More than a decade after Led Zeppelin‘s Jimmy Page settled a lawsuit over the disputed songwriting credits to “Dazed and Confused,” he’s facing a new case accusing him of flouting that earlier agreement.
Jake Holmes has claimed for years that he actually wrote “Dazed and Confused” and that Page simply performed it without credit or payment — first as a member of The Yardbirds, and then more famously by re-working it into a signature song for Led Zeppelin.
That dispute led to a copyright lawsuit in 2010 and a later settlement. The terms of that deal were not disclosed, though later credits for Zeppelin’s track say the song was “written Jimmy Page, inspired by Jake Holmes.”
But in a new case filed Monday (May 5) in Los Angeles federal court, Holmes says Page is once again violating copyright law by failing to credit or pay him — on both newly-released recordings of Yardbirds performances of the song and in the recent documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin.
“By falsely claiming that the Holmes composition is the Page composition, … Page [and others] have willfully infringed the Holmes composition,” Holmes’ lawyers write. “Defendants…have ignored plaintiff’s cease and desist demand and continue to infringe.”
Holmes says he wrote and recorded “Dazed and Confused” in 1967, and he believes Page first heard it during a performance in New York’s Greenwich Village at which Holmes opened for The Yardbirds. He says that band later started performing the song and, after they broke up, Page used it as the basis for the Zeppelin song of the same name — one of the legendary rock band’s best-known hits.
According to Holmes, the settlement in the earlier lawsuit included a provision in which Page acknowledged he had “no claim whatsoever to or with respect to the Holmes composition.” But in recent years, he says archival Yardbirds recordings have been released that feature the song — a move he says clearly violates his rights to the original.
Holmes says Becoming Led Zeppelin, released in February, also infringes his copyrights by featuring footage of live performances of the song: “Defendants have thus committed multiple acts of willful infringement by continuing to use the Holmes composition without authorization.”
A representative for Page did not immediately return a request for comment.
