Update: A representative of Robbie Williams reached out to Inquisitr with a statement from the singer.
“I would like to offer my sincere apologies to Jimmy Page, my neighbour, for my comments made before Christmas about him in relation to my recent building works, in which I likened alleged behaviour on his part to suffering from a mental illness. Jimmy Page has explained to me that certain specific factual assertions which I made were in fact not true and I am happy to accept what Jimmy Page says. I understand why Jimmy Page will have found my comments offensive and I apologise for any hurt that they have caused him and his family as a result. I did not intend my comments – which, so far as I am concerned, were made privately – ever to be published. I regret that the press went on to report them and I hope that the press will now remove them.”
Jimmy Page may be responsible for some of the greatest riffs in rock, but in the eyes of his boy-band neighbor, the Led Zeppelin legend is little more than a “mentally ill stalker.”
We certainly live in strange times indeed when a manufactured pop strumpet calls out a rock colossus for being somewhat defective and imbalanced, but then again it’s Donald Trump’s world now and the rest of us just live in it.
And that includes former Take That singer, Robbie Williams, who has taken a pot shot at Page for being a neighbor from hell.
Let’s rewind and find out what led to the current beef between the rock god and one of pop’s less well known factory chickens.
Page and Williams are neighbors in the Holland Park area of west London, and in 2014 Robbie’s plans to smarten up and extend his £17 million mansion did not go down at all well with Page, who attacked the former Take That singer’s proposals in a strongly-worded letter to Kensington and Chelsea council, stating, “the exterior should be considered sacrosanct.”
As celebrity feuds go, it’s certainly one symbolic of the uneasy relationship between rock stars and pop tarts. In the blue corner you have a lean, mean world-beating rock colossus, a heavy metal riff machine responsible for some of the finest guitar playing in the history of the genre. In the red corner you have a former boy band member who has in the past struggled with caffeine addiction and weight issues.
Last year, the Daily Mail reported that Williams planned to significantly revamp the 46-room mansion he bought in 2013 from the late film director Michael Winner, with the former boy-band pin-up proposing to install a lift and a recording studio.
However, Page had a number of concerns regarding the development, and surprisingly it’s not because having a new recording studio would enable Williams to make another record. No! Page who lived in the nearby Grade I listed Tower House for 40 years believes Robbie’s plans would be hugely detrimental to the surrounding area. and that because Williams’s property is Grade II listed, the exterior should be considered “sacrosanct”.
After submitting a number of revamped proposals, Williams finally won the war and for over a year the house has resembled a building site.
The Daily Mail reported that, “In July last year, a council report granted planning permission and allowed Williams’s builders to do ‘noisy work’ from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 1pm on Saturday – 12.5 hours a day.”
Williams, who also upset Winner’s widow, Geraldine, by ripping down a number of trees planted by the late film director in favor of installing some decking and a huge designer BBQ unit, accused Page in an off-air chat on Italian radio as behaving like someone with a “mental illness.”
“We bought this house and it was dilapidated, you know. It needed fresh energy, new love. It just needed a lick of paint and, you know, new stuff to be added, and our next door neighbor sort of decided to concentrate all of his energy on trying to block everything.
“Our next door neighbor isn’t happy with us trying to renovate our house and it has caused a problem and it will probably continue to cause a problem.
“Jimmy has been sitting in his car outside our house, for hours at a time. He’s recording the workmen to see if they’re making too much noise.
“The builders came in and he was asleep in his garden waiting. It’s like a mental illness.”
With no end to the bitter dispute in sight, Williams seemingly offered Page the olive branch of recording an album together.
“I think Jimmy is bored. I’m next door now, I’ve got a studio in my house. We could write songs together.”
Poor old Jimmy. Imagine being a rock legend all these years, only to end up living next door to a chirpy boy-band braggart who wants to record a duet with you. Oh the indignity!
[Featured Image by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]