Axl Rose: the singer with the greatest vocal range in classic rock
There are usually two types of singers in the world: those who sing what’s in their heart and those who treat their craft like an Olympic sport. Regardless of how often people try to stretch the limits of their voice, there’s also a case to be made for those who try their hardest to put together a song that will put every one of their competitors to shame as soon as they hear it. While there’s no account for showmanship when looking at one’s range, Axl Rose had quickly moulded himself into the most stunning vocalist in classic rock with only a handful of albums under his belt.
When Guns N’ Roses first emerged on the scene, though, people were already paying attention because of how different they were. The other hair metal acts populating the Sunset Strip were fun for what they were, but not many of them could have claimed to have crawled out of the gutter quite like they did.
Outside of Slash’s fantastic guitar playing, no one could take their eyes off of what Rose was doing, and that wasn’t just because of his electric skills as a frontman. From the moment he opened his mouth, people realised he didn’t just have a ratty voice. He had the vocal power of a jet engine large enough to put metal titans like Bruce Dickinson to shame, and Appetite for Destruction is one of the purest examples of him working out his instrument.
But, really, do I need to go over his searing high register with any of you? If you’ve been to any major sporting event in the last 20 years, chances are that ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ has filled that arena at least once, which means that Rose’s lines about bringing someone down to their sha-na-na-na-knees are etched in your brain.
There is a dark side of Rose, though, and on every GNR album, a handful of songs feature him delving deep into the depths of his register. While ‘It’s So Easy’ is technically a duet between him and Duff McKagan with the bassist turned down slightly, Rose’s lower harmony feels like it’s conjured up in the depths of Hell. That’s not even the lowest he ever went, eventually hitting an F1 on the song ‘There Was a Time’ for Chinese Democracy.
And it seemed that the science world agreed to. When looking at the most impressive vocal ranges in rock, Concert Hotels singled out Rose at the top of the heap in popular music, citing his highest note being a Bb6 in the track ‘Ain’t it Fun’ from their covers album “The Spaghetti Incident?”.
That’s just what he’s done in the studio as well. Looking through the multiple hours of concert footage preserved during his prime, Rose was known to put his voice through every acrobatic move that he could when he performed, which probably explains why he went into full diva mode when he decided to start cancelling performances halfway through the Use Your Illusion tour.
So when you look back on him slowly sliding up to a note on ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ or taking way too long to end the damn song already on ‘Don’t Cry’, that’s not being done just to be melodramatic. It was to illustrate the fact that Rose was the greatest of his peers and that no one in the scene, Los Angeles or otherwise, could hold a candle to him.
