That's one of the best live versions of that song ever
Great Bruce performance. Makes it all the more strange that I find parts of FF unlistenable because of Bruce straining with the vocals.
What I've heard from the last tour, Bruce sounded pretty weak consistently. Up until now the dude's gotten better every tour, but I think the years are catching up to him.
I dunno if I agree with that. He sounded much better when I saw him last on the reunion-heavy Final Frontier tour. I think Somewhere Back in Time was much harder on him.
Thankfully he doesn't have any reservations about overdubbing his live performances anymore so we still get great DVDs.
This got me thinking, do you think we generally hold Bruce to a higher or lower standard than a James LaBrie for example? LaBrie is only 5 years younger.
I've been making that argument for
ages. Granted, James has and will never be the showman that Bruce is, people online are really insanely critical of James LaBrie's live performances.
If you watch a handful of IM bootlegs from each era, you'll notice that Bruce had plenty of off nights, and sometimes even entire legs of tours were bad, but his reputation is pretty much impenetrable. James? Not so much. People dog him as soon as they hear him sing a little flat in a Youtube video.
It comes with the territory, I think. In the 80's, metal was still linked with hard rock 'n roll. No-one cared if things were a little gritty or off kilter. Bruce could belt, and he had great energy. Who cares if he belted the wrong notes sometimes? It's just rock and roll!
90's metal by comparison is much more pristine. Pretend operatic singers from the 80's found themselves replaced with real operatic singers, and actually touring and playing live shows became a lot less important than just releasing albums.