Monker wrote:
According to Augeri, he said he could not talk about it. I'm sure he signed a NDA when he left the band. But, he said, "All I can say is I sang every song, every night." That implies that somebody in the control made a decision to use prerecorded vocals or his live vocal and it was not his choice.
He never implied or said he didn't have a choice. Imo, that simply means he was vocalizing (badly) to fulfill his contract obligations. It's probably the same reason he started playing guitar on stage in 2005. Basically trying to justify his worth.
There was no unilateral mastermind in the control room. This all had to be worked out ahead of time with Elson, as there had to be coordination for when SA would actually ad-lib with the audience mid-song or at the end of songs.
As noted on here, in 2005, SA also switched to a large fuzzy mic head and started concealing his mouth. It is what it is. The sad thing is, there are touring artists out there, still engaging in similar behavior. One prominent lipper, 90s country artist John Michael Montgomery, recently retired.
You can find isolated examples of Augeri lipping even before 2005. Send Her My Love in this 2004 clip is 100% from Vegas 2001 and there's no way this wasn't rehearsed ahead of time. It's probably the only song out of the entire 2004 concert where his pitch isn't all over the place - because it's from the auto-tuned Vegas DVD. Are we to believe that Elson just randomly flipped a switch to punk Steve on that day? It doesn't make any sense. Steve has also said (paraphrasing): 'Elson has heard me at my best and my worst.' These 2 guys had a close working relationship. Of course the whole thing was mapped out to every last detail. The band was in on it too.
https://youtu.be/IcJhXnL6KZw?is=MeMZEFgwosIaHTJV