Robert Plant claimed that one of his classic onstage poses came about because he was afraid of missing notes while singing.

The Led Zeppelin legend made the lighthearted comment in the latest episode of his Digging Deep podcast, which explores his 2005 song “All the King’s Horses.”

When host Matt Everitt introduced the topic of singers arching their backs to “open the chest up,” Plant said, “I often did it like that because I didn’t really know whether I could hit the right peckin’ note!” He added that his thinking was "I’ll go as far away from the microphone just in case it’s not very good! Because you don’t know sometimes."

He cited the example of Led Zeppelin's classic “Immigrant Song,” saying it would be helpful to be a larger person like late opera singer Luciano Pavarotti to be “in it” and “on it.” "If I had to sing ‘Immigrant Song’ every day, I would probably be … like the Laughing Policeman," he explained. "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.”

You can hear the episode below.

Looking forward to his upcoming tour with Alison Krauss, Plant predicted that "it’s going to be good with Alison because I can be quite restrained until there’ll be two or three or four points in the show where it’ll really kick off. When that happens, her ribcage opens up – when you push the button she lets it go. It’s great.”

In a wider discussion of how he uses his voice over a range of different compositions, the 73-year-old noted, “If I haven’t got it right [by] now, you know, what am I doing?”

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