On the morning of October 22, 1969, Atlantic Records pressed the first copies of Led Zeppelin II into existence — and almost immediately, the lawyers came. What followed was not a single legal storm but a slow, three-decade unraveling of attribution, credit, and the blues lineage Jimmy Page had so masterfully woven through every track.

Willie Dixon was first. His publishers identified the bones of You Need Love inside “Whole Lotta Love” before Atlantic had finished shipping the second pressing. The settlement, finalized in 1985, would eventually rewrite the album's songwriting credits in a way that few rock records have ever been forced to endure.

Howlin’ Wolf followed. Then Anne Bredon, whose folk standard “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” had been credited as traditional on the debut. Each new claim revealed the same uncomfortable mathematics: the band’s genius was real, but so was the borrowed scaffolding underneath.

Producer Eddie Kramer, interviewed for this dossier from his Connecticut studio, recalls the sessions as “a blur of motel rooms and mobile decks.” Tracks were cut in