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First off, I don't blame the Slippery years for taking Jon's voice... I blame the Slippery years, the New Jersey years, and even the Keep The Faith years... A decade of strain, bad technique, and abuse is what I blame. Jon screaming with his high pitched signature scream throughout the entire New Jersey tour is what I blame... Like any other damaged muscle, you can pound the heck out of it when you are young but it will definitely catch-up with you later on in life... Age also takes on a natural regression in most men as well... It's a fact that most male voices deepen with age. I do agree that smoking is the worst thing Jon could have done but I don't think it's the contributing factor... His voice was already declining before he started smoking... I recently went to a Brett Michael's show and also watched some recent footage of Sebastian Bach and it's all the same for them too... Back in the 80's, Rock Stars didn't last this long and I don't think Jon was looking 35 years ahead.. If someone told a 23 year old JBJ, "if you continue to sing like this, you probably won't be able to sing 35 years from now", He was probably like, "who cares, as long as I could make it to 20 I'm good" Just saying!!!! |
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I still just find it so baffling that Jon decided to take up smoking in the mid 90's. It just seems like a really silly decision for any one who makes a living out of their voice...especially for someone who is as level headed and business minded as Jon...
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Sorry, I didn't read all of the thread so I don't know if it was touched upon, wasn't he smoking as early as the 80's?
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No. He has said many, many times that he started smoking on the set of M&V. Given the complete stupidity of a 32 year old singer taking up smoking, I'm sure this is true. Why make himself look like an idiot if it's not true.
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But, what happened to Jon's voice between the summer of 2011 and the spring of 2012? During concerts such as Oslo, Helsinki, London, Dublin (both nights), Bucharest, Mannheim, Udine, Vienna, Barcelona, San Sebastian and Lisbon '11 his voice was fresh, he could hit the high notes on the ballads like nothing at all, he went far out of his vocal comfort zone (additional high notes, rasp/screaming etc.) on multiple occasions...
All of that had completely disappeared by around May '12. Why? |
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But looking back at it - the new-found way of singing had probably also taken its toll on him. Not only did they tour immensely between 2008 and 2011, but as he regained confidence in his singing they dug out all of the vocally demanding stuff that had mostly been avoided in the 2003-2006 period. He was in good form in Europe 2011 and it was a great time to be a fan, but there were already some signs of him being on the maximum of his capabilities. In Dresden and Munich I noticed him straining his chords much harder on songs like IBTFY than he had done in 2010, in Barcelona the energy was immense, but the voice not up for all of the set and Dusseldorf had been quite off for most of the night. While he was still able to hit a great amount of notes and was stunning on nights when he was on (like I attended at the concert in Mannheim), his tone had slowly degraded (to an even more nasal one) from 3 years prior. I always like to take I Believe for comparison: Yes, the Lisbon 2011 version was stunning in its way of delivery and the passion behind it, but going by the singing alone the one from Twickenham 2008 is much easier to listen since he didn't push that much to belt out the notes. It seemed so much more natural then. That was moaning on a high level for a 50 year old who had to sing these difficult songs back then, but a difference had already been noticeable. |
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. |
But looking back at it - the new-found way of singing had probably also taken its toll on him. Not only did they tour immensely between 2008 and 2011, but as he regained confidence in his singing they dug out all of the vocally demanding stuff that had mostly been avoided in the 2003-2006 period.
Why did they avoid the vocally demanding stuff in 2003-2006? His voice didn't sound bad at all. Also what helpedo him sing the hard songs again in 2008? Was it the new technique? |
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