Meat Loaf and the Albert Hall are well suited, neither having much time for subtlety and understatement. The singer has made a long career out of taking the huge, the extravagant, the overwrought, and multiplying it by a million.
It is a rare admission that an album can be far bigger than the people that created it. Like George Lucas when he isn’t directing Star Wars films, Meat Loaf has found that his public is rather less interested when there isn’t a monster and a motorbike on the record sleeve.
And while it is hard to see this new effort approaching the vast combined 45 million sales of its predecessors (songwriter Jim Steinman’s reduced involvement being the disquieting factor), he’s certainly stayed true to brand values.
There were dramatic strings and epic guitar solos on songs that needed to be timed with a calendar rather than a watch. Steinman’s It’s All Coming Back to Me Now, a hit for Celine Dion a decade ago, was the obligatory emotional duet, finally given the Meat treatment with the impressive help of Norwegian singing star Marion Raven.
After recent health problems he was in fine voice on the older favourites, too, though Bat Out of Hell itself was the only one that could raise bums from seats. The song has a magic that has touched his entire career - he’s wise never to have treated the Bat as an albatross.
Here is the set list;
ACT 1
All Revved Up (With No Place To Go)
Paradise By The Dashboard Lights
Hot Summer Night
You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth
Out Of The Frying Pan (And Into The Fire)
I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)
Objects In The Rear View Mirror
ACT 2
The Monster Is Loose
Bad For Good
If It Ain’t Broke Break It
Blind As A Bat
Bat Out of Hell
ENCORE
It’s All Coming Back To Me Now
Life Is A Lemon (And I Want My Money Back)
To find some picture of the event look here and here
I am not going to brag and say I took all these videos below, because that would be a lie, so these are off a kind gentleman who posted them Youtube.
Objects in the rear view mirror
Bat out of hell (I was around there)
That’s all folks
-Kyle