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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.
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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.
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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.
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