When I saw the Stadium Tour I thought Vince Neil did a much better job singing than he had in literally decades. His singing is notoriously bad, and has only gotten worse over the years. So when he got, I’ll say maybe 50% of the words right, or at least I could tell he was actually singing words, I gave him credit for marked improvement. Now again, he wasn’t great by any means, and for the amount of money Motley Crue is pulling in on tour he should be way better than he is. But he wasn’t awful like the last few times I’ve seen him and he is at least putting forth some effort to do better.
Of course with a tour as big as this one the bands are going to make videos of as much of it as possible, either for a concert tour stream later in the year or maybe a full tour DVD package or something. So when one of the cameras that was on stage pointing out to the audience clearly showed a teleprompter screen, it was obvious to the whole crowd because it was being shown on the big screens on both sides of the stage.
I know lots of people think singers using a teleprompter is a rip-off because, again, for as much as they’re making, they should at least be able to memorize their own lyrics! And I agree with that, to a point. I can sit here and make excuses like: “with as much drugs and alcohol as Vince has consumed, I’m sure his memory is shot and he needs a prompter.” Or: “the Crue have released 41 singles, not to mention the other album cuts and there’s no way most singers could remember that many songs.” But I agree that most singers should, and do, remember ALL of the lyrics to ALL of their songs. Hell, Garth Brooks does 3 hour concerts and knows all those songs.
But in many cases I’m ok with a teleprompter for a few reasons. 1) If it helps the performer put on a better show for me, then that’s good! 2) Its not doing any harm to me to have a little screen on stage, so why should I care? 3) Everyone gets older and sometimes remembering little details, like tons of song lyrics, gets harder and we all could use some assistance at times.
So that’s my take on teleprompters, and specifically Vince using them. In the end in this situation, it helped Vince do a better show than I’d seen him do in a while, and that was good for me.
Here’s the latest YouTube video with a prompter in it. Does it really bother you? Ok, after watching how close Vince is to his teleprompter and STILL screwing up words to Home Sweet, Home, maybe it is a rip-off lol. You can see the screen just 10 seconds in.
