Thank you for the answer, bonjovi90 - I also think that may well have been the case.

But there's one thing I've never understood: how was it even possible for Jon to drop so low in terms of vocal stamina/abilities during the BWC tour? I understand that the Richie fiasco probably had quite a big impact on his vocal confidence (e.g. he had to push his voice harder as the backing harmonies became less prominent), but for the most part, Jon still sounded pretty decent during the 2nd North American leg (the first without Richie) and, while struggling majorly at times, was able to hit most of the notes on songs like Always and Bed Of Roses - something that started to "slip" in South Africa and Europe (May-June '13), and disappeared completely as soon as they hit the States again in July.

That said, even during the European leg (while having already lost a significant amount of vocal power and a bit of range, at least in terms of consistency), Jon was able to hit some of the high notes in songs like These Days and This Ain't A Love Song (for example, in Milan he hit the last "Yes I'm wrong..." of TAALS perfectly). And even though he was already having an extremely hard time with Always in general (most noticeably at the Gdansk show), he pretty much nailed it - as far as the '13 standards go - in Manchester, Birmingham, Madrid, Milan and London, at least.

Then again, he was already struggling a lot with Bad Name, Raise Your Hands, Born To Be My Baby, It's My Life, Keep The Faith, In These Arms and Prayer. Even some of the super-easy stuff like Captain Crash and Who Says started to become a "hit-and-miss", and that f***ing annoying "eeeee..." phrasing started to kick in as well, especially towards the end of the leg. It was particularly irritating on RYH, BTBMB and WLOL, and as Jon still continues to use it, I really hope that he'll soon find another way of pronouncing certain words while singing. Also, his voice started cracking on some of the high notes much more often than it ever used to do before (for example, during TD and TAALS in Prague).

By the time the band returned to tour the USA in mid-July '13, Jon's vocal stamina had already weakened considerably, even compared to the shows they had performed just a couple of weeks earlier in Europe. While I wasn't a Jovitalk member yet back on the BWC tour, in late 2015/early last year (nonetheless, before entering the boards myself) I checked some posts about the Always performance in Chicago on July 12th, and the comments included remarks like the following:

"The first chorus was passable, but man... The second and third were so out of key, it made me cringe. He was so far from hitting the notes, this was terrible."

"It's pitiful to listen to this."

"Always performances have pretty much summed up this tour for me. It was a song that Jon had managed to reclaim in 08 to great success, which for the most part continued into the Circle tour. Arguably he was singing Always then better than he ever did, including 95/96. The general feeling was he'd never be able to sing it again after the Bounce tour, so it was a real joy to be proven wrong. But now he keeps peddling it out, desperate to prove he can still sing it, but he clearly can't. It sounds like he's desperately trying to keep up with the song, and failing."

As my own comment, I'd like to admit that Always wasn't the only song he struggled mightily on during the Chicago show - he also performed probably one of the worst (electric) BOR versions I've ever heard him do. Even the ones from early 2010, while Jon dodged most of the high parts, were better in my opinion - at least back then Jon realized that his voice wasn't fresh enough to hit them. In Chicago he went for all of the high notes, but, for the most part, failed miserably.

And I can safely say that the auto-tuned MetLife concert video from July 25th that got broadcasted on bonjovi.com in August '13 (if I remember correctly) was a very obvious sign about Jon himself already thinking by the time that his voice was too bad to include it on an official live release (even if it was "only" an Internet one) in its original, un-doctored form. The digital pitch correction during songs like KTF, Prayer, Always and TD was so obvious, it was a (bad) joke. Even the easier-than-easy stuff like Water and Who Says was strongly doctored, obviously to (unsuccessfully) hide the fact that Jon couldn't sing basically any of the songs on the set list in key anymore.

However, this was only the beginning of a VERY big downward spiral. The Rock In Rio gig was a crap one as a whole (the set list was terribly inconsistent and Rich Scannella, replacing Teek, kept on f***ing up fills that would be easy to nail decently for pretty much anyone, myself included - and I'm not a technically accomplished drummer at all). But basically all the other flaws became obsolete once you paid attention to how Jon sounded. Yep, the guy's voice was shot to hell... literally, as it really was hell to listen to his voice throughout the show. Sometimes he'd hit a note or two - like during KTF - and you'd hold (a small amount of) hope for a split second, but by the time the band came back for the encore, Jon had lost his voice completely. Always was so big of a mess that, prior to hearing the performance for the first time, I couldn't even imagine JBJ being "able" to butcher it - or any song for that matter - as badly as he did there.

And I think we all know basically everything about the rest of the tour (Brisbane etc.)... but I still wonder how it all could happen, even acknowledging the huge mental pressure Jon faced after Richie's departure.