Stevie's Voice Decline in the 80's

[The Juggler]

I hope people don't take this as "Stevie bashing" because I love the woman and her music, but this topic is something that always interested me.

I love this demo of Secret Love from 1980, her voice is so pure and clear in it. It's beautiful and the effects of coke haven't been seen yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OltUuI0kv38

Skip forward a few years to the Mirage tour in 1982, Stevie's voice is still there but it's rough around the edges. But it's still her voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBS-Z_CPuMo

Even on the Wild Heart tour, her voice is very rough but it's still completley recognizable. So what happened between 1983 and 1985?

Compare the best few notes of Beauty And The Beast to the opening shriek of I Can't Wait...it's a completely different voice.

So what caused this complete change? Was it the coke, the hole in her nose, the ciggarettes, what? And how come Christine or Lindsey's voice never changed, even though they both smoked and did coke also.

By 1987, her voice was completely unrecognizable to the pure, sweet vocal on Secret Love from just 7 years. What happened? Was it a combination of factors like drugs, and perhaps wearing out of the voice?

I know as people age, people's voice's go down in register, but Stevie's has changed completley.

Again, please don't take this as Stevie bashing. I love all of Stevie's solo work, and I love her voice but it's nothing compared to her beautiful voice circa 1977-1981. Why do people think her voice changed so much?

[SisterNightroad]

I posted a medical article about this on the thread about Stevie's voice range: http://ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showpost.php?p=1162828&postcount=18

[sleepless child]

It was reported in the 70's that she had nodules on her throat and got a speech therapist to teach her to talk at a higher pitch. She also had Robin on the road with her as her speech therapist. I noticed the difference during the Rumours tour and Mick said it was because she blew her voice doing Rhiannon during the Fleetwood Mac tour and that's why they moved the song earlier in the show. I really noticed a change around 1998 during the Enchanted tour. I think age has a lot to do with that though. She also said doing drugs and probably the drinking didn't help her voice much either. I loved her voice during those early years.

[StevieNicksfann]

As my name suggests, I also adore Stevie of course but I also find this topic interesting. Mainly because her voice always seemed to recover to some degree after each tour. So although her voice may have deepened between thw white album tour to Rumours - she recovered enough to record vocals for the next album that still retained the qualities from before. However, after the Wild Heart Tour to Rock A Little, it seemed like this did not happen. In fact, her voice got more ragged between the recording of RAL and the tour. Something I found interesting. I always thought - "well she finished the Wild Heart tour in 1983 and now it's 1986 when she finally goes back on tour again (and I realize she had some one-off shows in between) and yet her voice not only didn't seem to recover but it got worse. I understand coke, aging, rock singing all are contributing factors but I do find it interesting that in this 2.5 year span, it went from zero to sixty so to speak.

[Macfan4life]

Her voice changed for her first solo album and it sounded better. I think her first solo tour had her at the peak of her vocal career. Her voice started to get fried on the Wild Heart Tour. Yes it was from the abundant amount of cocaine with Joe Walsh and smoking like a chimney.
By the time RAL came out and tour she had become a coked out performer with a horrible voice. If it was not for her incredible past career people would not take her seriously with that voice.

But once off coke her voice was back to beautiful for The other side of the mirror.

[SisterNightroad]

I'd like to point out, for those that doesn't know or remember, that Stevie recently in an interview admitted that most of the damage to her nose (and possibly her voice) has been done because she used to take medicines by nose instead of by mouth, since she believed it would be more effective this way. For example she said she used to dissolve an aspirin in a glass of water and inhale it with the help of an eye-dropper.

[sleepless child]

That's right. That was Master Class wasn't it.

[David]

I hope people don't take this as "Stevie bashing" because I love the woman and her music, but this topic is something that always interested me.

I love this demo of Secret Love from 1980, her voice is so pure and clear in it. It's beautiful and the effects of coke haven't been seen yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OltUuI0kv38I bet that's closer to 1976. The old fart fans had that vinyl (Almanac) even before Tusk.

Even on the Wild Heart tour, her voice is very rough but it's still completley recognizable. So what happened between 1983 and 1985?
I saw her in October 1983 on tour and then in 1985 at a couple of smaller shows. That was the biggest change I can remember in her voice and her ... uh ... appearance.