Who recorded it first
Dazed and Confused
Not a Led Zeppelin original — a 1967 Jake Holmes album track
Almost everyone meets “Dazed and Confused” as the six-and-a-half-minute centrepiece of Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut, and assumes the band invented it. They did not. The song was written and first recorded by the American singer-songwriter Jake Holmes, who released it on Tower Records in 1967 as a track on his debut album “The Above Ground Sound” of Jake Holmes. Holmes’ version went nowhere commercially; Jimmy Page heard it via the Yardbirds, and Led Zeppelin’s debut credited the song to Page alone — a credit that only changed decades later, after litigation.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Issued 10 July 1967 on Tower Records as a track on Jake Holmes’ debut album “The Above Ground Sound” of Jake Holmes, recorded early that year — not as a single.
Charted Did not chart. The album itself did not chart either, and Holmes’ follow-up fared no better.
Hear Jake Holmes’ original 1967 recording — the folk-rock version, not the Led Zeppelin arrangement. www.youtube.com · Auto-generated upload on the “JAKE HOLMES – Topic” artist channel; the description reads “Provided to YouTube by CDBaby” and names the album <em>The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes</em>. Its runtime of 230 seconds matches the MusicBrainz length for the original recording (230,053 ms) exactly, confirming it is the 1967 master and not a re-recording.How it travelled
Holmes wrote and recorded the song in early 1967 and released it on Tower Records that July, on his debut album ↗. It sold poorly and never charted.
The Yardbirds saw Holmes perform in New York in August 1967, reworked the song around its descending bass line, and played it live through 1968 — but never recorded a studio version ↗.
Jimmy Page brought the arrangement to Led Zeppelin, who recorded it in October 1968 and released it on their 1969 debut ↗ with a sole Page credit.
Holmes sued in June 2010; the case was dismissed with prejudice in January 2012 after a settlement, and later reissues changed the credit to “By Page – Inspired by Jake Holmes”. A second suit filed in May 2025 ↗ was resolved that August.
Wikipedia: “Dazed and Confused” (Jake Holmes song)Know more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
Right band, wrong origin
“Dazed and Confused” is one of the most securely attributed songs in rock — and the attribution was wrong on the record sleeve for decades.
Led Zeppelin
Their January 1969 debut album carried the song, credited it to Jimmy Page alone, and made it a permanent part of the band’s live identity. Nothing on the record pointed anywhere else.
Jake Holmes
Holmes released it on Tower Records in 1967 as a track on his debut album “The Above Ground Sound” of Jake Holmes, more than a year before Led Zeppelin cut their version.
Jake Holmes
Holmes wrote the song in early 1967. Reissues from 2014 onward, following his settlement with Page, credit it as “By Page – Inspired by Jake Holmes”.
The Yardbirds
They heard Holmes in New York in August 1967 and built the arrangement Led Zeppelin would inherit — but played it only live, so their part of the chain left no commercial studio record at the time.
Led Zeppelin made the version everyone knows. Jake Holmes made it first, and wrote it.
Context
Why the cover swallowed the original
The usual reason a cover eclipses an original is exposure. Here it is exposure plus paperwork. Holmes’ record sold almost nothing and the album never charted; Led Zeppelin’s debut reached No. 10 on the US Billboard 200 and No. 6 in the UK, and the song became a staple of album-oriented rock radio without ever being issued as a single. But the decisive fact is that the sleeve of that debut credited the song to Jimmy Page and nobody else. For roughly forty-five years, the only name a listener could attach to “Dazed and Confused” was Page’s.
The route from one to the other runs through a third band. The Yardbirds saw Holmes perform at New York’s Village Theater in August 1967 — drummer Jim McCarty bought the album afterwards — and built their own arrangement around Holmes’ brooding descending bass line, with Page adding the guitar figures. They played it constantly on their final tours and never recorded it in a studio. When the Yardbirds ended, Page took the arrangement with him into his new band, and the version that reached the world had travelled two removes from the man who wrote it.
The chronology, step by step
- Early 1967 — Jake Holmes writes and records “Dazed and Confused” for his debut album.
- 10 July 1967 — the song is issued on Tower Records as a track on “The Above Ground Sound” of Jake Holmes. It is not a single, and neither track nor album charts.
- August 1967 — Holmes performs on a bill with the Yardbirds at the Village Theater in New York; drummer Jim McCarty buys the album and brings it to the band.
- 1967–68 — the Yardbirds rework the song and play it live regularly, but never record a studio version.
- 3 October 1968 — Led Zeppelin record their version at Olympic Studios, London, with new lyrics by Robert Plant.
- January 1969 — the song appears on Led Zeppelin (Atlantic Records), credited to Jimmy Page alone.
- June 2010 — Holmes files a copyright infringement suit in US federal court naming Page.
- 17 January 2012 — the case is dismissed with prejudice following an undisclosed settlement reached in autumn 2011.
- 2014 onward — reissues change the credit to “By Page – Inspired by Jake Holmes”.
- May 2025 — Holmes sues again, over archival Yardbirds recordings and their use in the documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin; the parties tell the court on 1 August 2025 that the matter is resolved.
The original didn’t lose on merit. It lost on a credit line.