Re: Gary Cherone Reflects on his Three-Year Stint In Van Halen
Date: January 20, 2013 07:00PM
Troy, I admire your love for this music that we all talk about on this website and I have always had a respect for your knowledge about it, but...
I want to make sure that I just read your last post correctly.
Did you just say that all 3 VH singers can sing each others material?
If I read that right, then you cannot possibly know much about vocal ranges. The VH singers go in this order of ranges:
Sammy - Highest
Gary - Below Sammy
David - Below Gary
Sammy can sing anything Dave does and Dave can't sing anything Sammy does. Gary tried to sing Sammy songs, but was nowhere near powerful enough in that high/raspy range that Hagar has. Gary has a naturally cleaner tone than Sammy so it was a real stretch for him to scream his ass off like Sammy does. He is lucky he didn't last too long in VH because it probably would have ruined his voice.
As far as MIchael Sweet in Boston goes, it just didn't work for me. As I said before, I am a Brad Delp freak and I want those songs sang as close to his original perfection as possible. MIchael was not able to do that. He's a great front man, he sang on key, he sang with feeling, he sang with power but the bottom line is that he was not born with the vocal tone that Boston's material requires. Yes those concerts were successful but that doesn't mean that he is interchangeable with Brad Delp. And that is what you are not getting.