brywool wrote:Perry sounds ok on the 94 recording, but he totally avoids a lot of his high notes at this show. Listen to Only the Young, he completely changes the melody lines (in a lot of the songs actually) to accommodate his diminished range. He doesn't even sing the right chorus harmony in Only the Young, he sings the lower one. He was doing that at the end of the 83 tour with Journey too- he changed his part in the Separate Ways chorus so that it was nearly one note throughout (which was not as recorded and just wrecked that great melody line). I don't have a guitar in front of me, but I think this show is tuned down a FULL step. Not a half step (as many bands do, but a FULL step). He also changes the melody of the Oh Sherrie chorus and sings a lower harmony on the last lines of the chorus. He didn't do that when he sang the song with Journey on the ROR tour.
Perry was/is(?) a great vocalist but to say this is a great recording of him is just ... incorrect. To me, while it's very entertaining- as Steve ALWAYS was- nobody could touch him as a front guy, but man, his voice here is truthfully a shadow of what it was. The YT recording is decent enough to hear how he's changed the melody lines and song keys to accommodate his lower range.
It's not as bad as Augeri's bad shows were because Perry ALWAYS had great pitch and tone live (SA didn't). Perry's one of (if not THE) most gifted rock singer during the rock era, but this performance clearly shows him at a diminished level.
The important thing to note is that the audience could care less. It'd be the same if he came out now and toured. The audience would just be glad to see him. But as a singer, it's really apparent that he was having some pretty severe problems here. For any joe blow out there, it'd be a great vocal performance. For Steve Perry, not so much. Still the best feel of any singer of that time, but he definitely had some issues going.
It's odd that at the beginning of the Frontiers tour- he was amazing live. Something happened during that tour that put him on the road to losing some of his voice. By the end of THAT tour, he was having difficulties and the band was playing everything way fast to help him out. And those issues stayed with him and apparently got worse for him by 94.
Does anyone have a list of the tour dates he did in 94? I'd be curious to see how the shows were laid out. (Days in a row, etc.)
I wouldn't say it's "odd" that he suddenly lost something on his voice. Jeremey can pinpoint the exact moment his voice blew out. Who knows, maybe something similar happened to SP? If not, my guess is overuse combined with not taking care of himself (won't touch the drug/booze rumors, let's just call it the trials and tribulations of the road) did him in and the most severe symptoms manifested quickly, but the actual decline was not as sudden as it seemed. It's like athletes--a lot of them seemingly get old overnight. You definitely see it in my 3 main sports--football, basketball, and tennis. It's amazing. But when you objectively go back and look at games/matches over the last couple years of their alleged primes, you can see the loss of a step there, the huff and puff here, and so on. I'll bet Perry's decline wasn't as sudden and drastic as it seems to be now if you were to really analyze his decline show-by-show and night-by-night.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dofRGNCtUKI -- I assume these are the shows you're speculating being a full step down. Definitely not. Just half a step. Still frighteningly awful, in any case.
It's funny. I can pretty much hear right away to what extent a band is downtuned (and most bands I know of don't go below 1/2 step/Eb). But with Journey, I really have to check between a half or full step because it's so much more apparent when their music is downtuned than just about anyone else I can think of (from Leppard to Elton John and whoever else downtunes these days). I think that's a testament to how challenging and dependent on the full vocal range that this material really is.
Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2012 2:39 pm
