Vocal question

[?]

I've been thinking, could James' voice have healed faster had he not gone on tour with DT so soon? I'm interested in hearing other people's opinions on this case. Should DT have continued touring with James (like they did), make songs easier for him to sing (so that he wouldn't ruin his voice completely), find a stand-in singer to fill in for James, or cancel the tour dates and take a break from touring for some time? If you have some other opinion, you can vote for the "Other" option.

Personally, I think they should have made the songs easier to sing so James wouldn't have destroyed his voice completely. The songs on I&W and Awake are challenging to sing, and singing them after rupturing your vocal cords is not a good idea! Getting someone to fill in for James would have been hard, as there were only a few weeks to the Awake in Japan tour, and it would have been weird to see them with some other singer. Stopping the touring wouldn't have been a smart idea, because playing shows is important in promoting your album. So I choose the option 2...

[wolfking]

I'm pretty sure the doctors told him to have time off or else he could risk permanent or prolonged damage.  He decided to continue to keep up with DT's heavy schedule.  I could be a bit off on this. 

Saying that, they could have tuned down to make the high notes easier to hit, but I think Mike certainly wouldn't allow that.  I guess a stand in singer would have been a smart idea but it depends on how long for.  I guess DT was on the rise and they just had to keep the momentum going to continue their rise to success.

[Aniland]

They should have done... exactly what they did.

[jonny108]

I think just for the time being that he was resting his voice they should have found a replacement singer to tour with them.  I believe that the main reason James' voice detoriated was due to him going out on tour when his voice should have been resting and recovering.

[hefdaddy42]

This seems to be a very strange poll.  What should the band have done in a situation that occurred years ago?  Don't we have enough speculation about things that haven't yet happened, without speculating about events that already occurred?

[Samsara]

Here's the thing. There was no way DT could NOT tour, after the success of I&W and the anticipation of the follow-up. They HAD to tour. James was a trooper and got through it. It would have been dumb to get a new singer, impossible to not tour, etc.

In a perfect world, yeah, delay the tour six months, see if that helps James. But they didn't have that luxury. Even then, James didn't really find the "right" vocal coach for him until much later, so he wouldn't have made the kind of vocal recovery he has in the past 10 years without finding that person anyway.

[Icebear]

Well, it's ancient history by now. They did carry on, and it sorta worked. Not without severe consequences for JLB, though. For the sake of the band, it was the right move. But it could have gone the other way. There's no telling with an injury like this, he could have broken down after a couple of gigs and never been able to sing again. Then what would've happened to their tour? So, it was a gamble that paid off. But if it were me, I'd like to think that my bandmates would be open to discussing postponing the tour. A possibly career-ending injury trumps most other considerations, even though I understand the need for promotion/publicity surrounding a new album.

[The Dark Master]

As has already been stated, they were at a very tough point in their careers where they really could not afford to take 6 months off to let James recover.  The band had to continue the tour.  Now, with that said, maybe there were things they could have done that would have made those shows easier on James (song selection, mostly; either they could just play songs that would not require James to strain his voice too much, or they could play a set full of songs with long instrumental sections, like Metropolis or A Change of Seasons).  As for getting a guest singer......... it would have to be someone big who the DT fan base pretty much universally respects for it to fly.  Bruce Dickenson comes to mind since he seems to know the band pretty well (they have played on his BBC radio show, he has made guest appearances with them from time to time, and they have toured together) plus at that point he was not in Maiden, so it might have been possible.  It would have been pretty awesome to see someone like Bruce fronting DT for a brief while.  But I don't know if he would have wanted to just drop everything and do a six month tour with DT at that point in time, and it probably wasn't likely to happen anyways.  Basically, they did what they felt they needed to do; the band toured, and James took it like a man, even though it limited his vocal capabilities for a number of years after.  Oh well, you can't re-write the past, it happened, and that is all there is to it.  At least James  did recover eventually, and since Octavarium he has been amazing live.  

[The Presence of Frenemies]

I definitely wish James was able to sing like he did in pre-1994 days more regularly now. At least we still get glimpses, like some of the stuff on Score, the LiTS ending on CiM, the ending of the Cemetery Gates live cover, and basically all of Stargazer. Since the lack of a break probably directly caused his shift to a thinner tone, I obviously wish something could've been done.

It was quite a weird spot for DT. They were popular enough that they had a large fanbase to keep happy, but they weren't popular enough where a break would be feasible. The only way in which they could've had a win-win situation was if they found a replacement who could really ignite the stage. I disagree that it would have to be someone particularly famous a la Dickinson, but it sure would have to be somebody with good live consistency and a ton of range.

The name that keeps leading me to is John West, especially since he's from somewhere in NY too. I don't THINK he was up to much in 1994-95, since he was in Badlands in the early '90s and then Artension/Royal Hunt/solo albums in 1996 and beyond. I've always wondered how the LtL F# would sound sung by West. Maybe that's just me, but I could see him working out back then--definitely not with newer DT stuff like ToT though.

I find it interesting, though, that JLB was, vocal injury and all, still doing the belted vocals on 5YiaLT. He even takes the final LtL chorus up in the ending medley, with a really throaty tone. It wasn't until like 2000 or so that it seemed (at least to me) that he settled in with the much thinner tone we're used to today.