Happenings 57 Years Time Ago

Today's news of the passing of guitarist Jeff Beck reminds me of the pivotal role he played, while in The Yardbirds, in creating the new sounds that so influenced pop and rock music in the mid-60s and specifically during 1966.

The British Invasion of 1964 brought a new sound and spirit into popular music and the next set of changes in '66 turned the music in a new direction.  Below are 6 songs from that year, arranged in chronological order of release, of which three are from The Yardbirds and Jeff Beck.  Five of the six were singles, but none were smash hits in the U.S., although four reached the top 20 on the charts.

February 1966 marks the release of Shapes Of Things by The Yardbirds.  Which reminds me, I need to check the 45s I have in storage as I think I still have the three Yardbirds singles.  Shapes was unlike anything I heard before, with the crazy guitar solo in the middle, the way they hit reverberating chord at solo's end, and the guitar sputtering out at the end.

The next month saw Eight Miles High by The Byrds.  This was a very heavy song for the time with the bass and rhythm guitar recorded loud, the odd, enigmatic lyrics, and the dissonant jazz-tinged lead guitar by Roger McGuinn.

The Yardbird's next single, Over Under Sideways Down, was released in July, with its unique sinewy guitar threading throughout.

That same month 7 And 7 Is was released by Love, an L.A. band.  Another first of a kind sound and ending.

In August, The Beatles released Revolver.  The last song on the second side, and the strangest on the entire album, was Tomorrow Never Knows, which was actually the first song recorded for the album back in April.  Things would never be the same.

And finally, in October, came Happenings Ten Years Time Ago from The Yardbirds, lyrically and sonically distinctive.  A word on Yardbirds guitarists is appropriate here.  The band's first guitarist was Eric Clapton, who quit in 1964 because he thought the band was becoming too commercial.  His replacement was Jeff Beck.  In the spring of '66, Jimmy Page joined the band and, until the fall, both Beck and Page served as guitarists.  Over Under and Happenings feature both.  That fall, Beck quit the band, leaving Page to carry on until Jimmy left to form a new band which became Led Zeppelin.

I'm Not Talking

And that's what I got to say.

1965 recording by the Yardbirds.  That's Jeff Beck on guitar.  Jeff's predecessor as guitarist in the group was Eric Clapton.  A little later Beck was joined by Jimmy Page on guitar and then after Beck left, Page served as the solo guitarist for the band.

Composed by Moses Allison who also wrote Young Man Blues, later covered by The Who.

Dazed And Confused

(This is not a reference to THC's mental state . . . at least in his opinion.  One of the first posts on this blog was The Evolution of Dazed and Confused.  Since the key embedded video in that post has been made inaccessible by YouTube and some additional information has come to THC's attention he is presenting a revised version today.)

(Jimmy Page from innocentwords)


Dazed And Confused from Led Zeppelin's debut album, released in 1969, remains one of the band's most popular tunes; an epic heavy tune showcasing the guitar riffs and screeching vocals for which Zeppelin came to be known.  The song's been used in many TV shows and movies (it even became the title of a movie with a great cast) and was a highlight in the band's concerts.  On the album the composition of the song is credited to Jimmy Page, Zeppelin's lead guitarist.  But was Page really the composer?
In 1967 a little known singer named Jake Holmes released his debut album oddly entitled "The Above Ground Sound" Of Jake Holmes.  It wasn't a big seller but one of its purchasers was 16-year old THC.  He liked it enough that he took the train from suburbia to see Holmes play two shows in August and September 1967 at The Bitter End, a small club in New York City's Greenwich Village and got to sit in the first or second row.  Holmes opened the August show for Neil Diamond, just starting his solo career with the hits  Solitary Man (on which he does a fine version about 12 minutes into the video linked below), Cherry Cherry and Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon.  Holmes was terrific and Diamond proved to be a fine live performer.  You can listen to Diamond's set here (sorry for the bad audio quality) which includes I'm A Believer, the huge hit Neil wrote for The Monkees and Kentucky Woman, soon to be released as his next hit single. A warning note - though the YouTube video says it is from The Bitter End if you listen closely it appears possible two of the songs, including Kentucky Woman, may have been edited into it from other appearances, though THC remembers him playing it in his set.

(above and below from fondmineandsteve)
Holmes next opened for Van Morrison whose first solo hit, Brown Eyed Girl, was still riding high on the charts.  Much of Morrison's set consisted of songs later included on his 1968 album Astral Weeks which, for unexplainable reasons, was adored by the critics.  Morrison was unbearable, wandering around the stage with his eyes closed, hands on his head, yelling unintelligible lyrics accompanied by music which was mostly boring though on occasion it rose to the level where it became irritating.

At the time THC liked much of Holmes' repertoire but having recently listened to the album most of it does not hold up well with one exception, a song called Dazed And Confused, which stood out then and now for its weirdness and intensity.  As you can hear Holmes played with an unusual band lineup - Jake on acoustic guitar,  a bass, a very trebly lead guitar and no drums.  You can watch Holmes playing at what seems to be The Bitter End here.  And now take a listen to Dazed And Confused by Jake Holmes.

The lyrics are different than the Zeppelin version but the melody is the same as is the basic chord structure.  Even the guitar break bears some similarity.  Coincidence?  THC thinks not.

In August 1967, Holmes opened a show for The Yardbirds, a British band with a lead guitarist named Jimmy Page.  THC has written about The Yardbirds before and earlier lineups featured Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck as guitarists.  This is the 1966 version of the band featuring both Beck and Page, playing The Train Kept A Rollin' from Michaelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup (one of many hit movies from the era that are unwatchable today and among Vanessa Redgrave's first films).

The Yardbirds liked Dazed And Confused quickly incorporating it into their live set with Page embellishing the instrumental sections.  Appearing on French TV in March 1968 their revamped version still had Holmes' lyrics, sung horribly by Keith Relf, but with an arrangement sounding very much like that recorded by Zeppelin a year later.  Embedding of the video from French TV is disabled by YouTube but you can see it here.

Later that year The Yardbirds dissolved and Page started a new band, Led Zeppelin, a name bestowed by Keith Moon, The Who's drummer, who Page was trying to recruit to join his new group.  Page completed the transformation of Dazed And Confused by writing new lyrics and that's how it happened.  Dazed And Confused was not the only Zeppelin song to generate controversy over its composition - if you do a google search on "led zeppelin plagiarism" you'll come up with 89,600 hits and "led zeppelin song stealing" yields 159,000 results.

Jake Holmes released a second album but while his performing career quickly faltered he ended up becoming quite successful.  In 1969 he co-wrote the Watertown album for Frank Sinatra.  It was Sinatra's least commercially successful album but it was, after all, Frank Sinatra!  During the 1970s Jake became a phenomenally successful jingle writer.  Included among his credits are writing the music for "Be All That You Can Be" for the US Army, "Be a Pepper" for Dr. Pepper, "Best a Man Can Get" for Gillette, and "Aren't You Hungry for Burger King Now?" and doing the vocals on many of them.

All through these decades Jake never took action about Jimmy Page's writing credit for Dazed And Confused other than writing a letter to Led Zeppelin which was never answered.   Finally in 2010 he filed a lawsuit against Page claiming copyright infringement.  The case was dismissed with prejudice in 2012 (see Order of Dismissal) but it looks like that action was part of a settlement between the parties though neither has spoken publicly about it.  Shortly thereafter Celebration Day, a Zeppelin live album, was released with the credits for Dazed And Confused reading "Jimmy Page; inspired by Jake Holmes".

(Jake Holmes today from Broadwayworld)
(Jimmy Page today from local rhthyms)

The Train Kept A Rollin'

Time for a little Rock n Roll archaeology.  Until very recently, THC assumed The Train Kept A 'Rollin by The Yardbirds (1965) was a cover of an old blues tune (also later covered by Aerosmith in the 1970s.). The tune was originally written and performed by Tiny Bradshaw and his band in 1951 as a rhythm and blue songs but sounds much different than the version by The Yardbirds.  It turns out there is a missing link - a completely new and revolutionary, for its time, arrangement by Johnny Burnette and the Rock 'n Roll Trio in 1956.

If you are not familiar with the history of rock it may be hard to appreciate just how different this recording sounded for its time.  With the aggressive vocal and, more importantly, the thundering bottom and the fuzz tone sounding guitar, there was simply nothing else like it with the combination of rockabilly and blues.  And just guessing here, but THC does not think the song was really about a train.

The song was released as a single from the Rock 'n Roll Trio's debut album to an unreceptive audience and failed to hit the pop charts.  Maybe it was just too far ahead of its time.

Let's do a little more archaeology and carry the story backwards and forwards.  Tiny Bradshaw had a long career as a bandleader until his death in 1958.  In 1934 he provided the young Ella Fitzgerald with her first big singing opportunity.

The trio consisted of Johnny Burnette and his brother, along with a friend whom they met when they were all amateur boxers.  The Burnettes were from Memphis, like so many of the pioneering rock musicians, living for awhile in the same housing project as Elvis Presley and his parents. The failure to generate any hit singles led to the breakup of the band in the fall of 1956 and Johnny went off to California to seek fortune and fame in the music business.

Burnette struggled, finding his only success, with the teen pop hit You're Sixteen in 1958, a song which became a hit for the second time when covered by Ringo Starr in the 1970s.  For years, he tried to find a follow up hit but his quest was cut short when he died, at the age of thirty, in a 1964 boating accident on a California lake.
(Burnette)
You're Sixteen was not written by Burnette.  The composers were Robert and Richard Sherman, best known for their songwriting for Walt Disney as they created most of the songs for Mary Poppins, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Jungle Book and the Disney theme park tune which still triggers dread for many a parent, It's A Small World (After All).