I really, really was rooting for him back in those days. I was so eager to hear how he'd sound on the Bruce material, and didn't know that much about singing at the time so it didn't occur to me that he might not be capable of the Bruce stuff. Fortunately, the first bootleg I got my hands on back then was The Eternal Flame, and he sounded...fairly decent on most of the Bruce stuff. It wasn't until later on when I got other boots, like the infamous Santiago one, where I saw how badly Steve blew it with not downtuning that material. And of course, by the end of each show, Blaze was drenched with sweat, which exacerbated the bald look.
As for the baldness thing, that was curious to me. He wisely donned the backwards-turned cap on the Virtual XI tour, and then at some point after he went solo, he went and got hair implants (likely for free for appearing in ads for the company). Not too long after, he started shaving his head, presumably because the implants weren't all they were cracked up to be. Fortunately, the man's got a good dome, and looks good bald.