What are the confirmed last performances of Stevie high notes?

[ViscountViktor]

When did she last perform:

- The top note in 'all your life' in Rhiannon

- The falsetto on 'it's only right' in Dreams

Thank you!

[AnthonyMI]

The Regan administration. First one.

[UnwindedDreams]

Originally Posted by ViscountViktor

When did she last perform:

- The top note in 'all your life' in Rhiannon

- The falsetto on 'it's only right' in Dreams

Thank you!

So it wasn’t truly the top note “All Your Life” but in her Grammy performance with Taylor Swift she sang it in that fashion. It didn’t sound how she does today and she sang “Taken by the wind” like the White album.

This wasn’t in concert but she sang the Dreams falsetto in Deep Dish’s Dreams remix.

[Macfan4life]

I think her live high notes retired on the Mirage tour. Her 1983 tour when she did copious amounts of blow had her vocals very rough some nights. I still think she could hit some high notes but it was rare. She started relying on her back up vocalists for the Edge of 17: ooo baby ooo, said ooo around that time.
Sara is a rare recording from the Mirage tour but several of them on youtube had her perfectly hitting the highest notes in that bridgey part of Sara ooooo oooo, oooo ooo ooo said Sara. You would have thought it was December 1979 instead of October 1982. Not all nights she did that though.
She could screech in 1986 if but I don't call that a high note

[aleuzzi]

Hard to say. She was already altering the notes by Mirage, but that was likely due to lack of discipline and boredom. She still had range and quite a bit of power. So I’d say 1983/84. By the time I saw her in 1986, her voice was in shreds: it was shocking how audibly she’d deteriorated.

A few years later, I heard “It’s a Bitch” and thought—“hmmm, the high notes are gone but she sounds healthy.” She’d become a powerful vocalist of a different sort. With “Blue Denim,” I was won over to this new voice, which lasted until about 2005.

Overall, I think she sang pretty well, with gradual but not unnatural deterioration, until about 2015.

[ViscountViktor]

I think my question is more does anyone have bootleg proof eg this date is the last one we have when she sang it.

I'm pretty sure it's the 1977 Rumours tour as by the end of it she was already avoiding these notes.

The 1978 live album has her dodging them, although she does sing the falsetto top part in the Dreams chorus.

Such a shame but I think that tour changed her voice a lot.

[jmn3]

Real high notes - live? Probably the first half of the Rumours tour if we’re being honest. It’s not that she couldn’t sing the songs since then but she had to adjust. She still had a lot of power to her voice IMO through the Say You Will tour. Although by then the power and range was already quite limited but she could still nail a few songs pretty well. For the last 15-20 years she has gotten painfully monotonous. She can still have some moments but more or less throughout an entire show she is painfully blah these days. Rhiannon has been brutal for years and the bridge on Gypsy is just sad.

[David]

Originally Posted by ViscountViktor

When did she last perform:

- The top note in 'all your life' in Rhiannon

I think that ended between September and November 1977. She is still doing that in Vegas and LA in late August, but it’s gone by the Australia video in November.

- The falsetto on 'it's only right' in Dreams

That, too, ended for the most part somewhere on the 1977 tour. It is gone on the first verse but still present on the second verse when they played LA August 29. (It’s there in Nashville in late May and others.)

By my ear, the falsetto and high notes on a more-or-less regular basis faded during the latter 1977 tour — at least on those two songs — but there were other songs where she really shot up there on the 1983 solo tour. So the modified choruses and such just became a habit rather than a technical vocal inability. I think she curtailed high notes to please vocal coaches.

[ViscountViktor]

Originally Posted by David

I think that ended between September and November 1977. She is still doing that in Vegas and LA in late August, but it’s gone by the Australia video in November.



That, too, ended for the most part somewhere on the 1977 tour. It is gone on the first verse but still present on the second verse when they played LA August 29. (It’s there in Nashville in late May and others.)

By my ear, the falsetto and high notes on a more-or-less regular basis faded during the latter 1977 tour — at least on those two songs — but there were other songs where she really shot up there on the 1983 solo tour. So the modified choruses and such just became a habit rather than a technical vocal inability. I think she curtailed high notes to please vocal coaches.

I am just listening to the Las Vegas bootleg 25/08/1977 right now and yes she does sing some of these in each song, although not all of them!

What songs do you have in mind from the 1983 tour?

Edit: I am just watching Australia 1977 now - she is doing falsetto in Rhiannon chorus and hits one of the high 'million years' (but this could be dubbed?)

[David]

Originally Posted by ViscountViktor

I am just listening to the Las Vegas bootleg 25/08/1977 right now and yes she does sing some of these in each song, although not all of them!

So the avoidance of those notes wasn’t an abrupt, total moment. It was a gradual refusal to do so.

What songs do you have in mind from the 1983 tour?

Oh, Stevie was up there at Irvine Meadows (September 24) and bellowing all over high C the whole night in Los Angeles (October 2) on “Outside the Rain,” “If Anyone Falls,” and “How Still My Love” (her yelling song that year). I was never so oddly intrigued by a performance of hers in all my born days — despite the fact that I saw her do some very strange things from time to time.

Edit: I am just watching Australia 1977 now - she is doing falsetto in Rhiannon chorus and hits one of the high 'million years' (but this could be dubbed?)

And no high C on “Rhiannon” a week later in Osaka/Budokan, Dec. 4, 1977. But that isn’t to say that she doesn’t sing a high note on some other song all night, which means that she dropped a few key high notes because she just got in the habit of doing so — not because she couldn’t climb up there in the passion of the moment.

If you can find that high C on any of the 1978 shows, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din. (No in Dallas Cotton Bowl on July 23 or Baton Rouge on Aug. 30.)

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by David

So the avoidance of those notes wasn’t an abrupt, total moment. It was a gradual refusal to do so.

Oh, Stevie was up there at Irvine Meadows (September 24) and bellowing all over high C the whole night in Los Angeles (October 2) on “Outside the Rain,” “If Anyone Falls,” and “How Still My Love” (her yelling song that year). I was never so oddly intrigued by a performance of hers in all my born days — despite the fact that I saw her do some very strange things from time to time.


And no high C on “Rhiannon” a week later in Osaka/Budokan, Dec. 4, 1977. But that isn’t to say that she doesn’t sing a high note on some other song all night, which means that she dropped a few key high notes because she just got in the habit of doing so — not because she couldn’t climb up there in the passion of the moment.

If you can find that high C on any of the 1978 shows, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din. (No in Dallas Cotton Bowl on July 23 or Baton Rouge on Aug. 30.)

Some nights she could hit it, and some nights she couldn't. The nights her throat was bad she clearly just didn't want to even try. She got really crucified in some of the early live reviews and there were plenty of gigs they cancelled due to her over straining her voice.... for a long time in interviews she couldn't get her voice above a whisper. She would also get injections to, as she put it, "de-swell" her vocal cords. That's a tricky game to play. She did end up with nodules on her vocal cords also. So I'd disagree that she only stopped hitting the notes out of habit. A lot of nights she knew she would NOT hit them and so didn't try them. Other nights either she thought her voice could hit them or the drugs were good enough or whatever and she went for them. There are quite a few nights she went for them and missed too, so.... Crap shoot.

[sleepless child]

I think the drugs or more importantly, the alcohol ruined her voice. It's a shame. Her voice changed so much after 1977. I thought she really brought it back to a great level in 1994, but by late 1998, I think it was changing again. This time due to age. I hate her vocals on the Say you will album. In your dreams the vocals weren't too bad but some of her duet vocals haven't been real good. 1

[David]

Originally Posted by bombaysaffires

Some nights she could hit it, and some nights she couldn't. The nights her throat was bad she clearly just didn't want to even try. She got really crucified in some of the early live reviews and there were plenty of gigs they cancelled due to her over straining her voice.... for a long time in interviews she couldn't get her voice above a whisper. She would also get injections to, as she put it, "de-swell" her vocal cords. That's a tricky game to play. She did end up with nodules on her vocal cords also. So I'd disagree that she only stopped hitting the notes out of habit.

I think that vocal strain was definitely the original reason for some of these little rearrangements of the vocal line. I remember all the trouble she used to have in the first few years of touring with Mac. She was a sick little thing with a perpetual sore throat when Mac was the biggest rock act around.

When I mentioned habit, I was actually referring to the one high note in “Dreams” (“it’s only right/it’s only me”) and the note in “Rhiannon” (“all your life”). She just slowly stopped singing the album notes in those two instances in late 1977 — even though she was still doing some shredding on the rest of “Rhiannon,” “Gold Dust Woman,” and “Landslide” (which has a bunch of high notes). So Viktor and I were trying to figure out whether we could nail down a specific date — but as it turns out, we can’t, just a monthlong window.

Lots of times — one can hear on concert tapes — in 1977 Stevie does not sing “it’s only right” on the high C, but she does sing the exact same high note during the chorus, on which she is singing a secondary harmony a third above the vocal line: “Players only love you/When they’re playing.” A kind of habit settled in on those two songs, resulting in an evolving permanent change in the vocal line on good nights and bad. 1977 November and December seems to be that window for those two songs to permanently change the vocal line from the album. Since 1983, look at how the vocal line on “Stand Back” has dropped — not modulated (it’s still the same key) but dropped to a harmony below the original lead line (“Take me home/Why don’t you take me home,” etc.). And Lord knows that “Gypsy” notes in recent years have changed, too, dropping from a main vocal melody to a harmony part below it (sometimes a little annoyingly—“and it lights up the night”).

[ViscountViktor]

Originally Posted by David

So the avoidance of those notes wasn’t an abrupt, total moment. It was a gradual refusal to do so.

Oh, Stevie was up there at Irvine Meadows (September 24) and bellowing all over high C the whole night in Los Angeles (October 2) on “Outside the Rain,” “If Anyone Falls,” and “How Still My Love” (her yelling song that year). I was never so oddly intrigued by a performance of hers in all my born days — despite the fact that I saw her do some very strange things from time to time.


And no high C on “Rhiannon” a week later in Osaka/Budokan, Dec. 4, 1977. But that isn’t to say that she doesn’t sing a high note on some other song all night, which means that she dropped a few key high notes because she just got in the habit of doing so — not because she couldn’t climb up there in the passion of the moment.

If you can find that high C on any of the 1978 shows, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din. (No in Dallas Cotton Bowl on July 23 or Baton Rouge on Aug. 30.)

Any links to these?

[David]

Originally Posted by ViscountViktor

Any links to these?

Los Angeles If Anyone Falls

Los Angeles How Still My Love