Holmes Versus Page With a Touch of Hart

Sometimes the desire, pain and frustration hits me so intensely – everything has to be right and perfect, and I have to be willing to do anything to achieve – I get IT for one instance.  What right do I have to speculate about people like Jimmy Page or Jake Holmes or even an angel like Hayley Hart who have lived their entire lives like that? I have a tiny lawyer in my head telling me to say that what is to follow is pure speculation. So don’t nobody sue me ‘cause this is only for entertainment purposes.

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury. The only question we need to ask ourselves now is: Is there a connection between the Jake Holmes’ 1967 song Dazed and Confused and Led Zeppelin’s 1969 Dazed and Confused? With the court’s indulgence we will be listening to three versions of the song in question.”

I don’t even know if this is a jury issue. It’s just that jury trials are such wonderful media circuses and it is all going to depend on whether you are a Page fan, a Plant fan, a folk music fan, acoustic or electric guitar, whether you like Randy Newman, what car you drive, airline you travel, your soft drinks, fast food, trains, choice of beer, razor blades, and whether you have spent time in the American Army. I don’t mean any disrespect to Jake Holmes, The Youngbloods, The Yardbirds, Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty, The New Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin or Jimmy Page. I thought I should mention everybody. It’s all part of a rich quilt work of human experience.

To explain all these cultural allusions such as trains, plains, automobiles, soft drinks, and the military… Jake Holmes, as well as being a folk singer, created advertising jingles for Dr. Pepper, Chevrolet, Gillette, and the US Army, to name just a few products. Jake has touched our lives intimately, right down to our underarms, and we haven’t even seen him. He has such great album covers. He has a Peter Fonda vibe going. And he can go to the club on Fridays and play folk music if he wants.

Now Music Copyright is a really complicated issue. You have lyrics, music, covers, arrangements, different forms of distribution, radio, television, CD, composers, performers, allocation of moneys, etc… It’s mind boggling. And if you are in a band you share creation with a partner or partners – things like who did what and who gets what and who decides gets really complicated as soon as money starts flowing. Sigh.

As I understand it, around 1967 Jake Holmes and the Youngbloods opened for the Yardbirds. The Yardbirds then consisted of founding members Chris Dreja, rhythm guitar, and Jim McCarty, drums and backing vocals, and a new lead guitarist Jimmy Page. I think before this it had been Page on bass and Jeff Beck on lead until Beck was fired. Exciting stuff. Jake Holmes and the Youngbloods played Dazed and Confused and this was the first time the Yardbirds, including Page, heard it. In 1968, the Yardbirds did a cover of Holmes’ Dazed and Confused on French TV, with Keith Relf on vocals and harmonica and Page on lead guitar, a Fender Strat. The lyrics are the same as on Holmes’ 1967 album. The melody, the musical structure, the rhythm all are very similar to Holmes’ Dazed and Confused. You can see, on the TV show, Page bowing his Fender for the first time. And the Yardbirds give Holmes credit for the song.

In 1968 Page left the Yardbirds and, with Robert Plant and John Bonham, he formed The New Yardbirds which lasted for September and October of ‘68 until they changed their name to Led Zeppelin – coined, I believe, by Keith Moon. Anyway, Led Zeppelin is a much better name for a supergroup. A supergroup needs an original name. In 1969, on their debut album Led Zeppelin, there is a song Dazed and Confused. Same title, same riff, same tune to the verse, same lyrical hook “I’m dazed and confused…” The tune stayed the same but the lyrics were changed. And it is all delivered with due magnificence by Page, Plant, et al. Only Holmes gets no credit.

Jake Holmes holds a 1967 copyright for his song Dazed and Confused. Led Zeppelin holds a 1969 copyright for their song Dazed and Confused, which according to them has no connection to Holmes’ song. Now the interesting thing about popular musical copyright is that it is based fundamentally on lyrics. It is more difficult to copyright riffs, tunes, styles… However, a combination of riff, tune, style might constitute a recognizable piece and copyright infringement. Also, precedence of former cases helps.

In 1969 there were probably significant differences in American and British copyright law, problems with enforcement. And where is a young American folk musician Jake Holmes going to get the money to pursue an international copyright infringement case against British supergroup Led Zeppelin? However, Jake does send Jimmy Page a letter saying he thought it was pretty impolite for Page not to give him some credit for Dazed and Confused.

Now, I have quite an imagination and I like to think positively about things so I imagine a secret phone conversation. A complete fiction. It starts out something like this. A red phone on a night table rings around one in the morning. A bleary eyed individual wakes, fumbles for the receiver…

“Hey, Jake, how are things? I hope I am calling at a convenient time. This time difference is a real bugger… Yeah, I know it’s been a long long time. No hard feelings… No, I didn’t think so. I – I really love your work. We should just get together and jam sometime… the next time I’m in New York at the Illuminati Convention. You know… Yeah. Yeah. Real funny. Look, Jake, I have this really cool idea that’s going to promote our early work… Yeah! Right! Sue me.  We never had this conversation. You can have your people call my people and they can figure out the details…”

A complete fiction, of course, but it makes a nice story. And interesting stories is all we have, all we are, in the end. I should know. I have been all over the world and I have done things and met people that I can only talk about as fiction. Well, why not? Some of Kurt Vonnegut’s best fiction has been autobiography, and visa versa, as soon as you clear away all the aliens and time travel. But who would want to?

Now, 40 years later in 2010, Jake Holmes is pursuing a copyright infringement case. Not that he really needs the money now. Maybe he has been sitting on a whole lot of resentment for the past forty years and then it all just exploded forth in 2010 in the form of a court case. Of course, retroactive royalties would be huge. And, from a purely practical point of view, a well-managed media circus would generate great interest in both party’s early catalogs.

Look, I figure the public likes to imagine all sorts of tensions between public figures, but there are advantages to being… economically comfortable… and people like this don’t need to get really pissed off at each other. I like to think I am looking at this like a musician because I am a musician, kind of. The music is ALL, after all, just like Jake sent a letter to Page as one guitarist to another saying something like “Hey, Man (because that’s how people from the 60’s talked) it would have been at least cool if you had acknowledged me.”

I think I get it. It’s like this. One of our best recordings we ever did was of a Hayley Hart song “Rag Doll”. I rented a room from Hayley about 20 years back and she gave me her demo tape before I left. I was blessed. So I kind of get Hayley, and I get the song, and it means something to me. I want to play it publicly, and that is cool, as long as I give credit and inform the club that they should pay her royalties. Five or six drunk people in a Finnish pub don’t make a whole lot of difference anyway.

But if I was to record it and make money on that recording then it is a different story. Of course, it is a basic blues riff. And you can’t copyright a style. If I was to keep the riff but change the lyrics and the melody it would be a whole different song, of course, and I still get to rip with the harmonica. But, you know, I love Rag Doll. I want to play Rag Doll. And that’s Hayley’s song. So buy her friend Kim Doolittle’s album Touch Wood. Better yet, convince sweet Hayley to put out her own version so you can hear it from the beautiful source. She has a voice on her that will rip through you like silk and leave you quivering in her wake. Sigh… Ah, but making money is so hard and such a drag.

As for tensions between people, there are people in my life who I just can’t stand.  I’m not going into details or name calling, and nobody would care anyway unless I was producing multi-million dollar albums. Thank God! But when it comes down to music, I can just sit down with that particular person and there is no ego, no past or future or responsibilities or animosities or betrayals. There is only making my harmonica fit with his (or her) guitar. Our hearts are joined. And that is cool.

Of course, after it is over, when I finish and the rush of emotion has passed and I finally open my eyes and look at the person across from me, I might feel dirty and say “Oh God! What have I done?”