Originally Posted by bonjovi90

Agreed. He always went to the limit of his then-current range on every album, hence them having to downtune all the songs live from 1988 onwards in order to give him the chance to make it through a tour. Looking back at it - maybe he'd still have his voice (or parts of it), had he taken a more conservatice approach to the songwriting. But then again I'm happy to at least have two decades of great powerful vocals instead of them having played it safe for all of their career.

The first album where he actually admitted that he had considered the live aspect and hence not gone for the too demanding notes was What About Now. I remember that interview where he talked about Livin' On A Prayer, how his voice had mellowed out over the years and how he'd taken that into consideration when being in the studio for the album.