Next up in my Best Vocalists of All Time series, we have the Top 20 Metal, Male Vocalists of All Time.
This one was a little challenging to compile as I had to try and make the call of who belongs in which camp.
I tried to focus on including those that would still fall under the 80s and 90s metal category but there was still some crossover with those that were included on the Top 20 Rock Vocalists.
Again I compiled this list based on the polling we did with all of you, combined with my own input.
We’ll be looking at clips of the artists performing and there will be honorable mentions included at the end.
I’d love for you all to continue to chime in and let me know if you thought I missed anyone!
Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy – Where The PROOF Is In The Singing!
I’ve also included here some interesting facts about some of the artists from the top 20:
Geoff Tate
A wine enthusiast, he started making wine at age 14, explaining: “I was a boy scout and you could get a merit badge if you created a beverage or a food product and I made dandelion wine, which wasn’t very good but definitely sparked my interest and got me started on that passion.”The passion for wine further developed when Tate was in Queensrÿche: “I have been collecting wine seriously since the band first got signed back in 1983 and we were touring the world. I’d make special arrangements to leave at certain points of the tour and take off and head into the wine regions. I started to become even more interested in how it was made and how grapes were grown and which grapes grew best where and that type of thing.” Tate has given several interviews to the magazine Wine Spectator. In 2010, Geoff and Susan Tate launched their own brand of wine, “Insania”.
Jon Bon Jovi
When he was seventeen, Bon Jovi was sweeping floors at his cousin Tony Bongiovi’s recording studio, Power Station. In 1980, when Meco was there recording Christmas in the Stars: The Star Wars Christmas Album, Tony Bongiovi recommended John for the song “R2-D2We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, which became his first professional recording (credited as John Bon Jovi).
Jon also has an I for talent as he discovered Skid Row and Cinderella. In 1983, Bon Jovi visited a local radio station WAPP 103.5FM “The Apple” in Lake Success, New York to write and sing the jingles for the station. He spoke with DJ Chip Hobart and to the promotion director, John Lassman, who suggested Jon let WAPP include the song “Runaway” on the station’s compilation album of local homegrown talent. Jon was reluctant, but eventually gave them the song, which he had rerecorded in 1982.
Sebastian Bach
While hanging out with Metallica during a rooftop photo shoot, the singer discovered a bicycle on the building top and gleefully pedaled around on it. After realizing the front wheel was detachable, he started rolling it around, got carried away and it then shot off the ledge. Horrified, Bach and Metallica ran to the edge to see the spinning wheel land right through the windshield of a brand new Mercedes-Benz SUV.
While partying with Lars Ulrich and his Bay Area home, the pair noticed some guys running back and forth on the property, but thinking nothing of it, they continued to party. After Ulrich had gone on and on about the new car stereo he had installed — with amplifiers and speakers that were “the most powerful known to man” — he and Bach went to the garage to test it out. Ulrich put in a CD, preparing to blow Bach’s mind and eardrums. But remember those guys running around earlier? They had broken into Ulrich’s car and stolen the speakers and amplifiers, casting a deafening silence on the afternoon.
Catching Mötley Crüe on the Generation Swine tour in New York City, Bach found himself in front of a group of Hells Angels. During “Shout at the Devil,” he enthusiastically pumped his fist. At one point, he threw his arm back and elbowed one of the motorcycle gang’s members right in the face. Bach tried to reason with him by saying, “C’mon dude!! It’s the Crüe!!!!!” That didn’t help the situation, and the biker grabbed Bach’s head, bent him back and permanently rearranged his nose. There’s a happy ending to this story, though: They ended up becoming party buds and hanging out the rest of the night.
Michael Matijevic
At age nine Matijevic began singing in the church choir, he also played country music such as Johnny Cash, and John Denver. However at age eleven he was introduced to Led Zeppelin; and that is when his musical journey began to come alive. When Matijevic was thirteen years old he and his brother John formed a band name “Teaser”, playing covers tunes as well as original music.
He, John and James (the three were a band called Red Alert) left to Los Angeles in the hope of getting a record deal, despite having no contacts. However, within a month, the band had a record deal.
Despite a brutal face injury during his career, our years later, in 1996, after much physical rehabilitation, Matijevic formed a new version of SteelHeart that recorded the album “Wait.” The single “Wait” went #1 in many Asian countries, & the song “We All Die Young” which was later used in the 2001 Mark Wahlberg / Jennifer Aniston film, “ROCK STAR.” Matijevic played a huge part in the ROCK STAR movie by lending his voice to Mark Wahlberg’s character Chris Cole in a Steel Dragon cover band and later as his alter ego Chris “Iggy” Cole of Steel Dragon.
Joe Elliot
Joe wrote his first song when he was eight years old and recorded it on his mom’s tape recorder. “I still have it,” he notes of that special opus. He made his stage debut playing Elvis Presley in a school play at 11 miming guitar, and learned to play six-string for real soon after, joining his first band at 15
Walking home because he missed the bus, he met a fellow musician named Pete Willis, who happened to be looking for a guitar player for his band Atomic Mass. But Joe was quickly moved to lead vocals. Joe suggested to name the band Deaf Leppard (as a kid he would pretend that he was a rock star in an imaginary band he called Deaf Leppard)
As a member of Def Leppard, he wrote pop and soft rock music for various music artists such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.
James Hetfield
For Metallica’s 1991 song “The God That Failed”, the lyrics and song material were inspired by Hetfield’s anguish on the circumstances surrounding his mother’s death. She died of cancer after refusing medical attention, solely relying on her belief in God to heal her. Hetfield felt that had she not followed her Christian Science beliefs, she could have survived.
James Hetfield was a janitor before Metallica. In 1991, Hetfield blew his voice doing a cover of the song “So What” during the recording of the album Metallica, and had to be completely retrained. He has the recording still on tape and practices with it before every show.
Kip Winger
Kip’s theatrical composing debut is the musical thriller Get Jack. The story revolves around the five female victims of Jack the Ripper. This became a concept album that entered at #7 on Billboard’s Cast Albums chart.
He and his brothers all played in a band called Blackwood Creek. He co-wrote one of the songs on “Midnite Dynamite,” KIX’s third album from 1984, which was his big break. This led to a collaboration with Alice Cooper on two albums (after which he joined Cooper’s band in 1985.)
I just write – we write the exact same way we’ve always written since the ’80s: Set up a drum machine, write some riffs, and once we get the stuff the kind of quality we want riff-wise, then we start to shape the arrangements.
