This is a review of the taping of the Meat Loaf concert that was held in aid of the UK based charity Comic Relief. It was later broadcast on a national British radio station:
I first heard about Meat Loaf's involvement with Comic Relief through the Loafdom Mailing List as it was not very well advertised, eventually there were also mentions on Radio Two (surprisingly a middle-of-the-road type radio station). To obtain tickets for the concert one had to telephone a hotline, answer a question about Meat Loaf and then pledge some money to Comic Relief. Assumingly the top 50 pledges won a pair of tickets for the taping.
The question was easy (which well known singer sang with Meat Loaf on DeadRinger For Love - Cher) so we made our pledge and waited. The winners were supposed to be announced on a programme about a week before the taping. After an anxious hour listening to Meat Loaf being interviewed on the show, the announcer informed us that he wouldn't be reading out the winners' names but that they had already been told that they'd won! Not surprisingly, I was really disappointed but when we rang the hotline again to find out how much we'd lost by, they told us that the lines were still open! Confusion reigned!
On the Tuesday, five days before the taping, I received the wonderful news that we'd been successful in our pledge and had got tickets !!!
Although we were allocated seats on the floor level, it was a free-for-all as to where one sat so we reached the venue in Golders Green, London by 5.10 - the doors were supposed to open at 6.30 with the recording commencing at 7.15. It was bitterly cold waiting with a biting wind. We were second in the queue and soon met up with some Meat Loaf fans that we'd seen at television shows a couple of weeks earlier so we chatted a lot (with our teeth chattering too!). Occasionally we could hear a few chords of the sound check when the doors were opened to let the theatre staff in. Inevitably, the soundcheck overran so a slight scuffle broke out between one father and the security guards with the result that the children were allowed to stand inside the foyer. Nearly an hour late we were allowed in and we managed to get seats in the third row.
The concert started with Home By Now / No Matter What (which is far more dramatic than Boyzone's version) and then they used the drum link into Life Is A Lemon (the same drum link that was used later on the tour but this was an experimental shorter version). They next performed DeadRinger For Love, Anything For Love, the duet version of Is Nothing Sacred for the first time and I'd Lie For You (and That's the Truth).
They then went into what was to be on the tour the acoustic part of the concert with Two Outta Three Ain't Bad and You Took the Words Right Outta my Mouth (most of the band had stools at the front of the stage) before the usual sketch in Paradise by the Dashboard Light and a Bat out of Hell finale.
During the concert there was a "Question and Answer" section which mainly gave Meat Loaf a chance to reel off the movies he was about to or had already filmed. Eeringly (with hindsight after what happened to the tour) at one point Meat Loaf got onto the subject of illness and said that Kasim had had a cold on the last tour so they'd banned him from any contact with the rest of the band for four days to decrease the chance of infection! Disappointingly, when Meat Loaf introduced the band, he omitted Kasim!! Luckily this was rectified when it was broadcast as the announcer listed the band members.
The show lasted about two hours but only one hour was broadcast. It was well worth the money in my opinion and at least it went to a good cause too.