This is super interesting. Has anyone else ever said it so on-the-nose besides Axl? It's actually so on the nose that it makes me doubt that Dave's account is the full truth.
1) Axl’s sense of melody just realllly speaks to me. He writes and delivers vocals in a way I find catchy, even in the songs that I don’t like as much.
2) good riff driven hard rock with the coolest sounding guitar tones in the whole business
While ACDC might have slightly accelerated the decline of Axl's voice, it still would have come anyway. As others have said, Axl sounded pretty good in 2016/2017 on the GNR tour.