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Rasp is Axl's alter ego!!


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Boom, there it is! Seems Axl starting looking at dealing with his maniac early life around when he and the band got huge. I just don't consider Axl's voice raspy until 1988. Before that is was most clean and "gritty", with off nights sprinkled in every once in a while. In 1988, he pushed it hard, and Rasp Axl Rose was born.

He was nuts in 1991 = crazy dirty rasp.

1992-1993 = therapy is showing signs of life = more controlled, more consistent singing

2001-2002 = totally new Axl...where's the rasp???

2006/7 = gotta kick this shit into high gear. Huge festivals, album's about to drop

2009/10 = you say that Chinese sucks? Well, fuck you = rasp attack!

2011 - 2014 = awe fuck it. Rain in Rio was a terrible omen. Doomed.

2016 = New/old Guns = you get a little bit back. After all, with Slash now cuz he brings in huge money so please allow little rasp here and a little rasp there. And Coma

2016 = AC/DC = who am I? Why....it's alter Axl. You Rasp'd Me All Night Long

 

 

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^I call bull - he sounded class. His voice is definitely starting to tire though, Grandpa Angus should give him more recovery time, but nothing to do with sitting. If anything he seemed to be hitting the high notes easier when he was standing.

I think "Raxl" just shows up when he puts the work in:

  • Years of not singing led to 01/02 (the 01 shows were pretty good.. 02 was... eh... "10 seconds of rasp!")
  • Working hard for 4 years led to incredibly fit and vocally strong Axl in 06
  • Let himself go a bit by 09
  • Got fit again by 2010, started getting weak/inconsistent by the end of 2010 (label refused CD2?)
  • Let himself go completely by 2011
  • Worked hard to get ready for the RnRHOF in 2012 but didn't show up
  • Gave up again mid 2012-2014
  • Vegas 2014 seems to be showing he can still do it/saying goodbye to CD-era with a bang
  • April 2016 - he's back, he's fit, he's determined
  • AC/DC shows - he's worked harder than he has in 10 years (probably)

That's just my theory anyway. I wouldn't rule out vocal injuries/surgeries or illness though.

/endobsessiveanalysing

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Someone on a YouTube comment said Axl had vocal surgery in 1999 that destroyed his mid voice and so he was left with power rasp or Mickey falsetto....I had never even heard that rumor 

but I think Axl sounds fine in all the ACDC shows...incredible really. I don't think his voice is tiring as much as the climate changes are getting to him. One city it's hot and one city it's cold and windy. Axl wearing the scarf is an indication that something has gotten to him, so he's just trying to protect his throat currently it seems. Playing these huge stadium venues has raised his vocal level and I think if he keeps working out he'll be good to go!

this is an old pic but you can see how little his arms are and weak his sternum looks muscularly....now look at a recent pic of Axl and you can see how much muscle he's added on...so getting in shape in my opinion will help him in the long run. 

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Personallly, i prefer sweet child with no rasp,  but full rasp at the outro ( where do we gooooo ) .. For me that would be the " perfect version" 

 

I think ( well, now we know it) axl always had it in him.  The big question here is, why he choose to sing "that way" for the last four or five years?? 

My theory:  they all figure out back in 2010( probably during that duff thing during the tour)  that the reunion was going to happen. So i think axl decided to save some bullets, he's not spring chiken anymore.

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Just now, IncitingChaos said:

Someone on a YouTube comment said Axl had vocal surgery in 1999 that destroyed his mid voice and so he was left with power rasp or Mickey falsetto....I had never even heard that rumor 

but I think Axl sounds fine in all the ACDC shows...incredible really. I don't think his voice is tiring as much as the climate changes are getting to him. One city it's hot and one city it's cold and windy. Axl wearing the scarf is an indication that something has gotten to him, so he's just trying to protect his throat currently it seems. Playing these huge stadium venues has raised his vocal level and I think if he keeps working out he'll be good to go!

this is an old pic but you can see how little his arms are and weak his sternum looks muscularly....now look at a recent pic of Axl and you can see how much muscle he's added on...so getting in shape in my opinion will help him in the long run. 

I think that surgery thing its bs. Axl had a pretty perfect mid range on 2010.  He did some over the top shows that year.  I have in my ipod "dont cry" from puerto rico ( i was there) and "if the world" from Caracas ( there too) .  axl was so perfect that i had to look for vídeos and listen them several times to realize that it wasnt a dream or some "illusion"

I think he just need to sing a lot day after day to get his throut in shape

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1 hour ago, SEPTEM said:

I think that surgery thing its bs. Axl had a pretty perfect mid range on 2010.  He did some over the top shows that year.  I have in my ipod "dont cry" from puerto rico ( i was there) and "if the world" from Caracas ( there too) .  axl was so perfect that i had to look for vídeos and listen them several times to realize that it wasnt a dream or some "illusion"

I think he just need to sing a lot day after day to get his throut in shape

The surgery might not be bs but I think you could make a case that Axl still has a mid range that may have been diminished bc of normal wear and tear than anything else. He's shown signs of it over the years but it was clearly not as crisp when he returned in 2001. 

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10 hours ago, ludurigan said:

what?

 

 

 

I hear mostly clean, and powerful. Doesn't mean I'm right of course. But I hear a huge difference between his singing style here and how he sounded in 1991 and 2010, for example. 

Edited by PirateRadio
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7 minutes ago, PirateRadio said:

 

I hear mostly clean, and powerful. Doesn't mean I'm right of course. But I hear a huge difference between his singing style here and how he sounded in 1991 and 2010, for example. 

i dont know about 2010

but I never seem ANY singer do what Axl did in Indiana 1991

(and other shows from the US tour)

Tell me about ripping your vocal chords to pieces!

Gotta give to him,

thats giving 110% for the band and the crowd!

thats fucking rock n roll! 

and it somehow sounds fucking great

 

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14 minutes ago, ludurigan said:

i dont know about 2010

but I never seem ANY singer do what Axl did in Indiana 1991

(and other shows from the US tour)

Tell me about ripping your vocal chords to pieces!

Gotta give to him,

thats giving 110% for the band and the crowd!

thats fucking rock n roll! 

and it somehow sounds fucking great

 

Oh man. Couldn't agree more. In joking about an alter ego, I really had Indiana 91 in mind because I far as I know he never sounded more out of control on stage...in his home state, with family there. Go figure.

 

What they did from 91-93 should not be forgotten. Performing those songs seems to be a monumental task. So much goes into the vocals, and it was also cool that Slash truly made it a two man show. Touring that music for 20 whatever months it was very very special. There were a true touring band.

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1 hour ago, PirateRadio said:

Oh man. Couldn't agree more. In joking about an alter ego, I really had Indiana 91 in mind because I far as I know he never sounded more out of control on stage...in his home state, with family there. Go figure.

 

What they did from 91-93 should not be forgotten. Performing those songs seems to be a monumental task. So much goes into the vocals, and it was also cool that Slash truly made it a two man show. Touring that music for 20 whatever months it was very very special. There were a true touring band.

Yeah, what a tour. Not so special to me. I have a very different view on the 1992-93 tour, specially 1992 the circus-era.

To me GNR went downhill (it was basically over) when Izzy left in 1991. Then GNR kinda came back on the stripped tour in 1993 -- specially for the five shows with Izzy.

Everything after that was Axl solo era. Now Slash and Duff are back but the hired hands are still there butchering the music. I wish I could like it but it just sounds awful.

Everythng will be allright when Izzy gets back and they get rid of the hired hands and get themselves a good drummer - hopefully steven!

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41 minutes ago, ludurigan said:

Yeah, what a tour. Not so special to me. I have a very different view on the 1992-93 tour, specially 1992 the circus-era.

To me GNR went downhill (it was basically over) when Izzy left in 1991. Then GNR kinda came back on the stripped tour in 1993 -- specially for the five shows with Izzy.

Everything after that was Axl solo era. Now Slash and Duff are back but the hired hands are still there butchering the music. I wish I could like it but it just sounds awful.

Everythng will be allright when Izzy gets back and they get rid of the hired hands and get themselves a good drummer - hopefully steven!

I'm right there with ya. Fortus needs to bring it down 100 notches, and there appears no hope for Frank. No idea why he's sucking now, but did an okay job covering the songs 5 years ago. But like you say, the bottom line is that both gotta go. I would be okay with Matt if Steven is able to get the job done.

 

I use the word "special" for the 91-92 tour as an all encompassing sort of thing. It was absolutely crazy.

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18 hours ago, IncitingChaos said:

i just don't get how he can sing Shook Me all night Long like this 

but sweet child like this....completely different songs but sweet child would do ok with some rasp in it. 

Absolutely nothing wrong with that version of sweet child. A clean voice doesn't automatcally = mickey. There's power and control there.

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14 minutes ago, Dangelus said:

Absolutely nothing wrong with that version of sweet child. A clean voice doesn't automatcally = mickey. There's power and control there.

I think he would do better to hold the notes a little longer at the end of each line, closer to the studio version. 

They seem to be in a rush to get this song over with. The only time he's sang it properly with or without rasp was in 86 or 88...I can't remember I saw a video of it a while back 

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these are the best performances of the song over the years imo, I think the biggest differences is when he doesn't stop and go and sound choppy in between words, I like the seamless transition from word to word in 86

Edited by IncitingChaos
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2011 - 2016 Sweet Child is the worst vocal in the entire set. Rocket Queen is a close second worst. I just think it's pretty ridiculous that Axl's performance is the glaring weak link in the band's most popular song of all time. Again...go figure, huh..

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1 hour ago, PirateRadio said:

2011 - 2016 Sweet Child is the worst vocal in the entire set. Rocket Queen is a close second worst. I just think it's pretty ridiculous that Axl's performance is the glaring weak link in the band's most popular song of all time. Again...go figure, huh..

As far as difficulty goes SCOM is not terribly hard to manage. There aren't many words, the most difficult part is hitting the vocals Axl did on the studio version but on the UYI tour Axl never even tried to...the live version has rasp in it, the studio is clean...I kinda liked that they did that, but the clean voice he puts on it from 11-16 comes off as weak, and I'm convinced after the ACDC shows that if he wanted to he could take his vocals up a notch and turn SCOM into a much better live song than its been recently. It should be a highlight of the show. 

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The AC/DC songs are mostly higher pitch shrieking, closer to the way Axl sang like a banshee in the mid-to-late '80s, which are the songs he was always able to nail live even when his voice was at its worst (I'm thinking songs like Nightrain, My Michelle, the end of It's So Easy, etc.). Rocket Queen and SCOM require a lot of vocal melody where he isn't shrieking, and I think that's why he started doing the helium voice on them, because he lost that ability to maintain rasp at "medium" levels (sorry, I'm not technically versed enough in singing to know how to phrase that). Hell, even when I'm singing along, I find it much easier to do the rasp when you're just kind of shrieking along to stuff like the Nightrain chorus, but it's far harder to hit the notes on Rocket Queen. The songs where he has difficulty are when he began really trying to change his style, singing with the hard rasp in the medium range on stuff like YCBM, and that's why when he sings those now, even when his voice is really good, it still has a bit of that Mickey Mouse falsetto. I think he just lost a lot of his lower register power with the rasp.

But AC/DC tunes are almost all exclusively sung in the really high shrieking rasp that he is still capable of achieving, which is why he sounds consistently good on them -- plus, I do think the fact that he rehearsed with the band, and had a lot to prove, made him hungry and made him give more of a shit.

Bono said in another thread that in GN'R he's basically only accountable to himself, and as with any job, when you don't have to live up to anyone else's standard it's more easy to kind of flake out -- but in AC/DC he had millions of fans ready to turn against him, he had a band standard to live up to, and a legacy to preserve that was no longer just his own legacy. I think that fire in his belly was something we hadn't really seen or heard since he first came back with NuGN'R.

As for why his voice was so poor in 2001/2002 -- I think he fucked his vocal cords up permanently on the UYI tour, screaming haggardly every night, and he probably re-learned to sing with a professional vocal coach who taught him that high-pitched helium falsetto, and because the new band had a bit of a new sound he just decided to switch it up and go that direction.

But as evidence for my theory that the shrieking is easier for him to achieve rasp on -- if you go back to '01/'02, all the bits he sounded good on were those involving that banshee wail: the opening scream of WTTJ, the Live and Let Die scream, the It's So Easy outro, My Michelle. It's always been the midrange, melodic songs where he has to switch back and forth (like lower range on WTTJ verses into higher pitch on the chorus) where his voice ends up reverting to Mickey Mouse.

I'm sure someone who's more aware of all the technical precision of singing could correct me on some of the stuff I've said above, but I think my general gut instinct is correct even if I'm not sure what kinds of terms to use to describe it.

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2 hours ago, Estranged Reality said:

The AC/DC songs are mostly higher pitch shrieking, closer to the way Axl sang like a banshee in the mid-to-late '80s, which are the songs he was always able to nail live even when his voice was at its worst (I'm thinking songs like Nightrain, My Michelle, the end of It's So Easy, etc.). Rocket Queen and SCOM require a lot of vocal melody where he isn't shrieking, and I think that's why he started doing the helium voice on them, because he lost that ability to maintain rasp at "medium" levels (sorry, I'm not technically versed enough in singing to know how to phrase that). Hell, even when I'm singing along, I find it much easier to do the rasp when you're just kind of shrieking along to stuff like the Nightrain chorus, but it's far harder to hit the notes on Rocket Queen. The songs where he has difficulty are when he began really trying to change his style, singing with the hard rasp in the medium range on stuff like YCBM, and that's why when he sings those now, even when his voice is really good, it still has a bit of that Mickey Mouse falsetto. I think he just lost a lot of his lower register power with the rasp.

But AC/DC tunes are almost all exclusively sung in the really high shrieking rasp that he is still capable of achieving, which is why he sounds consistently good on them -- plus, I do think the fact that he rehearsed with the band, and had a lot to prove, made him hungry and made him give more of a shit.

Bono said in another thread that in GN'R he's basically only accountable to himself, and as with any job, when you don't have to live up to anyone else's standard it's more easy to kind of flake out -- but in AC/DC he had millions of fans ready to turn against him, he had a band standard to live up to, and a legacy to preserve that was no longer just his own legacy. I think that fire in his belly was something we hadn't really seen or heard since he first came back with NuGN'R.

As for why his voice was so poor in 2001/2002 -- I think he fucked his vocal cords up permanently on the UYI tour, screaming haggardly every night, and he probably re-learned to sing with a professional vocal coach who taught him that high-pitched helium falsetto, and because the new band had a bit of a new sound he just decided to switch it up and go that direction.

But as evidence for my theory that the shrieking is easier for him to achieve rasp on -- if you go back to '01/'02, all the bits he sounded good on were those involving that banshee wail: the opening scream of WTTJ, the Live and Let Die scream, the It's So Easy outro, My Michelle. It's always been the midrange, melodic songs where he has to switch back and forth (like lower range on WTTJ verses into higher pitch on the chorus) where his voice ends up reverting to Mickey Mouse.

I'm sure someone who's more aware of all the technical precision of singing could correct me on some of the stuff I've said above, but I think my general gut instinct is correct even if I'm not sure what kinds of terms to use to describe it.

This. This x 10 000. The mid-range is the biggest problem, the high screams and lowest register rasp are still pretty easy for him to nail. The only question is - how the hell did 2010 happen and can he ever bring it back again? He sounded pretty good in the mids in 2006, too. People might say it's an age thing, but he wasn't exactly a flower of youth in 2010, yet he sang the best he has since 1993. I personally think he can bring it back, he just needs to care enough. He's starting to get used to the fans adoring him again and I'm afraid he's gonna let himself go for that reason. Let's hope I'm wrong, though.

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I think when Axl channels Mickey, he thinks he sounds like (or at least tries to) Bon Scott and Freddie Mercury. But he doesn't. He just doesn't have that voice. And those guys couldn't do what Axl does/did with all the higher pitch screaming. I'm not sure if that mid range was ever really there consistently past 1986/7. He often grinded his way through those mid range parts. There was no way he was ever going to recreate the AFD studio vocals on stage. If the rumors are true, and he recorded each line separately, than there was never really an intention to do so, unlike, say the Eagles, who's purpose was to record in a way which allowed them to perform the songs live in exactly the same form.

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