Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page isn’t showing a songwriter a whole lotta love over one of the band’s classic hits, and now he’s dragging the guitarist into federal court.
A guy named Jake Holmes filed the suit against James Patrick Page — yeah, that’s his full name — over “Dazed and Confused” … the song Zeppelin dropped back in ’69. In the docs, Holmes says it’s already been legally established that he is the copyright holder on the track — he and Page reached a settlement in 2011.
Holmes says he noticed something awry with the new IMAX documentary, “Becoming Led Zeppelin,” which was released earlier this year — the film credits say Page wrote ‘Dazed’ and Holmes only “inspired” it, but Holmes says that’s patently false.
Little backstory on the song … the Yardbirds released the first version of ‘Dazed’ in 1968, when Jimmy was a member of the group, and he recorded a new version of it with Zeppelin … which only credited Page as the writer.
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That prompted Holmes to sue decades later, because he got the copyright for ‘Dazed’ in 1967 … leading to their 2011 settlement.
So, Holmes’ point is any version of the song — Yardbirds or Zep — is not “inspired” by him, it’s written by him, and he wants to be paid as such.
Besides the movie, Holmes says, he’s also getting screwed by recent re-releases of Yardbirds performances … because he hasn’t seen a dime from them.
He’s suing Jimmy for all monies earned from the use of “Dazed and Confused” in the documentary, or from any new releases of the song. We’ve reached out to Page’s camp, but no word back yet.
