Live at Wembley

by William RuhlmannBy 1987, Meat Loaf was a forgotten man in his own country, but the story was different in Europe. While his 1986 studio LP Blind Before I Stop had marked a sales drop after five consecutive Top Ten albums in the U.K. (including the compilation Hits Out of Hell), it had still made the Top 40, as did the single "Rock 'N' Roll Mercenaries." That kind of consistency, along with the singer's reputation as a concert performer, more than justified the release of this tour souvenir, which was called Live at Wembley in Britain and simply Live elsewhere. (In America, it wasn't released at all.) While it demonstrated that Meat Loaf had the ability to perform his Bat Out of Hell warhorses competently and passionately and that other hits such as "Modern Girl" could rock a crowd, however, the album really never was anything more than a tour souvenir. The sound wasn't great, and although the audience was enthusiastic, Meat Loaf and the band simply went from one song to another, without comment and without much variation from the performances on the much better recorded studio albums. Of course, the juxtaposition of songwriter Jim Steinman's ambitious Bat Out of Hell suites with the more pedestrian arena rock songs Meat Loaf recorded without him was unkind to the latter. The only thing out of the ordinary was the concluding "Rock 'N' Roll Medley," clearly an encore, but Meat Loaf himself was missing in action for much of it, leaving his backup band and backup singers to take the lead vocals on the first two selections, "Johnny B. Goode" and "Slow Down."