And someone mentioned Bon Jovi, he also struggles pretty badly live these days with his aging vocals too. It's really just natural IMO.
Yeah, and that's all I was really saying above, for the most part. And I think most people get that.
And to the comparison with Tate that Scotty mentioned, while there is some truth to that, that is also a different case for a couple of reasons, one that isn't really fair to him and one that totally is:
First off, if Bruce was the gold standard, Tate was the platinum standard. In his prime, NOBODY could sing like him. Nobody. And it wasn't
just the range, but how cleanly he sang the notes. It isn't fair, but he is always going to be compared to that by some.
But secondly, his problems later on weren't just natural loss of range. He lost range because he abused his voice and just didn't care. When asked about it, he was always very flippant about the substance abuse, the drinking, the smoking, and no attempt to do warmups or vocal coaching. And both on studio albums and live, you could hear and see him singing with really, really bad technique that compounded the problem. That criticism is COMPLETELY fair game.
And to bring it back to James on the latter point, that is where James is above reproach. For decades, he has gone to great lengths to take care of his voice and to get training. Whether you like his voice, hate it, or fall somewhere in between, you can't criticize him for the same things someone like Tate is open to.