Pre-recorded vocals on 1999-2002 In the Flesh tour?

[ILuvHoney]

There has been a lot of discussion about Roger's use of pre-recorded vocals on tours from 2006 onwards; however it is also known that he has been using vocal tapes as long back as the 1980 The Wall tour for certain vocals.
However, one tour that has largely avoided any discussion about this is the 1999-2002 In the Flesh tour. Of course, it's obvious that one verse of Every Stranger's Eyes was obviously lip-synced to the original album track. I am not in doubt that he did sing at least the vast majority of it live back then, and I am yet to find any obvious signs of lip-syncing on other songs on the DVD which I have watched countless times over the last 15 years.
However, I found this interview with Norbert Stachel, who played saxophone for Roger at this tour: https://www.brain-damage.co.uk/other...h-brain-d.html
The interviewer asks Stachel: "Is it true that Roger (rather sensibly) used a handful of pre-recorded vocal segments to save his voice from too much strain? When I met him at Wembley his voice was struggling and he was sucking lozenges. I'd much rather artists used the odd pre-recorded segment (selectively) rather than have to cancel shows..." to which Stachel responds: "Yes, and I agree".

This surprised me a bit, and made me a bit curious about which vocals they are talking about. This is as far as I know the only interview where a member of Roger's band has acknowledged Roger's use of pre-recorded vocals publicly. And the formulation "a handful of pre-recorded vocal segments..." indicates that this was true for more than that one verse. The pre-recorded vocals used from 2006 onwards are easy to identify as they usually sound a bit unnatural and pretty easy to distinguish from his actual live vocals who sound considerably different, and Roger's lip-syncing is rather bad and easy to detect on close-up shots. However I haven't noticed any suspicious vocals on the In the Flesh tour, apart from the album track on that particular verse, neither on the official release nor on bootlegs. Neither have I heard from any witnesses who saw the tour who detected anything suspicious at the shows they attended either.
Does anybody here know more about this? Are there vocals on other songs who sound the same night after night on this tour as well, aside from that one verse on Every Stranger's Eyes? And how about the 2002 shows where Roger did not use the album track for the first half of that verse (from "from where I stand" to "and I see signs"), was it really live or did he just record a new track?

I know that there might be differing opinions about whether we should discuss this, and not everybody wants to know or care, but if you don't want to know just don't watch the thread. It has been well-known that he uses vocal tapes for parts of the show for 18 years now, I have reconciled with it although I by no means like it, and we're talking about a tour more than 20 years ago, so I don't really see any issue with discussing it. It doesn't change the fact that it was an awesome tour with a great band and the best setlist Roger has toured with anyway, even if there were pre-recorded segments in it. Neither do I want another discussion about his use of pre-recorded vocals on post-2006 tours here, as there are lots of other threads where this is discussed but the In the Flesh tour seems to have avoided that kind of scrutiny.

[daemonspudguy]

I only have 2 recordings from the 2002 tour and the vocal performance of Every Stranger's Eyes is slightly, yet noticeably different between the two, at least to my ears.

[DaveTheRave]

This is as far as I know the only interview where a member of Roger's band has acknowledged Roger's use of pre-recorded vocals publicly.

Maybe that’s why he’s a former member of Roger’s band!

[ILuvHoney]

Yeah probably. For Roger's special appearances in September of the same year (the month after this interview), the same band as on the 2002 tour was used, except Stachel had been replaced by Ian Ritchie. However, I don't think he would have remained in the band for very long anyway; Stachel said he preferred other types of music, and I believe the two would also probably crash politically, considering that Stachel has recently appeared in a different context...
But I guess his sudden disappearance from the band might be attributed to this, and it was probably a bit naive of him to not expect consequences for confirming this publicly though. But maybe he planned to quit anyway and did not care. But he didn't appear to have any grudge against Roger either in the interview, so maybe he just was that naive.
I see that other band members are more defensive about this topic. Jon Carin has ridiculed people for asking about it on his Facebook page. Even Jay Stapley - who hasn't played with Roger for 37 years, and based on what he himself has said in interviews did not have the best relationship with Roger on the KAOS tour - claims that all the vocals on the Pros and Cons tour were live, which evidently wasn't the case (at least it would be very impressive if Roger managed to sing the high parts of Running Shoes, First Time Today, Go Fishing and Every Stranger's Eyes exactly like the album track on every show of the tour). So this rare admission is certainly unique in the regard; not even former band members have confirmed this publicly as far as I am aware. Not even Tim Renwick or Andy Newmark, who defected to the other side, so the band members seem to be pretty loyal when it comes to keeping the silence about this topic.

[daemonspudguy]

Personally, I think that Roger had wanted to have Ian Ritchie play on that tour from the beginning but Ian couldn't for whatever reason. The same thing happened with the This Is Not A Drill Tour.

[Emdy]

His vocals for Welcome to the Machine, as with all his tours, were prerecorded. His vocals for Comfortably Numb seem to have been dubbed after the fact, and the same vocals appear as the delayed bits on his live Wall (2010-2013) album, as well as live playback (the delayed bits) on the Us+Them tour.

For what it’s worth, he’d sung mostly live on the 1987, 1999-2002 and 2022/3 tours. Berlin 1990 is particularly fun to compare the live broadcast to the official release, not just for Roger’s contributions.

[ILuvHoney]

Thank you! Did he use the track for Machine on the entire tour or did he start using it at some stage of the tour? I listened to the Camden 1999 bootleg and thought the vocals sounded different from the CD, he sounds a bit more strained and he is also slightly out of tune on the sustained notes, which leaves me to believe that he didn't use a track for that one there.
A bit surprising that he would choose to lip sync that song after leaving the "it's all right we know where you've been" line to the backing singers though. With that line omitted, the song isn't really that difficult to sing.. There are other songs performed at this tour (e.g. Time, Perfect Sense Part II, Amused to Death) who go higher as well as faster and should therefore be more difficult.

As for Berlin, didn't they replace most of Roger's vocals afterwards for the official album release? I heard a recording of the original broadcast a long time ago and as I recall, Roger's voice sounded totally shot for much of the show, yet on the official release he doesn't sound that bad for the most part. And I guess some of the other artists got similar treatment as well?
Not a big fan of Berlin 1990 though, so haven't paid a lot of attention to either the official release nor the original broadcasts; in fact it's the only official album by Roger of which I don't own a physical copy. With Bryan Adams as a possible exception, I feel that the guest performers butchered most of the songs and hearing those versions of some of my favourite songs makes me cringe. But I am considering watching a recording from the broadcast again sometime soon, just to watch all the technical glitches and stuff. It's a piece of history after all, even if it hasn't aged well.

[Emdy]

I’d have to go back and listen to some recordings from 1999, but I do recall at least by some point that year he was using the prerecorded track. Might be a similar situation as the TINAD tour where some parts that were sung live on the first handful of shows were later lip synced. I would expect then that the gals singing the high parts were to maintain the illusion that he was actually singing.

As for Berlin, it wasn’t only his vocals that were redone after the fact. Cindi Lauper and Van Morrison’s performances in particular are noticeably different, and I don’t think they were just pulled from the dress rehearsal like Sinead’s. There are some notable bass dubs on Brick 1 as well.

[mark2114]

I can't speak to all of the vocals but for the Milwaukee 99 show his voice broke on the opening of Perfect Sense and he had to re-start it.

[slp22]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX5-z9PslZQ Roger's strangled sounding vocals drown out his pre recorded track in this performance of "Have A Cigar" from Rio in 2006. Pretty bad.

[daemonspudguy]

I read somewhere that he apparently had laryngitis that night. I was not surprised.

[thespitwasduringmoney]

this is slightly unrelated but while listening to the Wembley 1987 KAOS show, i could swear that Roger’s vocals on Home were the same as the studio recording.

[ILuvHoney]

Slightly unrelated but still interesting. I guess you mean the choruses then? Because the verses and outro definitely sounds nothing like the album.
But I'll have to investigate the choruses closer.
Every Stranger's Eyes on the KAOS tour definitely uses the vocal track from the Pros and Cons album for the climax, and the same was true for the Pros and Cons tour, as well as all shows on the In the Flesh tour before one of the 2002 Osaka shows. So it is possible that he did the same for Home, which also has some pretty high notes in it.