Hey everybody welcome back again to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy where the proof is in the singing.
I'm doing this really interesting series and the series is called Replacement Singers- Who Did It
Better. Next up is Vince Neil and John Corabi you know the band is Motley Crew. Before we get started
if you wouldn't mind, please like and subscribe to my channel that'd be really cool. I have a
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all negotiating, discussing these great singers and how to get great at singing. So I want to
get, dive right in. Now we have some rules of engagement and I've covered this in a couple videos
already so I don't want to be redundant but first of all post respectfully in the comments please
don't just you know say this guy sucks he says whatever it makes no sense to do that I really
want to get to the bottom of who's better and sometimes things aren't always as they seem so
let's talk about Motley Crew right now because I think that if I were to say and base something
only on singing abilities of course in my opinion John Corabi is a great singer, a much better
you know technical singer or even just a great, better singer than Vince Neil but let's not you know
forget about things like chemistry of the band, who actually helped make the band famous initially and
lots of different elements that come in it and even down to the songwriting, I could tell
you know that you've got songwriting that's curtailed towards Vince Neil
when John Corabi went in the band you know we're going to discuss this in a minute
you know I think, again things aren't as the same I don't want to have a spoiler alert on
that so let's dive right in and what rules of engagement sorry, is, is that you know
who was in the band longer, who lasted longer, who helped more write more songs, did the
replacement singer take the band to a new level. Lots of questions that need to be answered in
order to give a total picture or a total fair assessment of who did it better okay. So here we go.
By the way it's pretty cool that the girls are dancing and actually singing so they
have chicks that can sing and also dance like that fun. Now back here we're going to talk
about songwriting obviously these songs were written specifically Nikki Sixx did mo, a good chunk
of the songwriting in the band so he probably said okay this is what I have to work with,
this is kind of the style I want to go after and let me give you an example of something
and you guys may have not thought of this okay. I just did and I'm not sure when I'll release this
but I just did "Dr. Feelgood" with Sara Loera and as I was going through this and I have a
version myself and I'll try to put whatever Motley Crue stuff I have in the description
so you can check out how we did on stuff but anyway I did "Dr. Feelgood" and I did
"Kickstart My Heart" so I'll put both of those in there but I, I bring it up because I remember
singing this and the lyric reminded me so much of the verses to "Walk This Way"
you know (sings)
right (sings)
right so I thought wow so Nikki probably listened to "Walk This Way", knew what he had to work with
with Vince and did something in the verses similar to Aerosmith and was looking for an Aerosmith vibe
and then when you go back and listen to the song there's a lot of elements like that that makes
sense right. So I say that because it's really obvious to me that he had a certain, I don't want to use the
word limited range but I can't be so politically correct guys not just call things out. He had a
limited range singer who just, it was what it was and then this is what he wrote for. So this is the
byproduct of that but let's remember the chemistry of the band and this is what helped make the band
famous okay. So back in the LA scene when you know and this is the more polished stuff than
the earlier stuff which was really cool because they got better at this sound as they went along.
Okay so again I've heard a lot of people bash on Vince and as, as in a similar fashion maybe not
as extreme as we talked about David Lee Roth, you know back in the LA scene a, a good chunk
of why bands got famous was because of their fronting abilities you know charisma on stage,
how they fit the band, the motif, you know did they synergize with the group well
and I'd have to say yeah I mean he fit the whole Motley Crew thing
and you know whether it's Looks That Kill or this or whatever the earlier stuff,
it was that LA vibe scene, Rat was in that category. There's these other bands where
I wouldn't say they're all the greatest singers it just they, they fit kind of what was going on
and this certainly is that so, man you know and he pulled it off and he's pulling it off live.
Okay now again in fairness I don't, I pulled footage as I've said this a million times on what
publishing companies would allow so I had to grab footage and I like grabbing live footage
because I really feel like you can really hear the singer rather than a bunch of you know extra takes
behind a red light in the studio so, but in this case the vocals are pretty dicey. Check this out.
Okay so I wouldn't even really call that singing okay "Girls, Girls, Girls"
was different now let's talk about this again because i want to talk about the songwriting.
So Nikki Sixx was able to, such a great songwriter, was able to
take what he had and work with it but he also was able to mask and maybe hide some of his
inability with the band and the prowess of the band and the strength of the songwriting and
you know some, Tommy's drumming I mean he's a great drummer like he, there was a lot of strengths
that he played off of in order to be able to mask or hide or, or or just cover for maybe some
things that weren't so great. Now this is obviously earlier on in, in their career I don't know if this
is the Us festival or what but you know this was earlier on so they hadn't been as developed
as that, like you know this is back around the Looks That Kill I think maybe earlier but, era.
Now. If you listen to how raw and naked his vocals are okay
and then you listen to the production stuff on "Girls, Girls, Girls" or "Dr. Feelgood" or something
there's a whole lot of production going on right. So it's very, very different than you know his
voice is fairly weak here and it's pretty small and kind of mousy sounding up top. I mean I'm not
here to bash on him I'm just calling a spade a spade for what it is but let's be realistic
you know the band and the recordings is much bigger than they are here live at this point right.
All right so I'm gonna move on. Let's see what else we got here.
Kind of done with that a little bit so I'm gonna move up here.
See this is, but let's go back let's check
out livewire sorry I should have done that, here we go. This is one of the very first songs right.
I mean it just sounds like a pretty mediocre garage band right I mean you'd go into like a
LA rehearsal room and you'd be going (sounds) right. Okay I want to fast forward a little bit
to, to this. Now again this is a studio recording so it's not fair but John Corabi
is a great singer so I want to point some things out as I get to that but check this out.
Okay I want to get into this minute, good song by the way. Real good song. This happened at the
zenith of when 80s metal and classic rock took a complete nose dive and grunge was coming in, circa
1989, 1990, 1991. John Corabi steps in to fit or fill the shoes so to put the bill, fill the shoes
of Vince Neil. It's, it's kind of like having Chris Cornell step into something I mean he's really
good and then but all of a sudden some executive decisions are made on to the direction of the band
because it was tragically unhip to continue on with the 80s metal sound so lots of bands tried
to change their sound right and I'm going to give you an exception to this in just a second, a couple
of exceptions and so Motley Crue was no exception to this they actually you know went that route and
what was interesting for me that I thought that Nikki did in songs like this was, I felt he did a
really good job trying to marry their original you know "Girls, Girls, Girls", "Dr. Feelgood-y" kind of
sound and contemporize that sound with a bit of a grunge flare without going full blown grunge okay
because they really weren't that kind of band, you know Tommy Lee on drums for example is just a killer
bada drummer. You've got, you know the whole band had risen finally, not finally but they'd risen
to, to a form of excellence that superseded, I think it eclipsed a lot of the grunge bands, not all but
you know quite a bit so it would have been kind of weird to, putting a square peg into a round
hole to try to get them to to be full blown grunge okay. Now so Corabi steps into the situation with
the best that he could and I think it's really good, like the album's really good
and this is a really good song and he's a really good singer, it's a good band good, production
but at that time the Motley Crue fans didn't want to hear grunge, they wanted to hear Motley Crue
and it may or may not have been smarter, again who knows at that juncture where again commercial mus,
or 80s metal just crashed, to have done another album in the spirit of original Motley Crue and
not got down the grunge route but it was an executive decision, a smart one, a business one
that Nikki made to do that in the songwriting part. Now why do I bring this up because there were
quite a few bands that did this and interestingly enough if I think of, I mentioned Chris Cornell.
If I think of Chris Cornell as a singer and even Layne Staley could fit in this category too, I
think that he could have easily been an 80s metal singer and jumped into the boat of the modern rock
group of you know bands or whatever and was very successful through that time, doing just that
but he certainly has more of the high range and the distortion and the power and and some of the
blues not all because it's like he kind of shied away from that so that he wasn't stigmatized
or tagged as a 80s metal you know rock singer but he could have certainly fit that bill and
and so Corabi in the same way you know was kind of straddling both fences, but they made this decision
and it wasn't that successful so then do we say who is better you know. By the way let me, okay
let me finish playing the song and then we'll get to that hold on. Cause I'm gonna get back to other bands.
See on the (sings) we think of you know or no, we think of "Kickstart My Heart" (sings) right
it's the same lick kind of and so there's certain el, but then there's the detuning of
the guitars there's, he brings in elements of Motley Crue and he brings elements of grunge
without being too grungy so he doesn't totally lose everybody. He's got a a really commercial,
very poppy, commercial sounding 80s metal kind of bit going on here where the verses were much
more modern rock grunge kind of say more to modern rock than grunge and interesting.
Hooligans Holiday.
See now I could, I could see you know Layne Staley singing something like this
if it was a little more dark and minor key and you know whatever, not being so commercial in
that sense and maybe if they'd really gone down that route and stuck to it for a while
it may have worked. Now back to other bands. So I got the privilege through these times of traveling
back and forth to Europe on tour a lot of different tours and stuff this is about 1989-90
and I watched when Bon Jovi kind of took a huge dump in the United States around that time and
a lot of other bands that had done that what, and Sammy Hagar even you know to some extent you know
the pre Van Halen and then Van Halen came in and they sort of stuck to their guns but what
was interesting is the bands that actually stuck to their guns at that time which would include
you know bands like Bon Jovi, Bon Jovi went back to their roots where they became famous initially,
went back to Europe and worked their tails off in order to be able to, to you know to hang on to what
was kind of going away, you know fading and, and maintain that and rebuild their careers with their
original sound. Now did Jon change some things around with "Lay Your Hands On Me" and some other stuff,
yes and no he started to lose some range and stuff and he accommodated that you know whatever, but for
the most part you know he stayed true to that. Now that was true for other bands like AC- DC, Van Halen
you know a lot of other groups that went back to their original roots didn't kind of veer off to
do you know the grungy sort of thing and just went back to work and regained their fans and tried to
you know get whatever back. They stayed the course and they became or continued to be successful. I
just find that really interesting you know Motley Crue I'm sure is coming back and they'll do Motley
Crue. They're gonna be touring again and playing their old stuff and I'm sure they'll come come up with
something new but so it begs the question and this is really an enigma because most people would say
well Vince Neil must have been better because he maintained it, he's back in the band, people want
to hear the original singer. I get all that but the reality is, in my personal opinion Corabi is a much
better singer and I think most all of us would agree. I think Vince would agree with that but the
chemistry and the songwriting, we had a criteria, do you remember what that was. The criteria was
did the replacement singer take the band up a notch. I don't know was that song better than "Girls,
Girls, Girls" or that song better than "Dr. Feelgood" or better than "Kickstart My Heart" or some
of these other epic things that Vince did with the band. Well I just think Nikki's songwriting
was so good that he was able to pull that chemistry together of that sound and that band
and I'm not so convinced that that, that raised the bar. His voice is better, I didn't get to
see him live so I don't know what that looked like but in the end, you tell me. You put in the
comments section tell me what you think because again I want to be fair about everything. Front man,
how long they lasted you know and, and and. You put in the comments, you tell me what you think that's
what we're here for. Please be respectful when posting, don't bash people just give us you know a,
an honest opinion that is not too brutal or blunt. Anyway thank you for joining me, I
have a lot more of these coming your way and definitely check out my next video.