![]() So, swear to God, literally, we had not rehearsed the make-out scene until we performed it live. And he goes: ‘You’ll figure it out when you get there’. “I said to Steinman: ‘Exactly what happens in Paradise?’. ![]() Karla Devito waits expectantly as Meat prepares to lunge (Image credit: Getty Images) Karla jokes that making out with Meat was not on her job description when she took the gig. She played the virginal teenage temptress to Meat’s revved-up horn-dog in Paradise By the Dashboard Light, a campy rock’n’roll fantasy that required the apple-cheeked singer to lock lips with the amorous Meat in a nightly on-stage tryst. Karla was hired not just as a backing singer, but also as an actress as well. Karla Devito, Meat’s forever chirpy foil on the original Bat tour, is not surprised. Days before that, supposedly because he was ‘resting his voice’, he placed a moratorium on phone interviews, leaving this writer with merely a few lines of tersely written emailed answers to run with. He cancelled an appearance at the 2007 Classic Rock Roll Of Honour (on the day of the event), and then cancelled the rest of his European tour. His management said he was just stressed, but at the time of writing he hasn’t played a gig since. ![]() And then, just a week before this story was due, he announced on stage at a show in Newcastle that he “would never sing again”, due to recurring voice problems. While his ex-band members were readily available to talk, Meat Loaf himself proved elusive, scheduling and cancelling interview dates three times. Even just writing about the Bat Out Of Hell tour 30 years later is a monumental task. It should be pointed out that the circus didn’t end in 1978. I was never surprised when it got bigger and bigger and crazier and crazier. It wasn’t like: ‘Gee, look, we’re doing coliseums’, it was like: ‘Yeah, that’s where this belongs’. “None of it surprised me,” Joe Stefko says. The injuries and madness mounted, climaxing in Meat’s dramatic, bone-breaking tumble off stage in Ottawa, and a bizarre, public suicide attempt soon after. Meat pushed himself so hard physically every night that he required oxygen to revive him – an iconic image that would become a symbol for 70s excess. There were fights, mutinies, drugs and over-indulgence at every stop. The tour was also one of the most volatile. By May 1978, when the tour lurched to a halt, Meat Loaf was one of the most recognisable acts in the world. They conquered the US, and then set their sights on the UK and Australia, where they became ever bigger. Within months the band had moved from clubs to theatres, and then to arenas and civic centres. The power behind the throne, Meat and Jim Steinman in 1978 (Image credit: Getty Images) Whether they hated Bat Out Of Hell with a passion or not, they finally got behind it.” They did something like $40,000 worth of damage to the room… That night set the wheels in motion. People were jumping and dancing and carrying on. In Meat Loaf’s 1999 autobiography To Hell And Back, the singer writes about the intensity of that CBS Records convention gig: “There must have been 200 people on stage while the band was still playing. “After that the label ‘got it’, and they committed a lot of money, and it was a much, much better tour after that.” “We blew away everybody down in New Orleans,” Bruce Kulick says. After struggling with a minuscule budget and hampered by insufficient promotion from the record label, Meat Loaf played the CBS Records convention in New Orleans in the winter of 1977, and their now legendary performance changed everything. We never opened for anyone again, either.” Show them how great you are, and then you can do your speeches and your balloon acts or whatever the fuck you want to do’. You’ve gotta get the first punch in and just shut ’em up. So we all had a meeting afterwards, and I remember saying: ‘Look, you’ve gotta punch them in the face right away. And Meat just starting throwing shit all over the place. He said: ‘Don’t you ever embarrass me like that again!’. “Chairs were going… And Bob, who never took shit from anybody, said: ‘I told you this was not gonna work!’. “Meat was so upset he destroyed the dressing room,” Stefko says of that night.
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