Plant corroborated the story in his testimony. Page told a different story under oath: When he was called to the stand in 2016 as part of a plagiarism trial over this song, he said that he wrote the music on his own and first played it for his bandmates at Headley Grange in Liphook Road, Headley, Hampshire, where they recorded it using a mobile studio owned by The Rolling Stones. Page sometimes told a story of the pair sitting by a fire at the cabin as they composed it, a tale that gives the song a mystical origin story, as there could have been spirits at play within those walls. Page and Plant explained that they started working on it at a 250-year-old Welsh cottage called Bron-yr-Aur, where they wrote the songs for Led Zeppelin III. In October 1970, after about 18 months of near constant touring, the song took shape.
By April, he was telling journalists that their new song might be 15-minutes long, and described it as something that would 'build towards a climax' with John Bonham's drums not coming in for some time. Jimmy Page would work on the song in an 8-track studio he had installed in his boathouse, trying out different sections on guitar. Led Zeppelin started planning 'Stairway' in early 1970 when they decided to create a new, epic song to replace ' Dazed And Confused' as the centerpiece of their concerts.
