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 Meat Loaf (Sun file photo) |
The Meat Loaf was salty.
Sometime before Christmas, Meat Loaf's management set up a conference-call interview for his tour in support of Bat out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose. He'll be at Rexall Place tonight.
Conference call interviews can be sticky, unless you have a decent moderator mitigating questions from music journalists from across North America. None of us got that lucky.
I was first, allotted one question by the moderator, which left me with a difficult decision: Do I throw Meat Loaf a bone, asking him an obvious softball about his fiancee, Edmonton's own Deborah Gillespie, or do I ask him about the rocky road to Hell III and his legal dispute with longtime collaborator Jim Steinman?
I opted for the latter.
"Maybe what you've been reading isn't true," said Meat Loaf, hardly warmed over.
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"I don't remember the year, but Jim started sending me songs for the project. He was definitely in. And then he had a stroke. Maybe it was selfish on my part, maybe not, but I got very nervous about his health and his ability. When you start a project like this, it is physically demanding. I just thought, 'Man, I don't know that he can physically do this.'
"He told me over the phone that he needed six to nine months of therapy just so he could get his hands back to play piano. When he said that, I became very nervous. I think he did, too. If a project like this went on for two and a half years, the cost would be astronomical and not feasible in today's record market."
And that's that, as far as Meat Loaf's concerned, anyway. Last year, he and Steinman resolved a dispute over trademark rights to Bat Out of Hell, dropping a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the title of the best-selling 1977 album.
The 59-year-old Meat Loaf, whose real name is Marvin Lee Aday, had filed a suit last year claiming that Steinman wrongfully registered the phrase as his trademark in 1995.
Even if I wanted to press Meat Loaf on that issue, the placating moderator never gave me the chance. Meat Loaf insists, however, that his relationship with Steinman is fine and if anyone's to blame for the headaches it's their respective lawyers - dirty rotten meddlers!
Steinman does still have songwriting credits on Bat out of Hell III and acted as a consultant on the recording, though not a full-fledged contributor.
Meat Loaf, however, is still quick to defend Bat III's place in the series and his career.
"People either love or hate the Bat out of Hell albums," he concedes.
"The music is extreme and it deals with extreme situations in people's lives. It deals with the major peaks and valleys in their lives, when they're most vulnerable.
"But I believe (Bat III is) perfect inside the series. The reality is that this album, around the world as a whole, has been reviewed much better than the previous two."
Released last year, Bat out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose has been certified gold in Canada, Germany and the U.S.
Album sales today aren't what they were during the 1970s, but Meat Loaf says he's still proud of Bat III's numbers. But the numbers alone weren't enough for him to rationalize putting Hell on earth by way of a tour in support of the album.
"I really thought after the last tour that I wasn't going to do it again. There were nights where it was just too heartbreaking for me. I'm very emotional. It's been 40 years in January and I don't know how I've lasted it. I'm very emotional and I wear my feelings on my sleeve.
"Doing vocals on the record was very demanding and I was getting frustrated by the fact that there were things I could not do. When you're used to doing something and then you hear it ... and you you're hearing what you could have easily done 10-15 years ago and you can't, it's frustrating. I didn't want to cheat it, like I can't really do it anymore."
Thanks to the help of a vocal coach, he still can and will tonight, without any crutches or "cliched rock 'n' roll falderal."
"I don't do theatrics. I don't do fire like Kiss, motorcycles or dancing girls in cages - and I never have. I also don't go and slap high fives with people in the front row or wave to the cute girls on the side. And believe me, there are cute girls in my audience.
"I give more of an emotional centre as opposed to a flash in the pan. I want people leaving (my concert) like when they saw Rocky for the first time."