00a0 During the years he had spent as a session player, Page had accumulated a vast knowledge of how to make a record sound better.\u00a0 Led Zeppelin would be the crucible and the studio his laboratory to create a new sound to set his new band apart from all the others.\u00a0 As he mixed the ingredients for their debut album, <\/span>Dazed and Confused<\/span><\/i> would borrow not only from the Holmes version, but also from the version Page had performed with The Yardbirds in their last days together.\u00a0 The Yardbirds\u2019 vocalist, Keith Relf, had altered the lyrics a little and the \u2018Birds \u2018amped-up\u2019 the arrangement a bit, but the walking bass and eerie atmosphere of Holmes\u2019 acoustic version were all there.\u00a0 The only recording of the \u2018Birds\u2019 rendition was done for a March 1968 session aired on John Peel\u2019s<\/span> Radio 1<\/span><\/i> show on BBC just before they set off on their final American tour.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The version they performed on Peel\u2019s show and during their last tour was pretty much identical to the one that showed up on the first LZ album credited to \u2018Jimmy Page\u2019.\u00a0 The rest of The Yardbirds were certainly aware of the song\u2019s origins.\u00a0 McCarty gave his recollections in a 2003 interview:\u00a0 \u201cI was struck by the atmosphere of <\/span>Dazed and Confused<\/span><\/i>, and we decided to do a version.\u00a0 We worked it out together, with Jimmy contributing the guitar riffs in the middle.\u201d\u00a0 When the \u2018Birds\u2019 remastered and expanded <\/span>Little Games <\/span><\/i>album came out on CD, the track was credited to \u2018Jake Holmes, arranged by The Yardbirds\u2019.\u00a0 Three months after the final Yardbirds tour, the only substantial change to the <\/span>Dazed and Confused <\/span><\/i>track recorded by Led Zeppelin was another slight rewrite of the lyrics.\u00a0 Page included a new line about \u2018the soul of a woman\u2019 being \u2018created below\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At the time, Holmes was unaware that his song had been pirated away by Page.\u00a0 He said he had written the song on a college tour not long before the tour with The Yardbirds:\u00a0 \u201cI didn\u2019t think it was that special.\u00a0 But it went over really well;\u00a0 it was our set closer.\u00a0 The kids loved it – [and he adds dryly] as did The Yardbirds.\u201d\u00a0 Jake didn\u2019t realize the appropriation of his song until \u201cway later\u201d:\u00a0 \u201cRock \u2018n\u2019 roll was kind of going into its second life when Led Zeppelin came along.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t fifteen years old anymore so I wasn\u2019t listening to that stuff,\u00a0 I was too busy hanging out at clubs like the Night Owl with the Lovin\u2019 Spoonful, Vince Martin, and Cass Elliot.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Did he care when he found out about Page taking credit for the song?\u00a0 Holmes said, \u201cI didn\u2019t care.\u00a0 At that time I didn\u2019t think there was a law about intent.\u00a0 I thought it had to do with the old Tin Pan Alley law that you had to have four bars of exactly the same melody, and that if somebody had taken a riff and changed it just slightly or changed the lyrics that you couldn\u2019t sue them.\u00a0 That turned out to be totally misguided.\u201d\u00a0 Holmes did investigate the matter, but the cost of litigation outweighed his economic situation, especially if it didn\u2019t pan out.\u00a0 He has reached out and basically said, \u201cHey, Jimmy, I don\u2019t care about the royalties, just give me a credit, half a credit, something,\u201d but he doesn\u2019t think it is about royalties anymore.\u00a0 \u201cFor [Jimmy Page], it\u2019s probably more difficult to wrench that song away from him than it would be any other song,\u201d Holmes says.\u00a0 \u201cAnd I have tried, you know, I have written letters to him.\u00a0 That\u2019s the sad part.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it has to do with money.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like he needs it.\u00a0 It totally has to do with how intimately he\u2019s been connected to it over all these years.\u00a0 Besides, I am a cult hero now.\u00a0 I have a lot of cachet with my kids because all the kids in their school say, \u201cYour dad wrote <\/span>Dazed and Confused<\/span><\/i>?\u00a0 Cool!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the highlights of Zep\u2019s live <\/span>Dazed and Confused <\/span><\/i>performance happens when Jimmy\u00a0 extends the middle section using a violin bow to coax otherworldly sounds from his guitar.\u00a0 According to Wall, the inspiration for this little gimmick was also borrowed from a couple of other sources.\u00a0 There were two acts (maybe more) known for doing the violin bow schtick before Page.\u00a0 One was The Creation whose guitarist Eddie Phillips scraped a violin bow across his guitar strings in the group\u2019s two 1966 singles, <\/span>Painter Man<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Making Time.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Jimmy was familiar with The Creation as they were based in London.\u00a0 Record producer Shel Talmy, who\u00a0 worked with Page on sessions for The Kinks and The Who, later stated, \u201cJimmy Page stole the bowing bit of the guitar from Eddie.\u00a0 Eddie was phenomenal.\u201d\u00a0 The other possible source was the psychedelic band Kaleidoscope from Pasadena, CA whom Page was also familiar with.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Wall asked Page about the origins of the violin bow thing:\u00a0 \u201cHe insisted it was concertmaster violinist David McCallum, Sr (father of the <\/span>Man from Uncle <\/span><\/i>star David McCallum, Jr) who first suggested the idea as the two chatted during a tea break at a session in 1965.\u00a0 As a result, he had first experimented using a violin bow in The Yardbirds, on two tracks on <\/span>Little Games:\u00a0 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Glimpses.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The later number become an early violin-guitar showcase for Jimmy on stage, to be replaced during their final months by <\/span>Dazed and Confused.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Was Page being the innovator or a copycat?\u00a0 After Eddie Van Halen made tapping his guitar strings all the rage, was he ripping off those who may have experimented with it earlier or were all the guitarists who jumped on the tapping band wagon stealing from Eddie?\u00a0 We will leave that one for you to ponder.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Just to make it clear that Jimmy Page was not to be singled out for hijacking other peoples tunes, Wall goes on to give a long list of songs that begat other songs.\u00a0 He started with Bob Dylan who famously told an interviewer that his first album was, \u201csome stuff I\u2019ve written, some stuff I\u2019ve discovered, some stuff I stole.\u201d\u00a0 As for the last category, Wall mentions, \u201c<\/span>Man of Constant Sorrow<\/span><\/i> being a reworking of Judy Collins\u2019 <\/span>Maid of Constant Sorrow; <\/span><\/i>a blatant steal of Dave Van Ronk\u2019s version of <\/span>House of the Rising Son <\/span><\/i>(something Van Ronk never forgot); <\/span>Masters of War<\/span><\/i> which Dylan did after hearing Martin Carthy perform <\/span>Nottamun Town<\/span><\/i> when [Bob] was in the U.K.\u00a0 Carthy\u2019s take on <\/span>Scarborough Fair <\/span><\/i>led directly to <\/span>Girl from the North Country <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Boots of Spanish Leather.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Even the melody for <\/span>Blowing in the Wind<\/span><\/i> was derived from an old anti-slavery song <\/span>No More Auction Block<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Don\u2019t Think Twice, It\u2019s All Right<\/span><\/i> is a direct descendent of a traditional Appalachan song called <\/span>Who\u2019s Gonna Buy Your Chickens When I\u2019m Gone.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Clearly there are only so many chords to work with and so many ways to string the notes together.\u00a0 The issue still comes down to \u2018give credit where credit is due\u2019.\u00a0 With that said, we can go back to the patriarch of Hill Country and traditional Country Music, J.P. Carter.\u00a0 When his \u2018Carter Family\u2019 radio performances (and later records) began spreading the \u2018gospel of country music (and gospel country), J.P. smartly copyrighted songs that were written decades before he arrived on the scene.\u00a0 Many of those tunes had their origins in ancient Celtic melodies from the British Isles so they rightly should be put down as \u2018Traditional\u2019 but old J.P. was a foxy one.\u00a0 Note that many of these venerable old country masterpieces like <\/span>Will the Circle Be Unbroken <\/span><\/i>bear a credit line of \u2018J.P.Carter\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Page\u2019s contemporary and former \u2018Birds bandmate Jeff Beck kind of accused Zeppelin of copying his version of Willie Dixon\u2019s <\/span>You Shook Me<\/span><\/i> that came out on his <\/span>Truth <\/span><\/i>album before Led Zeppelin\u2019s album was out of the studio.\u00a0 Both guitarists were familiar with the song as they had listened to the Muddy Waters album it came from back in the day.\u00a0 Beck was angry but Page was probably telling the truth when he said he was not aware that Beck had recorded the song on <\/span>Truth.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Then again, it later came out that Zep manager Peter Grant had given Page an advanced copy of <\/span>Truth<\/span><\/i> weeks ahead of its official release. \u00a0 At least both guitarists gave Dixon his due on the songwriting credits.\u00a0 Interestingly enough, Beck was not beyond nicking a tune here and there;\u00a0 he just was a little more covert about it.\u00a0 He and Rod Stewart reworked several songs but credited them to \u2018Jeffery Rod\u2019.\u00a0 These included Buddy Guy\u2019s <\/span>Let Me Love You, <\/span><\/i>B.B.King\u2019s <\/span>Rock Me Baby <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Gambler\u2019s Blues <\/span><\/i>(retitled <\/span>Rock My Plimsoul <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Blues De Lux <\/span><\/i>by \u2018Jeffery Rod\u2019), and Dinah Washington\u2019s <\/span>Drinking Again <\/span><\/i>which came out on <\/span>Truth<\/span><\/i> as <\/span>I\u2019ve Been Drinking.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Beck explained it to Charles Shaar Murray in 2005:\u00a0 \u201cThere was a lot of conniving going on back then:\u00a0 change the rhythm, change the angle, and it\u2019s yours.\u00a0 We got peanuts for what we were doing and I couldn\u2019t give a (expletive deleted) about anyone else.\u201d\u00a0 That is, unless the \u2018anyone else\u2019 is Jimmy Page putting out <\/span>You Shook Me<\/span><\/i> not long after Beck\u2019s version was on the market.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another band that Led Zeppelin toured with was Spirit.\u00a0 Jimmy liked them well enough to cover their song <\/span>Fresh Garbage<\/span><\/i> on their early tours.\u00a0 When Spirit guitarist Randy California heard <\/span>Stairway to Heaven, <\/span><\/i>he immediately recognized the same (or at least very similar) chord progression that he used on a short instrumental called <\/span>Taurus.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 After California\u2019s passing, journalist Michael Skidmore filed a copyright suit against Led Zeppelin on behalf of the late guitarist\u2019s family.\u00a0 Skimore claimed Robert Plant had seen the band at a club in Birmingham a year before <\/span>Stairway<\/span><\/i> was written.\u00a0 Plant and Page both professed to have no memory of the event, Page stating, \u201cI knew I had never heard that before.\u00a0 It was totally alien to me.\u201d\u00a0 He further said he was not even aware of the claims of copyright infringement until people started posting clips on the internet in the 2010s.\u00a0 The courts rejected Plant and Page\u2019s argument noting they had \u2018access\u2019 to the song.\u00a0 It was the testimony of musicologists, however, that turned the case in their favor.\u00a0 The experts cited several examples of songs that used what they termed a \u2018common musical device\u2019, using the Disney musical\u2019s <\/span>Mary Poppins <\/span><\/i>song <\/span>Chim Chim Cher-ee <\/span><\/i>as an example.\u00a0 A later appeal was also ruled in Plant and Page\u2019s favor.\u00a0 The jury who ultimately decided the songs were \u2018not intrinsically similar\u2019 were, oddly enough, not allowed to hear the song <\/span>Taurus<\/span><\/i> during the trial.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I heard Buckwheat Zydeco perform <\/span>When the Levee Breaks<\/span><\/i> at the Porcupine Mountain Music Festival, I wondered how a Led Zeppelin song ended up in his repertoire.\u00a0 As it turns out, the song originated with Memphis Minnie (McCoy) and her husband \u2018Kansas\u2019 Joe McCoy who were documenting the great Mississippi River flood of 1927.\u00a0 Though credited to the four Zep band members on their fourth LP, the track has more recently been listed with Minni being given a co-credit for the song.\u00a0 When Plant sang, \u2018<\/span>Cryin\u2019 won\u2019t help you, prayin\u2019 won\u2019t do you no good \/ When the levee breaks, mama, you go to move\u2019, <\/span><\/i>there was no doubt those were Minnie\u2019s words.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We could provide more examples, but as previously stated, there are only so many ways to string the same notes togeth<\/span>er.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Wall noted that, \u201cJohn Lennon believed Bob Dylan\u2019s <\/span>4th Time Around<\/span><\/i> to be nothing less than a deliberate parody of <\/span>Norwegian Wood.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>Of course, one might point out that Lennon\u2019s <\/span>All You Need Is Love <\/span><\/i>was barely more than a modern re-reading of <\/span>Three Blind Mice.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>If you are wondering, Thomas Ravenscroft gets the credit for <\/span>Three Blind Mice<\/span><\/i> – it was published in 1609.\u00a0 As I said, \u201cGive Them Credit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 As long as we kept talking about Dazed and Confused<\/em> . . . LZ in 1970 at Albert Hall<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the dirtiest tricks in the music business evolved when record label owners and publishers began routinely adding their names to the credit line on songs.\u00a0 Most artists went along with it because they were anxious to get a record out, not that they were exactly given a choice.\u00a0 Many times they were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-new-music","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2723"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2726,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2723\/revisions\/2726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}