Well, this is a bit of a fuzzy area. Keep in mind I'm approaching this as someone who's encountered this topic from various angles, but who is not a professional musician. I'm also referring to U.S. law here, though there's substantial overlap with UK law. Apologies for the long ramble. Whether or not arranging counts as songwriting is open to interpretation. There isn't really a strict definition of arranging. Traditionally, it means creating the parts and writing the charts for a horn or string section. In other words, the songwriter says "I want a brass band here going 'badadaDA dum' and sings a melody, then the arranger does music theory things and out comes a brass part. In a band context, arranging sometimes refers to ideas about how to organize the parts of a song ("I think we should do 2 verses at the start and kind of build it up...then the third verse should be a guitar solo, and you can play that intro riff as the bridge."). Frankly, I find it difficult to imagine even the most basic arrangement not being an integral part of the songwriting process, but like I said, it's fuzzy. (To be clear, doing a cover of a song, no matter how different from the original, certainly doesn't grant a writing credit, which is established when the first, original version of the song is created in some form, which could be sheet music, but in our context is more likely a studio recording, but could even be an unreleased demo, such as all those Basement Tapes Dylan songs. Indeed, you must obtain a license from the copyright holder and pay a fee in order to sell or stream a cover - there are music license clearinghouses that perform this semi-automatically). Who gets credit for writing a song can be easy or complicated. A band can agree ahead of time to any kind of credit arrangement they want, either out of solidarity (everyone gets credit for every song no matter what) or because it's easier than figuring who did how much of what for each song. The band could even assign a writing credit to someone they've never met and who had zero influence on the songwriting process in any way, such as Richie Valens' mom, for instance. In my band, we split writing credits between the guitarist and myself. Although I'd have preferred a 4-way split, the two of us did do the bulk of the songwriting so it made sense to do it that way - he generally presented nearly complete instrumental demos that I would add vocal melodies and lyrics too, with occasional arranging. The drummer and bass player would add their parts to that. To be fair, we knew it was pretty low stakes - no one was ever going to cover or license one of our songs, so, whatever. If you don't have a pre-arranged agreement as to how to split songwriting credits, then you need to look at the legal standard for songwriting credit. It's still, unfortunately, rather fuzzy. Essentially, if your part of the song was substantial enough that it meets the standard for obtaining a copyright on its own, then you should get a credit on that song (also, legally, all credit is split equally between the credited writers, unless a different share has been worked out ahead of time). I personally find it hard to justify someone who was involved in the creation of a song not getting writing credit, unless they're purely playing a part someone else has completely created for them using charts or what have you. Even if JPJ "only" arranged the keyboard/string parts on Kashmir, he made many choices in creating that part that are integral to the form of the song in its original recorded version. But there's so much grey area here. Let's say you play a very basic drum part throughout a song - it probably doesn't meet the copyright standard for songwriting credit. But in my opinion, that's still a choice, and the form of the song is heavily shaped by the choice to use a simple drum part. ~very fuzzy~ I suspect there's a generational gap in how this issue is perceived, as well. Credits were given out pretty conservatively for many many years. Think of all the guest artists who did guitar solos for other artists but didn't get a songwriting credit. It seems to me that the artistry of a solo, even if the guitarist didn't author the underlying structure of the song, is incredibly musical and a vital part of the song in its recorded form. Studio musicians never got writing credits, no matter how the feel and details of their playing influenced the song. I'm also amazed at how rarely producers get writing credits when they work with rock bands. Today, songs have long lists of writers, because production has become part of the songwriting process in a way it never was before. Anyone who put their fingerprints on that song gets a credit. IMO this is how it ought to be done, but again that's just an opinion. Like, how could you justify not giving the bass player a writing credit (unless you'd literally written out every note ahead of time)? You might say, "Oh well, she's just playing bass along to the song that's already been written." But there are a million ways to play bass to a song. How are bass scales incorporated into the rhythm? Are the notes being played deep and low, or in a higher, more melodic position? That's part of songwriting, man. Anyway, the TLDR version is: I think Jonesy damn well should have received that writing credit. The counterargument might be that he was just doubling the riff that Page wrote on a different instrument. But I still feel like his playing involved so many creative choices to create that sound that he should be considered one of the co-writers.

Hello all. Curious if there's anyone around from the very early Internet days of Zeppelin fandom. Digital Graffiti (which was pre-Badgeholders)? Gatherings in Cleveland and Niagara Falls? If you were around, say hi! But anyway, I drifted away from the fan scene for a number of years, although I always had half an ear to what was going on thanks to a good man named Billy. Recently I discovered that some old vinyl bootlegs I thought I had sold years ago like a dumbass had actually been rescued by my brother, and he gave them back to me. That led me to start collecting bootlegs again - so much easier these days, dear lord I can get 10 new shows in a night, which would have been weeks of time and effort in the 90s. And then I ended up here! I've been falling in love with the band all over again, even listening to the studio albums feels fresher to me, and discovering that there's a really active fan scene, surfacing new shows, doing incredible remasters, it's mind-blowing. So...good evenin'!