I don't think it's Richie, Dave sings the higher notes in a loose way, and he almost always drops the key on " LIVin on a pra-yer". I honestly don't think I've seen a single live performance in which Richie actually hits those notes.

Good God, imagine if they decided to keep the key change in the last chorus. Jon will probably pass out right on the spot if he had to sing it nowadays.

In my opinion Richie is singing with DAVE "Livin on a prayer" before the solo and after that it is only Dave.

I imagine he was nearly passing out then

I don't think so, Jon was very very capable vocally back in '95. I'm not saying it was child's play for him to sing that high, but he wasn't straining as much as in, say, 1986/87.

The high "Liviiin on a prayeeer" before the solo , it's Richie singing that, in the key change, David does the screaming, and Richie sings every second line.

Up until the solo, it's Richie on "Livin' On A Prayer", that's very audible. After the solo, Richie and Dave shared the chorus with Richie doing "Woah, we're half way there" and then David on the "Livin' on a prayer...", much like Jon and the audience in live performances.
Richie used to sing this one with his head voice live which made it hard to decipher him from the others since we've been used to him singing the 2nd voice in the songs with his full chest voice. I guess he was just smarter than Jon by going for his head voice and not blowing out his vocals chords on Prayer that way.
About the solo, Richie rarely did full blown solos on rough early studio demos. Even the NJ demos, which were made at a much later stage in the recording process than this LOAP demo, have much less fleshed out solo parts than the final record.
And I guess it should've been established by now that Alec simply rarely was in the studio other than on the Fahrenheit record :mrgreen:

Of course he was great, but he found Always in the original key hard then, hence it was tuned down half a step. I really don't think he could've done it live.

It's not that Always was hard for him, it became a normal procedure for the band. Since 1988, they've been playing everything half a step down, no matter how hard or easy the given song is.

Jon was pretty much at his vocal peak in May 1993, when the demo for Always was recorded. Still, this was pretty much him pushing himself to the border of his capabilities. He always did that in the studio and it's obvious why it wasn't redone in such a high range a year later.