brywool wrote:In those days, steroid use (the shot kind) was prevalent on tours. Journey's tours had tons of shows and tons of shows in a row. I remember a Showtime special where Steve said "I provide myself with preventative medicine" when asked how his voice could stand up. That was during the Departure tour. It's open to speculation what that was, but there weren't and aren't a lot of medicinal things out there that will keep your voice in shape. There just aren't. There are, however, things that can be done once you've overworked it. I know, even today, a lot of people opt for the steroid shots. Supposedly, if it's not over done, then you can get away with it (I'm skeptical about that). But man, with the kinds of tours that Journey was doing, and the range of those songs, I cannot imagine that he was not using steroids.
Doing a ton of shows like that compounds vocal fatigue. At some point it builds up to the point where you have to take a bit of time off just to shut up and let the swelling in your vocal chords go away. The only other way to get rid of it is steroids that I know of. Trust me, though I'm no brilliant singer, but I've tried to find the secret to 'singing every day at your best' without "help" since I first started performing as a kid and I'm an old dude now. The one way that you can POSSIBLY avoid this is by proper vocal technique. But you know, I've heard that for years and even with proper technique being used, people still get vocally fatigued. When you sing vocally fatigued, you have to work harder to 'get there'. Working harder, you push more. Pushing more will get you through the gig, but compound the swelling and it's a vicious circle. Add stress to that. Add age to that and you're GOING to have problems. Keep doing it and those problems become permanent.
Jeremey's the vocal God here, he can probably explain it better n me.
Thanks Bry (who's no slouch himself in the vocal department), just saw this....
RE steroids, yes, I'm sure Perry used them. I KNOW of two instances he used them (when he blew his voice out in Dallas and some midwestern town on Frontiers and ROR tours, according to Cain) and I wouldn't be surprised if they were used on the Escape tour, given his physical appearance during the Street Talk promotions. In fact, if Perry overused them to get through that mammoth Escape tour, it would explain a lot of the change of his vocal sound for the ST and Frontiers records. I also know that Steve Augeri overused them, and suffered one of the most common side effects from overuse (when using a steroid inhaler which was seen on stage during some shows), which was thrush mouth and an infection of the vocal cords.
I have used steroids, both tablets, and injections, a couple of times a year NOT due to vocal wear, but because of an outside illness. We've never cancelled a Frontiers show due to vocal health, but there's been times when allergies or sinus infections have been so bad there's been no way to sing without them. The problem becomes a reliance on steroids to mask over actual vocal damage. My ENT at Duke would NOT prescribe this medicine unless he was able to do a visual inspection of my vocal cords and make sure there was no damage in the FIRST place, only using them to allow me to do my job during a bout of sickness.
I've been lucky because the most shows I do are 3-4 times a week, getting 3-4 days between shows to rest and recuperate. Nobody really tours any more like Journey did in the early 80s, but then again nobody really cancels shows that often for strictly vocal issues either. In ONE Journey singer's case, I think steroids were used to run the guy into the ground when there was already obvious damage being done due to misuse of the voice.
As most people know, singers can't just replace their voices like guitarists can replace strings, etc. It's frustrating for other people in the band sometimes because it's relatively much easier to play through a head cold or flu. Now let a guitarist slam their fingers in a car door and go play guitar that night, and the shoe would be on the other foot, hahaha!
And Mini-Lee (Deano) is being coached his rebuttal from The Nut Hut. 
Wonder if Journey's album will go gold within 24 hours somewhere too. 
) and he was saying with Jon doing the two 250-300 show tours back to back like that he was pretty much toast by the end of the Jersey tour, physically and vocally.......but too many people were counting on the $$$ for him to stop. I could so see the similarities of JBJ and SP when they pretty much walked away after the NJ and ROR tours. But in the end things were handled much differently by the bands down the road, but then I think Richie and Neal are two very different animals. 
