The stairway, it seems, is now going to hell by way of a subterranean floor. After nearly a decade of housing drama that involved paperwork, council meetings, and increasingly petty interviews to curry favor for their side, Robbie Williams has emerged as the winner in his feud with his next-door neighbor, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Britain’s The Times reports that Williams has started work on his London mansion’s “super basement,” an undertaking that will reportedly take a full year to complete. The new underground floor will contain a pool, gym, and shower alcove for Williams and his family. Despite the Take That singer purchasing the home back in 2013, the musicians’ ire for each other didn’t begin in earnest until 2015, when Williams submitted ambitious construction plans for the property. Page went on a media blitz to voice his fury at the plans — he even showed up at several local planning meetings — which he claimed would endanger the structure of his historic home. (Tower House was built by William Burges in the late 19th century. It’s beautiful!) The requisite building council sided with Williams, and the rest is history.
While Page initially said that his beef with Williams wasn’t personal, he would later call him “idiotic” and “tasteless.” Williams, meanwhile, always enjoyed taunting the guitar deity in the press, at one time stating, “I do know it makes a great story, and I’m really pleased, just for me, in general, for the rest of my life. I’m really pleased it’s Jimmy Page and not Jimmy the accountant.” Okay, but this whole saga requires a thought experiment. Who’s next? Do Sting and the second guy from Wham! live next to each other?