What is Wrong With Jon's Voice?

I saw Def Leppard last summer and althought the show was a bit boring, Joe Elliot did sound good.

The problem isn't hitting the long range notes. he does that in Amen and Hallelujah, but the tone is so low, it's not that difficult. It's the high notes he can't hit.

That's because he got someone to help him get his voice back to 1983 shape. It can be done. And as someone else said, Jon's voice wasn't blown out on the Slippery tour. He sounded the best he's ever sounded on the New Jersey Tour.

People's voices do change over time. Happened with Steven Tyler, but he still sounds good. But if you're too lazy to do anything about it, then it is what it is. He needs to relearn how to sing properly, and for whatever reason, doesn't seem to care enough.

That's a fact

That was true until about 1994. Not anymore. At least not live.

This is off-topic, but I can't let that slide, matey! Sorry but Axl has more left than you can imagine, he just chooses when to use it. In 2002 he came back and sang clean falsetto. In 2006-2010 he went back to his old raspy voice and sang the absolute living shit out of everything and I can 100% guarantee you from listening to every single boot that in 2010 he had more power and range CONSISTENTLY than he did on the VERY patchy Illusion tour. However he has since 2011 gone back to singing clean falsetto (we hardcore fans call it the Mickey Mouse voice) and it's purely to preserve his voice because he's been coasting playing hits tours not promoting Chinese as in 2006-2010. However when he e.g. goes crawling back to a venue he no-showed or walked out of he brings his A-Game and turns the rasp back on instantly (see Philly 2012 or Dublin) before going back to clean falsetto the next night). I can all but guarantee that come the next album he'll be screaming rasp again just like Steven Tyler still is. In the meantime, watch this Welcome To The Jungle from 2006 and tell me you don't wish Jon still had half of his fire. Talk about ****ing screams, it was 1989 the last time Jon could do anything like that:


Back on topic, I totally agree with you about the audience. Jon's been doing his looong notes at the end of Hallelujah and loving the cheap pop for years but having worn it out he wrote his own version, Amen, so he can still get the cheap pop XD. The reality is that even on the record with whatever fairy dust Shanks sprinkles on, his Amen high notes are still very nasal. But live on that BBC2 show they're almost unlistenable, partly because he probably hasn't done any work on his voice pre-promo/tour.

He might not have blown it in the 80s; the point is he sang badly and the damage he did to his voice meant it declined rapidly in the 90s.

What makes you think he could get his voice from 20 years ago back the way Elliot apparently did? I don't know Elliot at all, can you post a video of how bad he was before and how much better he was after this coaching?

How do you know he hasn't tried? Like I said, he clearly increased his range between 2006 and 2008 and appeared to be trying much harder on stage to sing well on the LH tour than the HAND tour.

Again, not trying to derail the thread or start any Axl vs Jon crap (Santa Fe and Something To Believe are in my top 10 songs of all time) just interested in the comparison given their similar ages and how badly and harshly Axl used to sing (although he had 1993-2002 off).

However, Sebastian Bach asked Axl to sing on his 2008 album and Axl obliged. He sang a cover of Back In The Saddle and a new Baz song. Then Baz asked him to sing on another new one and basically Axl was getting irritable at being asked for too much so he agreed but made a very clear point on the call/answer duet of singing Baz under the table as if to say 'I'm the real bossman, here'. Just check where Axl comes in at 1:50 here. This ain't no pro-tools shit (Roy Z recorded it and said it's a completely dry vocal on the album and he nearly fell off his chair when he heard it in the studio). This is Axl aged 46 in 2008 and you can't tell me that doesn't sound like Axl Rose aged 25. "Now I said it's ovveerrrrrroooooooooooooooooooooohhh!"

I agree with what everyone has said with the exception of Seb being right 95% of the time.

Your voice is a muscle. Asking why Jon's voice has changed is like asking why a football player isn't as fast, in his 50's as he was in his 20s, after he had repeated cortisone shots, fractures, and surgeries on his leg.

Joe Elliot is doing greatest hits shows with the same set list for an hour and a half which makes it a little easier for him to retrain his voice. Jon is doing mixed 3 hour shows.

I do think Jon managed to get to a decent place. We notice it more as fans but if you played the new album for someone and then dragged them to a concert, they probably wouldn't even notice.

My main gripe with Jon's vocal change is the fact that they are writing the songs around it. We are getting these "What Do You Got" type songs with no substance. If Jon rerecorded These Days today, it would be a totally different album.

Like I've said many times over, Jon's voice used to be able to carry any song into greatness. Now Jon needs the song to carry his voice which is the reason for the big productions. FAIL

On a side note, when talking about deteriorating voices. Sebastian Bach used to have, for me, one of the greatest voices of all rock singers. Just recently I got a blast of watching some 18 & Life performances again and after seeing the one from Wembley 1991 and Moscow 1989:

I stumbled across this recent official release (with vocals even clearly re-recorded in the studio):

The way his golden voice went downhill really hurts...

Quit in 2009.