Elevating ‘Hell’: That point Meat Loaf rode a horse within the Sheraton Centre ballroom

When the unhappy information got here of the demise of rock celebrity Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) on January 20, Toronto Star librarian Astrid Lange emailed me this gloriously outrageous picture from the archive. “(It was labelled) Meat Loaf on Horse in Ballroom,” she wrote, including, “Ah, the ’70s!”

“Meat was a wild man,” remembers Toronto broadcasting legend John Donabie, a distinguished voice from the ’60s by way of the ’90s on such radio stations as CHUM, Q107 and CFRB.

Over his illustrious profession, interviewing greats like John Lennon, Ry Cooder and Richie Havens, Donabie sat down with Meat Loaf a number of occasions. “My first interview with him was at Q107 when his debut album, ‘Bat Out of Hell,’ broke,” Donabie says. “He was actually jovial, and he talked very intelligently about placing the album collectively, him and (songwriter) Jim (Steinman).”

Donabie and his spouse, Ala, went to see Meat Loaf at Massey Corridor on that first tour and have been blown away by his expertise and presence. “Oh my god, Meat was, wow!” Donabie is sort of puzzled when he remembers that dwell efficiency. “It was like watching a rock and roll play. Regardless that he was a giant man, he moved throughout that stage like loopy, sweating like mad however by no means out of breath.”

“The album in fact ultimately turned a monster vendor,” says Donabie. In actual fact, Bat Out of Hell stays one of many top-selling albums of all time, shifting greater than 43 million copies worldwide. “Having an eight-minute track – ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Mild’ – doing so nicely was remarkable.”

When this picture was taken in 1979, “Bat Out of Hell” had been out for 2 years, and by that point had offered greater than 1,000,000 copies in Canada alone. To have a good time, CBS Data, guardian firm of Meat Loaf’s label, Cleveland Worldwide, threw an enormous bash for the singer and some hundred of his greatest followers, together with an assortment of stomach dancers, lions, llamas, and CFL linebackers.

Meat Loaf arrived within the Sheraton Centre ballroom in downtown Toronto astride a horse named Freddie, donned a Maple Leafs jersey proffered by Burton Cummings and drank pink cocktails from coconut shells beside an enormous ice sculpture spelling out his title.

An epitome of rock-star extra, Meat Loaf was quoted within the Star on the time as saying, “Is that this social gathering? I do not know. I don’t keep in mind the opposite ones!”

Ah, the ’70s certainly.

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