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Did Axl's voice peak in 93-94?


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yeah i think he had pretty much perfected his voice at that time. actually i think the whole band was at their technical peak at that time, which makes it all the more disappointing we didn't get a legitimate album as i think it would have rivaled Appetite as the best album (most raw vs most technically sound)

Edited by -W.A.R-
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12 minutes ago, Nosaj Thing said:

1993 was his best year - by far!

This. It was his most consistent live sans maybe 86-87. Those Skin N' Bones shows were amazing. Some of his best vocals are on TSI as well, as much as I enjoy it, its a shame it was wasted on covers.

Edited by ChineseIRS
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I loved his voice on the Illusions, hated pretty much the tour (it was way too much, voice shot - though some shows were impressive). LOVED his parts on SFTD - to me that's Axl's peak right there. Hated 2001-2002, loved the 2006 tour, loved some of the things he tried on CD (love the album) with cleaner vocals (something like Prostitute for example), loved the 2010 tour, hated 2011-2014 and love what we've heard so far in 2016!!

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I think his peak was 1986-1989. When you hear You're Crazy on that late night show you'd be hard pressed not to agree. I never heard Axl sound that great during even one single UYI show. Not that the UYI tours sucked or anything. He sounded like a wild, angry, vicious mad man on a mission to destroy every mother fucker that stood in his way. It was great. But pure, pitch perfect singing with grit? Those were the 80's shows imo.

Edited by Nintari
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Guys, guys...

LLAS, sftd, TSL...can you guys just sometimes write something without abbriviations?

 

has it ever occurred if you use so much abbreviation not even hardest of the hardcore fans among us won't knowb what you are talking about.

eg., evreryone knows the meanings of UYI, TSI, AFD, YCBM, SCOM..., but I haven't got a faintest idea what the above three are...

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4 hours ago, shotsfired cro said:

Guys, guys...

LLAS, sftd, TSL...can you guys just sometimes write something without abbriviations?

 

has it ever occurred if you use so much abbreviation not even hardest of the hardcore fans among us won't knowb what you are talking about.

eg., evreryone knows the meanings of UYI, TSI, AFD, YCBM, SCOM..., but I haven't got a faintest idea what the above three are...

Live Like A Suicide, Sympathy For The Devil and The Spaghetti Incident.

Sometimes I have to search a bit but I don't mind, I even enjoy it actually - those 3 are used very often, same as the ones you listed.

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15 hours ago, Pedrolg said:

They are re-recorded.

 

There's been a lot of debate on this. A few years ago I attended a panel with Jim Barber, an A&R guy at Geffen whose last project with the company was spearheading the Live Era album (which he said was one of the biggest disappointments of his career). He swore up and down that the vocals on that album were just heavily doctored from UYI shows and rehearsals. That being said, he openly admitted he was so tired of the project that he did not really keep a close eye on a lot of it towards the end. He did say there was no specific recording sessions where Axl sat in a booth and re-recorded vocals. There was no "let's try 'My Michelle' again Axl." As Barber said, it was hard enough to get Axl singing new songs. The last thing Axl wanted to do was sit in a studio and record old songs. 

Others have posted here who might be "in the know" and suggested that while many of the vocals are definitely from 1998/1999, many of them might come from times Axl jumped in and sang with the band while they were rehearsing old songs (mainly for the re-recorded Appetite). 

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I don't particularly like his 93 tone, like on You're Crazy the deeper raspier parts from 88 that I think are his finest vocals ever are replaced with a strangled cat approach. The "I've been walking the streets at night" part of Patience on Live Era is a prime example of what had happened even if that sounds more like failed vocals than a new tone. He seemed to have lost some of his register by then. 

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I vaguely remember talk of how much work went into Live Era, so I thought they just cut and pasted the best parts from hundreds and hundreds of options. I listened to it again tonight after reading the comments about it being re-recorded and, wow, it's obvious - which is funny because a week ago YCBM popped up on my shuffle and I thought to myself "he sounded better live than I remembered".

 

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On 12/06/2016 at 9:12 AM, Strange Broue said:

nah, in fact, even on the Skin and Bones tour his voice gets thinner and thinner... I'd say that the end of 93 and 94 when his voice started to turn in to an early version of Mickey

That being said, he even got some rasp back in 98-99 but slowly started to turn into full Mickey (like Axl recently said: he wanted to sing on a new voice to prevent more damage to his voice)

 

After that , what've heard on 2011 onwards till the reunion gigs, he just lost the overall power to his voice. That's the main factor, imho. In 2001-02 he was full mickey but got some great power while at it. 

 

let's hope that with his current vocal coach, he could accomplish a great voice in the GNR gigs too!

he said that?

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i was watching that springsteen/ axl thing just now and i had this thought, something which has never occurred to me before. i'm new to this forum so forgive me if this has been discussed before, but i had this thought about why axl disappeared after 93/94. is it possible that he maybe felt threatened by alternative rock, which was huge and had taken over mtv by then? i'm wondering if he kept a low profile all throughout the late 90s because he was unsure of his place or relevance in the world of popular culture, so he opted to stay out of it completely by becoming a recluse. maybe he only felt comfortable again around 98 when numetal started to become more of a thing, which made rock "cool" again. that's when he started working on chinese democracy, yeah? i could be way off, but that makes sense to me.

Edited by nevergotochurch
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1 hour ago, nevergotochurch said:

i was watching that springsteen/ axl thing just now and i had this thought, something which has never occurred to me before. i'm new to this forum so forgive me if this has been discussed before, but i had this thought about why axl disappeared after 93/94. is it possible that he maybe felt threatened by alternative rock, which was huge and had taken over mtv by then? i'm wondering if he kept a low profile all throughout the late 90s because he was unsure of his place or relevance in the world of popular culture, so he opted to stay out of it completely by becoming a recluse. maybe he only felt comfortable again around 98 when numetal started to become more of a thing, which made rock "cool" again. that's when he started working on chinese democracy, yeah? i could be way off, but that makes sense to me.

I think he stayed out of the spotlight because his band and life was a mess. From being a homeless junkie, to multimillionaire rock star and then tour around the world, takes it´s toll.. especially when you have mental illness.. 

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13 minutes ago, estranged_85 said:

I think he stayed out of the spotlight because his band and life was a mess. From being a homeless junkie, to multimillionaire rock star and then tour around the world, takes it´s toll.. especially when you have mental illness.. 

makes sense, I just admittedly don't know anything about what was going on in his personal life in the 90s... or even now, lol... just that he lives with that family. I'm not sure if or when he conquered mental illness, who his friends are, more recent romances if any, not much is known, right? so, I wasn't really aware that his life was a mess. 

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23 minutes ago, estranged_85 said:

I think he stayed out of the spotlight because his band and life was a mess. From being a homeless junkie, to multimillionaire rock star and then tour around the world, takes it´s toll.. especially when you have mental illness.. 

By all accounts Axl was never a junkie.

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13 minutes ago, ChineseIRS said:

By all accounts Axl was never a junkie.

I was talking about the early days... I know he didn't use drugs in the 90´s.. Maybe 'junkie' was a bit exaggerated , but i think most people know what i mean..

Edited by estranged_85
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1 hour ago, nevergotochurch said:

i was watching that springsteen/ axl thing just now and i had this thought, something which has never occurred to me before. i'm new to this forum so forgive me if this has been discussed before, but i had this thought about why axl disappeared after 93/94. is it possible that he maybe felt threatened by alternative rock, which was huge and had taken over mtv by then? i'm wondering if he kept a low profile all throughout the late 90s because he was unsure of his place or relevance in the world of popular culture, so he opted to stay out of it completely by becoming a recluse. maybe he only felt comfortable again around 98 when numetal started to become more of a thing, which made rock "cool" again. that's when he started working on chinese democracy, yeah? i could be way off, but that makes sense to me.

Axl was really into grunge, aswell as industrial, and wanted to replicate that sound with GNR

so no i don't think him feeling threatened was the reason he went AWOL

i think he went low profile because he was dealing with his own personal demons

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One of the first changes i noticed in Axl´s voice when he did the comeback after all those years was that he couldn't do the typical Axl rasp " Aaaooouu! " in songs, instead it sounded like super high "Mickey".. Hope you guys know what i mean :) Was his tonils taken away? Did he not practice or maintain his voice during 95-2000? 

This is what i mean about "Aaaoouu!" thing 13:14

 

Edited by estranged_85
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8 minutes ago, estranged_85 said:

I was talking about the early days... I know he didn't use drugs in the 90´s.. Maybe 'junkie' was a bit exaggerated , but i think most people know what i mean..

Even in the early days. Did he use drugs? Yes. But never on a constant basis according to pretty much everyone who was around the band.

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Didn't he have a bunch of legal shit going on in '94-95 too? Add that onto the 3 years of touring UYI's and he'd probably feel pretty burned out, kinda understandable he'd take a couple years off and just do what he wanted. Shame nothing really seemed to come from the mid 90's GNR stuff because his vocals on Sympathy are among his best IMO. As for his 'mickey' voice, he's told fans more than once that he was trying for a cleaner sound.

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Just now, ChineseIRS said:

Even in the early days. Did he use drugs? Yes. But never on a constant basis according to pretty much everyone who was around the band.

That´s why i just wrote that the word "junkie" were a bit exaggerated =)  used the wrong word.

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Folks dont differentiate an artist's decision how to interpret a certain tune w "voice quality" - Axl made an understated choice to sing Come Together in a blues style and pulled it off perfectly in my opinion.  very different singing than what GNR fans typically see from him but ZERO to do w "vocal quality

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