A few weeks before leaving for Boston University, and later Berklee School of Music, in August, 1967, and after the Bram Rigg Set had broken up, my good friend Beau Segal and I drove down to New York to see the Yardbirds. Beau was the one who found out about the show and it was his treat, sending me off to school in style.

Jeff Beck had left the Yardbirds and now Jimmy Page was the sole guitar player in the group. We had loved the single issued earlier in the year, Little Games, and most of the subsequent album release by the same name, although the U.S. release is a bit of a hodge-podge and left out some key tracks that appeared on the U.K. album. The double CD release of the early ’90s and then a later reissue rectified all this by including just about everything from that period.

But I couldn’t get enough of the shuffle feel of the single with Page’s mesmerizing rhythm guitar part and biting lead in the middle section. Later the next year, my group Pulse came up with a song with a similar feel that Beau wrote. I still have his original lyric sheet. It has no title on it but we used to refer to it as If You Love Me Today, and we played it in the second incarnation of Pulse, which was a four-piece with Harvey Thurott on second guitar.

The Yardbirds were playing at the Village Theater in New York on August 25, about six months later it would become Fillmore East. We didn’t know then that it was actually a rather momentous occasion because this was the show at which Page would get the inspiration, to put it politely, for one of Led Zeppelin’s signature tunes from their first album, Dazed And Confused.

It didn’t even register immediately about 1 1/2 years later when that first Zeppelin album was released, but there was a direct link between the track and one of the other performances that night, which has since come to light and been a topic of much conversation and a little controversy.

I’d driven to the city before to see The Paul Butterfield Blues Band at the Cafe Au Go Go the previous winter and the previous year to stay at the Albert Hotel on Washington Square with a couple of buddies from high school, but I’d never been to the Lower East Side. We more or less luckily found the theater on Second Avenue, parked on the street and bought tickets at the door. I remember it was pouring rain and we got soaked walking from where we parked to the theater.

Our seats were fairly far back in the orchestra on the right-hand side of the proscenium theater, still not bad with a clear view of the stage. The Younbloods, who we also liked though not as much as The Yardbirds, were one of the opening acts, which meant we wouldn’t have to sit through a boring opener. Also on the bill was a fellow named Jake Holmes, whom we had not heard of.

Holmes played acoustic guitar and sang with two other musicians Teddy Irwin on electric guitar and Rick Randle, bass. They were extraordinary. We hadn’t heard anything quite like them. It was a fresh and unusual mix of folk and jazz with pop/rock sensibilities in the vocals and songwriting. We were impressed. He played Dazed And Confused that night, although I didn’t recall it specifically after the show since his music was all new to me, just the overall excellence of the performance. Later when Beau picked up the album, we remembered Dazed And Confused from the show and thought it was one his most unusual and interesting tunes.

The Youngbloods were also very good, getting a big response from the audience for their hit Get Together. Banana (Lowell Levinger) was in the band at this point and played some bass, guitar and electric piano, along with Jerry Corbitt, guitar, and Joe Bauer, drums. Jesse Colin Young, though, was the focus and he had a nice quality to his voice and strong stage presence.

Then came The Yardbirds, which along with Page included Keith Relf on vocals, Chris Dreja, bass and Jim McCarty, drums, just a four-piece. I don’t recall the setlist entirely, but they opened with Two Trains Runnin’ and played quite a few numbers from Little Games, including the title cut, Smile On Me, a tour de force reminiscent of Otis Rush’s All Your Love, Drinking Muddy Water, White Summer, the outstanding traditional instrumental played solo by Page on his Telecaster, not on acoustic as on the album, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Sailor, on which Page pulled out a violin bow to work some magic he would later perfect in Led Zeppelin. He already had developed the effect of striking the strings and raising the bow high over his head, then striking the strings again while using some sort of early delay effect. Quite startling and effective.

Page looked very tall and lean, wearing a brownish/gold, shiny lame´ jacket that went to his knees. His stature was slightly bent, almost curved to one side, actually conjuring an image of a serpent to go along with his sort of semi-afro hairdo. His playing was brilliant throughout. They came out for an encore but Page broke a string early in the tune. Nonetheless he carried on with five strings, no time to change strings I guess. Then he broke another and the concert ended there. Evidently playing with four was undoable. It was a bit of a letdown, very anti-climatic.

What the concert has become famous for is the lifting of Holmes’ Dazed And Confused. Some reports say either Page or McCarty picked up Holmes’ 1967 album The Above Ground Sound Of Jake Holmes the next day. The Yardbirds reworked the song a bit, using the main riff, the same one Zeppelin would use, and most of the same lyrics but added a middle section and new instrumental parts. The group turned it into a showstopper during its final touring days the first half of 1968.

They never recorded it in the studio but it appeared briefly on an Epic live album, Live Yardbirds! Featuring Jimmy Page, in the early ’70s, quickly squashed by Page’s legal action. It has survived in booted form though and a version was available on the title Cumular Limit, which fetches rather high prices at the moment. Zeppelin, of course, changed the lyrics more dramatically and re-worked the middle section, though the feel is still tied to Holmes’ middle. The core of the song is there and Holmes at least deserved co-writing royalties.

Holmes, who later would write the signature Army theme Be All That You Can Be, said he was quite aware of the song when Zeppelin’s first album came out but just didn’t act on it. He actually wrote the band a letter in the early 1980s stating his claim for co-authorship but never received a response. His first two albums are available on a small label, Honablue Sound and Disc at ItsAboutMusic.com although evidently the original masters have been lost because they are mastered from vinyl sources.

The Yardbirds had similar brushes with songwriting credits and Zeppelin more famously with a track from its second album, Whole Lotta Love, for which Willie Dixon eventually received renumeration because of its similarity to his You Need Love. Of course, one can argue and probably quite successfully that there are numerous instances of this that have happened throughout the history of music with songs considered traditional, particularly in the blues and folk idioms.

Nevertheless, we know where Dazed And Confused came from. And in a strange twist to one of the many rock concerts I attended through the years, Beau and I were there when it was pinched.