No. 35: ‘Dazed and Confused’

In late August 1967, the Yardbirds topped the bill at the Village Theater in New York. Drummer Jim McCarty headed down to the stage to check out the opening act. Never suspecting that he was about to co-author yet another strange chapter in the history of rock music.

Jake Holmes, an American singer-songwriter, was opening for the famed British band. He had just released his debut album, “ ‘The Above Ground Sound’ of Jake Holmes.” The set included its key track, “Dazed and Confused,” a spooky bit of psychedelic folk lamenting the singer’s treatment by a girlfriend.

“Give me a clue as to where I am at,” Holmes sang in a bit of a whisper. “Feel like a mouse and you act like a cat.”

McCarty bought the singer’s LP the next day. “Dazed and Confused” opened side 2.

Eerie and mysterious, it tuned in to the Middle East for inspiration — the “raga rock” move employed by British groups such as the Yardbirds and the Beatles, and some underground U.S. acts of the day. Holmes’ song was recorded without drums, much of the drive and drama provided by Rick Randle’s descending bass line. The electric and acoustic guitars mimicked a sitar; amorphous tapping recalled the tabla.

McCarty dug the “weird kind of jazzy things” he heard in Holmes’ live set that summer night. “All of a sudden he plays ‘Dazed and Confused’ with this haunting riff and I thought, ‘That’s interesting,’ ” McCarty told Shindig magazine in 2020. McCarty shared the album with Yardbirds singer Keith Relf, his musical partner.

Relf, a noted magpie, started working on a cover, with additional lyrics. Guitarist Jimmy Page cooked up an arrangement, hearing it as a hard rock song with a lumbering intro, and starts and stops. It’s not hard to see the attraction, as Holmes’ original has some similarities to Yardbirds numbers found on the album usually called “Roger the Engineer” and on later tracks “Glimpses” and “White Summer.” The blues-wailing psychodrama quickly became a highlight of the Yardbirds’ live show.

The recorded evidence shows Relf playing with the lyrics throughout the number’s tenure in the Yardbirds. Holmes’ lyrics were skeletal, but the key lines remained in the Yardbirds’ expanded tellings. (They were to disappear in Led Zeppelin’s famous version.)

The Yardbirds never recorded “Dazed and Confused” for a studio album, a misstep largely due to the band’s looming disintegration. The late-period Yardbirds struggled to find material, but one of their greatest numbers arrived too late for the last proper album, “Little Games.”

“In a way, it was a great epitaph, because we were feeling very dazed and confused about what the hell was going on (with the band),” bassist Chris Dreja told group biographer Greg Russo.

Holmes’ version ran about 4 minutes. The Yardbirds sometimes stretched the number to 9 minutes or more. Most Yardbirds fans of the day never heard their version, but some later came to know it via the short-lived album “Live Yardbirds: Featuring Jimmy Page,” released in 1971 but recorded at New York’s Anderson Theatre in 1968. Epic had titled the song “I’m Confused,” a bit of weirdness corrected on “Yardbirds ’68,” Page’s redo of the album that came to market in 2017.

Several live versions of the Yardbirds’ “Dazed and Confused” appear on the box set “Glimpses 1963-1968.” It’s also on the 2000 demo-driven comp “Cumular Limit.”

Page’s transformation of the Holmes song into a psychedelic rocker — heavy on the dynamics — relied on his use of a rosin-heavy violin bow, applied to his multicolored Telecaster. “It gives an infinite variety of sounds,” he said. Later in the song, his race-with-the-devil breaks recycled “Think About It,” a Yardbirds B-side of the time. McCarty’s drum work anticipated the light-heavy contrasts later employed by Led Zeppelin.

The Yardbirds fizzled out in the summer of 1968 and Page carried on touring with a mercenary outfit called the New Yardbirds. By October they were Led Zeppelin, signed to Atlantic Records. One of the first songs they recorded, at Olympic Studios in London, was “Dazed and Confused.” Singer Robert Plant decided to write an entirely new set of lyrics for the number, which otherwise follows the Yardbirds’ template. Page repeated his violin bow bit with the Tele. Two takes and the rest is history. “Dazed” remains one of the band’s signature songs — and one of the few psychedelic rock numbers in the Led Zeppelin canon.

“Dazed and Confused” benefited greatly from Plant’s new lyrics and his urgent vocals. Also providing an upgrade was the drum work by John Bonham, who mostly followed McCarty’s lead, but with more power and precision. Page’s crisp guitar work takes the already-spooky descending line from the Yardbirds and turns it into a Hammer Films horror special.

The song would remain in Led Zeppelin’s repertoire throughout most of the rock band’s history. Key live versions on record include a 25-minute epic at the Forum in L.A. (1972) and a 15-minute romp from the Olympia in Paris (1969). The reunited band (without the late Bonham) offered a 13-minute workout at the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in 2007.

Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused” was solely credited to Jimmy Page, one of several questionable attributions on their albums that led to controversy and litigation over the decades. (The song went curiously uncredited on the “Live Yardbirds!” album.) Holmes finally sued over the Led Zeppelin version in 2010, and the matter reportedly was settled out of court the following year. Future pressings credited the song to Page, “inspired by Jake Holmes.” Holmes later remarked that his original was “inspired by nobody.”

Still, the songwriter allowed, “Jimmy Page took that song and he made it into something really cool.”

More Yardbirds: Top psychedelic song No. 10: “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”

Liner notes: Jake Holmes’ later career was very much “Above Ground.” His best-known work, aside from “Dazed and Confused,” was as a jingle man. He wrote “I’m a Pepper” and “Be All That You Can Be” for ad clients. He did release occasional solo albums into the new century. … “Dazed and Confused” provided the title for the Richard Linklater movie comedy of 1993, but the song does not appear on the soundtrack.