Jim Morrison’s voice was a gravely wreck by the time he kicked it. Contrast Light my Fire from The Doors first album with L.A. Woman off the last.
Bob Dylan, although he seemed to have regained his voice these days.
Jon Bon Jovi apparently destroyed his vocal chords through constant touring, steroid use, and lifestyle on the road.
Geddy Lee from Rush can’t sing like he used to, he blames aging or more accurately, writing crazy vocal parts when he was young, but some believe his heavy smoking played a role.
While not a lead singer, Eddie Van Halen, had a section on his tongue removed due to cancer and it has permanently damaged his speech and background vocals.
Axl Rose. He had a great (well, decent) singing voice before a drug overdose ruined it.
Unfortunately, this hasn’t stop him from singing, and by now an entire generation of people has grown up wondering how a guy who sounds like he gargles broken glass got to be a rock star.
Not that he was a singer but Miles Davis ended up with a very raspy voice after he yelled/tried to talk too soon after throat surgery in 1956.
There is dispute about the effects of losing 80 pounds had on Maria Callas’s voice and whether the change was for the better or worse. While Callas is highly regarded now, during her career there were many detractors. I remember one of my music teachers once playing a bit of one of her records and saying “This is how you do not sing this aria”.
How about Robert Plant. His voice was already on the way out by In Through The Out Door so I find it hard to believe it’s just from age.
My mother is a huge Leonard Cohen fan. She got into him through recent recordings. She listened to some of his old stuff and hated it. She told me ‘smoking and old age have given that man a great voice.’
The Doobie Brothers lost a couple lead singers to booze and drugs. Tom Johnston for sure burned out from the lifestyle. Didn’t Michael McDonald leave for the same reason?
Any other singer and it would have, but Cohen…
He wasn’t exactly a great singer to begin with, and what the years have done to his voice has given it a perfect character for his songs.
Hmm, I can’t find it now, but supposedly Slick Rick hurt his voice and couldn’t rap the same way he used to because of something that happened to him in prison.
Iirc, he was famed for doing the call-answer style of rap by himself but making it sound like 2 people, but after hurting his voice he was unable.
I’m familiar with all these artists but have never really listened to most of them enough to notice changes in their voices. I do like Joni Mitchell and read an interview from the 90s in which she denied her smoking was bad for her, but I’ve only listened to her old albums.
Speaking of Bon Jovi, he’s doing a package deal with the coupon site LivingSocial for his current tour. Two tickets to a Bon Jovi show + a night in a hotel and random Bon Jovi merchandise all for $500-$700 depending on which show you go to. Has he really fallen that far?
Huh? It doesn’t sound like much of a fall at all, but clever packaging. I’m sure he has a deal with a hotel chain, the merch is cheap to produce and the tickets are guaranteed sales. Sounds like a perfect match-up with his fan base. They are still playing arenas. One other thing, this might be an attempt to fuck over the scalpers, who would have a harder time re-selling the hotel rooms.
Totally! If only people banned drugs for celebs or to the whole world! It makes everyone miserable and depressed. 
It just seemed lame to me, like they had to come up with some sort of gimmick to sell tickets. But maybe it is the sort of thing that would appeal to their fan base and that’s why they did it.
Loads of artists are buying huge numbers of their CDs and including them as packages with their tickets - Prince did that a decade ago. And it’s not just at the top end. One of my favorite bars, Knuckleheads Saloon, is doing a Carrie Rodriguez concert on Valentines Day, and the best seats include a:
These days, you try anything, lameness be damned.
I think the change in Tom Waits’ voice from smooth balladeer to gruff tramp-blues was more a stylistic choice than the result of hard living. I was slightly disappointed to find it wasn’t from an authentic chain-smoking deathwish, but then at least that means he can stay alive and recording for longer.
I wonder what happened? Something happened to his voice in prison? Well, that sounds ominous as hell. I never heard that. But, he did have a very distinctive voice, and he was great at doing characters; women’s voices, children’s voices.
Now, I know that **DMC **suffers from spasms of the voice box, so he doesn’t have the same voice he had in Run DMC’s heyday.