Meat Loaf and the APO at Western Springs

By GRAHAM REID

If this is Meat Loaf's last world tour then this was a rowdy farewell.

Guys, there are worse ways to retire after more than 25 years in the job than with two vamps at your side (one in a red micro-skirt and holding a pitchfork), a blazing rock'n'roll band, most of your hair, and carrying about two-thirds the weight from the day you signed on.

In all that Mr Loaf gets a hats-off for rocking beyond the call of duty.

But as with all valedictory moments this was also full of pathos, some digressions which were slightly embarrassing, and a degree of breathlessness which showed the toll taken.

At times Meat Loaf was clearly a man whose range had deserted him - oddly most singers lose the tops of their voices but he was still strong in the higher registers and there were times, too many to be satisfying, when the band was obliged to fill in and carry the momentum.

And this was a show where the momentum faltered quite a bit.

He started a couple of songs, then halted them for some improvised chat, fluffed the intro to another, and was obviously winging it on another occasion while the band members looked at one another and just kept the tempo.

That said, there was also much to enjoy from a singer who is an eye-rolling, forehead slapping, sweat-drenched showman.

Meat Loaf music is grave-robbing stuff so throughout there were swathes of the familiar which the crowd enthusiastically rocked along to: symphonic rock which out-Spectored Phil; bar-room r'n'b of the Southside Johnny kind; a smattering of Springsteen taken to its pompous conclusion; chords from classic Tommy James and the Shondelles; mock gospel ... The whole grab-bag of rock history pulled together by this larger-than-life character whose songs are stories.

But over the long haul the bombast was crushing and Warren Zevon's Lawyers, Guns and Money went by as just another bruising encounter. He mocked himself in his stage chat ("Do I look like a man who has been starving?") and thanked the audience for making him what he was. But when he spent a long time introducing the band, sat breathless for a while and let the backing singers (and the audience) carry a couple of choruses for him, Meat Loaf was clearly a man who had given his all for rock' n'roll and was now ready to hang up his hat.

A looming deadline, but mostly a sense of disappointment, meant we left before the encore. If we missed Bat Out of Hell then so be it. Some things are best left in the memory, untarnished.