Robert Plant’s Famous Pose Wasn’t a Natural Act, but a Deliberate Tactic To Hide His Mistakes

If you’ve been to a concert of any genre, then you know that it’s the lead singer’s job to entertain the crowd and control the overall vibe. Of course, they do so with their voices, but they also do so with their bodies. Whether it be dancing, microphone tricks, or seemingly arbitrary poses, all of these things are ways to, more or less, control the crowd. If you are familiar with Led Zeppelin, then you know that one of Robert Plant‘s signature moves was to hold the microphone away from his mouth and arch his back. However, this wasn’t a natural act created for entertainment purposes. Rather, it was a deliberate tactic to hide his mistakes.

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In addition to being an entertainer, lead singers also, surprisingly, have to be lead singers. There is an argument to be made about certain pop stars who lip-sync during all their concerts. Though back in the day, when concerts were not a spectacle, but merely a concert, rock artists, for the most part, didn’t do this, including Robert Plant.

Singing and reaching the perfect notes in the studio is hard enough. Now, imagine doing that in front of a couple of thousand people live. Evidently, there is no redoing one’s mistakes on stage. So, you either had to get everything perfect or find ways to hide your errors. Robert Plant chose the latter, and that’s where his signature pose came in handy.

Robert Plant Needed a Way To Mask His Missed Notes

Regarding why Plant opted for this strategy, he told UCR, “I often did it like that because I didn’t really know whether I could hit the right peckin’ note!” “I’ll go as far away from the microphone just in case it’s not very good! Because you don’t know sometimes.”

Plant’s example of a difficult Zeppelin song to sing live was their single “Immigrant Song”. Concerning the song’s difficulty, Plant stated, “If I had to sing ‘Immigrant Song’ every day, I would probably be like the Laughing Policeman.” “I’d be so big and probably fail so many times to get those notes up there in that call to arms. I’d be like Fatty Arbuckle, probably. It just depends on how you go about what you do,” added Plant.

There you have it, Plant’s pose was not a natural form of entertainment. Instead, it was a trick of the trade he seemingly picked up after years of performing live.

Photos by Brad Elterman/FilmMagic