One thing that is quite apparent is that a lot of 70s/80s singers are reaching the end of the road. They weren't the best when it came to technique, and are now seeing the consequences.

Bono was better than Jon in these last years.

Sorry not really seeing your point.

The first link is dreadful, but there are Jon links just as band (also my opinion)

The MTV unplugged is professionally filmed and recorded and undoubtably touched up (possibly the reason that it's the only thing by them that I ever really enjoyed). Obviously you are a fan and that's cool, but I never was. I always thought they were vastly overrated and had huge success with little talent. But we all like different things. Not saying he could never sing, but I don't rate him with the greats.

But his decline has been a long process. I saw Kiss in 1997 (I went to see one of the support bands) and (again, in my opinion) Stanley was shockingly bad then.

I was also at Download Festival last time they played and left 30 mins into their set. But others were loving it. Each to their own.

Yeah could be, you're more qualified than me to comment. I just feel like mid 90s Bono was more akin to 2000s Jon, but could be wrong. He's just one of those singers that everytime I hear live footage he seems to be struggling...apart from the earlier stuff.

Joe Elliott used to be even worse, but I think he sought some help and has completely changed his style of singing and it works really well for him. Unfortunately I think Jon left it too late to take it seriously.

Vince was never great and has been shocking for at least 15+ years.

You're right, to say he was never a great singer is unfair, certainly at his peak he was, but that was a very long time ago now. My point was that he doesn't sound as bad a jon does currently, but his voice started to deteriate a long time before ten years ago. He's been struggling vocally since around the same time as Jon has.

Stanley certainly had a lot of range and control when he was on, and now he doesn't. That's all I was trying to get across. Whether you like their music or not is obviously down to taste, but that part is rather obvious.

Side note: PS is miming to tapes these days. Supposedly Joe Elliot has had a ton of such help live, too, and for quite some time. He sounded great on the last Lepard studio release, so he's still got that going either way.

As i said, he was poor when I saw him in 97. I feel he as a singer and the band overall are overrated. Personal opinion, as a vocalist he could never touch Jon at his peak.

Leppard have been accused of this since the 80s, but mainly for backing vocals. Utter rubbish, it's just a band of people that can actually sing. However....

Around 2008 I saw the band several times. Joe struggled every night, I honestly couldn't see how he could maintain singing like that. It sounded like his voice was on it's last legs. I'd seen then a few times before that and his voice was hit and miss from 2000 onwards, there seemed to be a very gradual decline from the early to late 90s.

Anyways a few years after that tour Joe had to pull out of the show on the Leppard cruise that they did because his voice was gone. They had a US tour booked later in that year and I'm convinced Joe was miming for that tour. The tell tale part for me was in Rock Of Ages when he would always sing "we're gonna set <instert town name here> alight". On this tour he reverted back to the album lyric of "we're gonna set this town alight". He's never done this before. He also seemed to be singing with the mic close to his mouth and his head down a lot of the time. I don't think he was comfortable miming at all and was quite self consious about it.

After that I believe that Leppard took a break and when they came back it was very obvious that something was different with the way he was singing. I think, in the same way that Jon does with the high note in Prayer, Joe has a couple of higher parts on tape, but on the whole he is singing live. When they did the Hysteria tour a couple of years ago, you could occasionally hear the crack or wobble in his voice, and the town name in the Rock Of Ages lyric was restored. I think he's learned to use his falsetto more effectively and with more power for certain parts, rather than trying to belt it out full voice. There is no doubt in my mind that he had some serious help from a coach over that period.

A band that were definitely using lead vocal tapes were Journey at the very end of their time with Steve Augeri (around 2006)

the voice still lives in him


U2 Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses http://www.youtube.com/v/cf9jiZSNEV4
U2 Acrobat http://www.youtube.com/v/WA_XXXa67IY

Yeah completely agree

These are pretty good. Sound like pro recordings tho. If only Jon could get anywhere close to this!