The Real Reason Led Zeppelin Covered Dazed And Confused By Jake Holmes

May 2024 ยท 1 minute read

Jake Holmes' original version of Dazed and Confused features the same bluesy rift that Zeppelin covered, although with different lyrics. This is how he wrote them: 

"I'm dazed and confused, is it stay is it go? Am I being choosed? Well I'd just like to know. Give me a clue as to where I am at, feel like a mouse and you act like a cat."

To promote this new album, Holmes played a gig in New York City in 1967 with the Youngbloods and Jimmy Page's first band before Led Zeppelin, known as the Yardbirds. According to the book Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Cover Songs of All Time, when Page and his bandmate Jim McCarty heard Holmes play Dazed and Confused from backstage, they were inspired by its sound, after a long time of the band having a creative rut. "The song had all the feeling of our old material," McCarty recalled. "That descending riff is very haunting; it creates an atmosphere. That's the sort of music we liked, music that's a little bit dark."

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