The lawsuit and the lead singer: Jimmy Page blamed a day in court on Robert Plant

Rock bands being accused of plagiarism is far from a new phenomenon; in fact, it’s been happening since the birth of the genre. One could reasonably argue that rock music was built around the art of theiving from blues musicians who had established a sound that was later adopted and mutated into its own thing, but while sometimes this was done lovingly, on other occasions, bands were a little too overt with their pilfering. One act that fell foul of this crime on several occasions in their early career was Led Zeppelin, who were seemingly so blazé about their song-stealing that it came back to haunt them later on.

For example, their debut album features the song ‘Dazed and Confused’, which Jimmy Page had adapted from a folk song by Jake Holmes as far back as his time with The Yardbirds, and when he brought the song to Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant changed the lyrics and they began to claim it as their own. While Holmes tried desperately to get in touch with the band about obtaining a songwriting credit, he eventually took them to court and settled on having the credits changed to ‘Jimmy Page, with inspiration from Jake Holmes’.

There are plenty of other examples of Led Zeppelin nicking other artists’ work, such as ‘The Lemon Song’ being a straight-up rip-off of ‘Killing Floor’ by Howlin’ Wolf that takes lyrics from Robert Johnson’s ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’, but while Page holds some responsibility for pinching these tracks, it’s Plant who arguably holds the ignominy of the most egregious theft in their catalogue.

‘Whole Lotta Love’ was the band’s breakthrough hit in the US, and is still regarded as one of their biggest songs. However, while the riff is classic Led Zeppelin fare, the lyrics are far from their own work, and this was a massive oversight on Plant’s part. The singer could’ve easily ad-libbed his way through the track in order to fill in the lyrical gaps, but instead chose to rob the words from ‘You Need Love’, a song written by Willie Dixon and made famous by Muddy Waters in 1962.

While the more attentive music nerds may have picked up on this at the time, Dixon wasn’t made aware of this until 1985 – 16 years after ‘Whole Lotta Love’ was released – when his daughter pointed out the distinct similarities between the two songs to him. It might seem unusual to chase a band down over a decade and a half after the release of their most famous song for a plagiarism case, but Dixon did eventually file a lawsuit against the band, which saw him gain compensation for their actions.

In an interview with Classic Rock Magazine, Page was quick to pin the blame on his bandmate. “Robert was supposed to change the lyrics,” he claimed. “He didn’t always do that, which is what brought on most of the grief.” While he was clearly eager to clear his name for this act of gross irresponsibility, Plant was also happy to concede that it was entirely his own mistake.

“Page’s riff was Page’s riff,” Plant told Musician Magazine. “I just thought, ‘Well, what am I going to sing?’ That was it, a nick, now happily paid for. At the time, there was a lot of conversation about what to do. It was decided that it was so far away in time and influence…well, you only get caught when you’re successful. That’s the game.”

Later on in their career, Led Zeppelin clearly got more shrewd about their thieving and were not quite as prolific in taking the ideas of others, but if you take a deep dive into their earlier work, there are plenty of examples where they’ve come under scrutiny for their little acts of plundering, and this is perhaps the most obvious example of it.