Last time we looked at rock singers who, even post- 70 years old, and still rocking as hard as they did back in the day.
This week, I thought it would be worth showing some singers that maybe aren’t faring so well with age.
DISCLAIMER:
We are all human, and all prone to mistakes. Every singer singing live knows there are better gigs than others, and voices can do better some days and worse on other days. The primary reason for sharing these live clips (and all of them are live) are to show just how unforgiving age can be if your technique isn’t good enough.
As we age, things change with our voice. With a well-trained voice we should peak in late 40s/early 50s… but the very same physiological changes that enable that peak in trained voices, are the very things that can derail voices without the right training. Even with voices doing 90% of things right, that 10% wrong can still be too much to keep delivering a high demand style of singing, like rock.
Therefore, the purpose of the following videos is to help those of you reading and listening to appreciate just how tough it is to keep delivering these high-demand songs into later years. It’s entirely doable (per my earlier article), but it’s important to note that even incredible voices can get derailed.
That said, brace yourselves
Whew! OK, now that the disclaimer is over, you may want to prepare yourselves to hear some less than stellar performances below.
Axl Rose (Guns ‘n’ Roses)
Axl was and is the lead singer of Guns ‘n’ Roses. Here is how he sounded in his hey-day:
And here is how he sounded at a massive performance in 2014 (he would have been early 50s here):
No, this is not a fake video. Not only is the guitar badly out of tune for the whole song, but Axl’s approach to hitting high notes – whilst high force and feasible in his youth – leads to this very weedy sound in later life. You see this a lot with hard rock singers that rely on their physical youth and vigor to get them to notes. As soon as the voice starts to become more stable (see this article) they can no longer cheat their way to the notes or rely on force, and the above sound is what tends to result.
Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave)
Chris was a huge inspiration for me when I first started on my own vocal journey, and as he tragically passed only a few years ago, I want to treat this section with the respect I think he deserves.
He was a great singer and songwriter, and he learned to work round diminishing range as he aged. However, when he did attempt to roll out his earlier classic hits, he generally did not sound at his best. His highly forceful approach as he got older tended to result in a lot of errors in pitch, and was often a more strangulated sound than the sound of his youth. This is a similar problem to Axl, but fortunately Cornell’s sound was not dependent on getting to quite the same range as Axl.
Bobby Kimball (Toto)
Bobby Kimball was one of the lead singers of Toto, and in his prime – what a voice. And truthfully, he can still get up there, the problem is that once you’re up there you need a lot of precision. If your hearing or vocal control is in any way slipping, disaster can strike.
I couldn’t find a great version of the same song, so I’ve got a live version from the 80s of Rosanna…
… then a more recent version of Kimball performing Africa.
… And you know what, I think if you’ve ever sung live, and maybe the monitoring is a little off, or you don’t know the song as well as you otherwise could, we’ve all felt a little like this. The phrase “there’s no prizes for singing a difficult song badly, there’s only prizes for sounding good” seems a very relevant point to close on.
Reminder:
Please remember, I am not posting these to rag on any of these singers. They are all absolute superstars in their own right, I know I’ve sounded far worse on even an alright day than these singers sounded on their best. Per my earlier disclaimer, I only share to help people understand why singing hard rock into later years is so damn taxing.