Don't kill me for saying this...

vagabond79

Prowler
I saw Iron Maiden for the first time in Charlotte about a week ago. I was really excited as I've been exploring the Maiden catalog pretty intensely over the past 2 years. I love everything about the stuff I've heard (first 6 albums mainly); the epic guitar riffage, the insane bass playing, Bruce's (and Paul's) killer vocals. However, I didn't feel like Bruce was "great" during the live performance. His voice seemed to go out on many of the screams and higher notes. It seemed like he was kind of struggling a bit at times.

With that said, I've only heard a handful of bands live that I thought had great vocals (Metallica for one). I usually just figure that the singer has to perform a bunch of gigs in a short period of time and it takes a toll on his voice. Of course, this was the first show of the Maiden England tour so I guess I was hoping for full-on screaming perfection. On the instrumental side, I thought the guitars/drums/bass were phenomenal. Steve Harris is just plain ungodly.

I'm not pointing this out to troll or diss Maiden in any way. I am just trying to see if anyone else feels this way. Has Bruce's voice lost anything live since the early 80's? Is his singing style hard to replicate live? Does he just sound different live as opposed to recorded?

Cheers.
 
Go listen to the live albums available to you, from Beast Over Hammersmith through En Vivo, and decide for yourself. My opinion? Yes, Bruce's voice is always a little more strained in concert, because he has to do this register constantly for dozens of shows in a period of time. If he hits every high register on every song, he will destroy his voice.
 
Bruce's voice is always a little more strained in concert, because he has to do this register constantly for dozens of shows in a period of time.

Not to mention the number of songs per set, as opposed to recording maybe one a day in a studio environment (multiple takes usually but still nowhere near the same strain).

I don't think strain on a voice would make such a noticeable difference for the lower register or more 'grizzly' vocals such as Hetfield.
 
One of the only screamers I can recall that sounded really good live is King Diamond. I know he uses that weird falsetto, but it sounds surprisingly good IMO.
 
King Diamond's falsetto is legendary, but I don't think it is nearly the strain that Bruce's is, since he doesn't use falsetto. I've seen a couple of video clips of this new tour, and he does kind of do some "soft landings" on some higher notes, but overall he sounds fantastic, and I can't wait to see them tomorrow in DC!
 
Yup, no falsetto for Bruce. He uses his lead voice through the whole show, and he does show some restraint so he can do it again the next day.

But the guy is a freak of nature to be able to sing like he does in the first place.
 
Agreed. Bruce is a freak. Every other vocalist on earth that i've heard hit his notes sounds wafer thin by comparison. Bruce's vocals, strained or not, live or not, sound genuinely impossible for a human to produce.
 
I think Bruce, for the most part, is sounding fantastic on this tour. But he does seem to get tired around the encore.
 
I actually think Bruce sounds better now than he did in the '80s, or at least post-World Piece Tour. He'll never sound as good as Samson through World Piece, but he sounds tons better now than any other era (though maybe '97-Death on the Road could give current Bruce a run for his money).
 
In my opinion, Bruce had his zenith in the late nineties and early 2000s. Just listen to the live albums and bootlegs from that era. What he did on the Accident in Brazil show in 1997 and on Scream for Me Brazil is simply phenomenal.

The problem, I guess, is that Bruce was never trained to be a singer professionally. From what I gather, he had used wrong breathing techniques for years, which is starting to take its toll on his vocal perfomances these days. Ronnie James Dio, to take another example, had learned all the necessary techniques from very early on, and he remained fit until the very last day on stage.

What happened in the late eighties and early nineties, on the other hand, is that Bruce was very worn-out from the gruelling world tours they took. If you listen to some of the latter gigs from the Powerslave, Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son tours, his performance really is pretty bad. I guess he adopted his infamous "raspy" style that you can hear on the Tattooed Millionaire, No Prayer and Fear of the Dark albums to somehow combat this and do less of the physically straining performances. Then, on later recordings such as Fear of the Dark, A Real Live Dead/One, he simply doesn't care very much anymore. This is very apparent on the Real Live tour bootlegs and Raising Hell. When he had a couple of solo albums and tours behind him, he obviously found a lot of new joy in doing what he did, which explains the very big difference in the quality of his performance on Balls to Picasso (where he was obviously still shaken from his Maiden experience, and probably also annoyed with the recording process) and Accident of Birth (which he did just for the heck of it). He evidently carried a lot of his joy into the Brave New World album and tour. My speculation is that he again got annoyed with Maiden while recording Dance of Death, which resulted in a few poorer performances. Bruce has indicated such things in interviews, at least. So he probably got a few of his conditions agreed upon afterwards, which means that he's putting everything into it again - although now his voice has aged a bit too much for him to pull off all the difficult numbers anymore.
There is an interesting post somewhere in the current tour thread that explains this is why they dropped Hallowed from the setlist.

This is of course, all pure speculation, and I'm expecting a point-by-point Forostar rebuttal soon. ;)
 
I would agree with most of that except the DoD comment, I've not heard any such interviews (doesn't mean they don't exist ofc) and personally don't think there's any bad performances on DoD.... the album in general seems to be hated more than the 90's ones around here though so I think everyone see's it as bad all round and so "bad performance" may be the impression when it's personal taste.... of course same could be true vice versa, I don't see it bad because I like it ;)

If I recall, Bruce was seriously considering quitting the band after World Slavery because of how much the tour had taken a toll on him, everyone was a bit worn out but Bruce far more than the rest.
 
Perun makes some good points. I haven't listened to any bootlegs, but if you just listen to the official live realeases Maiden have put out (e.g. all the stuff on Eddie's Archive) Brucie's voice just isn't that good in the 80's (& early 90's). When I was younger (early 90's) I just didn't notice this, listening to all this stuff i.e. how poor some of his vocals are on LAD, for example. With a more critical ear I hear it now though. Certainly in the early 80's you can sense that snarling power behind his vocal (regardless of how in tune he is) that just isn't there anymore; I don't know when this went. But, overall (although only from what I've heard), I think his singing is more in key now, than before. And, studio wise, it still holds up fine. People say it sounds strained now, but (as cited above) it could sound strained back then too. The difference isn't that marked, I don't think.
 
I would agree with most of that except the DoD comment, I've not heard any such interviews (doesn't mean they don't exist ofc) and personally don't think there's any bad performances on DoD.... the album in general seems to be hated more than the 90's ones around here though so I think everyone see's it as bad all round and so "bad performance" may be the impression when it's personal taste.... of course same could be true vice versa, I don't see it bad because I like it ;)

Bruce has made a few between-the-lines statements in interviews when Tyranny of Souls was released that indicated he wasn't overly happy with Iron Maiden, and that he was much more content with Tyranny than with Dance of Death. In an interview with the German Rock Hard magazine, I recall him saying something like "in Iron Maiden, everybody has to fit into the same shoes. That's okay because they're damn popular shoes". He said this when asked about Kill Devil Hill, about which he also said back then that he couldn't write a song like this with Iron Maiden, since their aeroplane songs are more about Spitfires and all that. Seeing how the last two Maiden albums had a much heavier Bruce broadside, it seems to me that Bruce could actually raise some points within the band there.

On the other hand, I have heard reports of Bruce having the time of his life on the Gimme Ed tour, so I might be wrong on all acounts there.
 
:) Just incase - I wasn't saying "No you're wrong", but provoking more information as I haven't really heard anything like that myself and most negative comments about DoD (in any way) tend to stem from the fact people don't like it :( So it's good to get more info about it :)

I'm very glad Bruce has his solo career tbh, as I enjoy both those tracks and Maiden's for different reasons, and I think were he to present those particular solo tracks to Maiden and have them taken on board they would come out very differently.

His style of singing is one that both puts quite a toll on the voice, and one that such toll has much greater effect. The snarler's/growlers I imagine put huge strain on their vocals aswell but that to the listener it sounds no different... to the singer it quite probably kills their throat and they need a period of recuperation, but for those listening they will just think "Yeah that performance was fantastic as always!". The usual sound of an 'injured voice' being a more raspy tone to it and all.
 
The problem, I guess, is that Bruce was never trained to be a singer professionally. From what I gather, he had used wrong breathing techniques for years, which is starting to take its toll on his vocal perfomances these days. Ronnie James Dio, to take another example, had learned all the necessary techniques from very early on, and he remained fit until the very last day on stage.
Trivia: Bruce learned to sing by the help of a step-by-step book with excersises (I geuss it probably came with a tape too). I can't remember the exact title but that's what Bruce said anyway.
 
About the World Slavery Tour: I think this was the turning point of his voice. I have done a comparison a few years back and i didn't find another metal\rock tour like this one, in terms of average gigs per month. There were tours with more shows and\or more time span (like GNR Use your Illusion tour, Aerosmith's Nine Lives tour, etc), but i still didn't find any other like this, with an average of something like 13 to 15 gigs per month, for 12 straight months, in an almost 2 hours show.

Also during the WST Bruce had that throat infection after Rock in Rio, and that's the main reason for his perfomance on LAD was here and there not so good. It was impossible to be anyway. For some reason, his voice in SIT album is perfect, but on the tour it wasn't. Very much like what happens on SSOSS era.

For me, Bruce's best vocal perfomance ever on studio is "Man of Sorrows". The control, the balance of his voice is unbelievable. He did aged well, and quite probably the main reason for his Maiden departure was for protecting his voice than any other reason. Nowadays maybe the main reason is his age, i don't know. After all, he's almost 54.
 
I wouldn't call his voice on SIT perfect. Take away the reverbs and other production tricks, and I think you'd hear the limitations. They do come out in some points throughout the album.
 
I wouldn't call his voice on SIT perfect. Take away the reverbs and other production tricks, and I think you'd hear the limitations. They do come out in some points throughout the album.
Take away reverb, delay and compression and you'll find that very few voices sits nicely in the mix. You'll always hear imperfections with any vocalist without them (you can do without delay though obviously, but it's a nice and common touch).
 
Well, the wife and I saw them last night at the Bristow/DC show. Phenomenal performance, however I DID notice that Bruce really seemed to be having a hard time with some songs. Not sure if it was the heat, or if he's been like this all tour. His shrieks were amazing, but on songs that have notes that are held longer, he really couldn't hold it for very long. Still, Bruce on one of his not-so-better days is still 100% better than any other vocalist I can think of.
 
To continue on the matter. As I recall saying here on the forum back when The Final Frontier was released: I wasn't overly impressed by his singing on the album. Mother of Mercy's chorus sounds like shit. Probably Bruce's worst performance as far as I'm concerned. Really strained - Definitely not "free singing" (well. This applies to some of the notes, but not all. Some are free).
 
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