Celebrity Death Thread

What followed was a plunge into obscurity, during which Meat Loaf embarked on a 1989 tour of Ireland that saw him headline such off-the-beaten track locations as Conna Castle in north Cork and Neptune Stadium in Cork city.

In the UK press, there has been much jeering at this phase of Meat Loaf’s life in music – as if going to Ireland was the worst fate that could befall a rock star.

Meat Loaf himself always spoke fondly of that time and credited it with helping restore his passion for rock music – setting him on the comeback path which would culminate in1993’s Bat Out Of Hell II, the single I Would Do Anything For Love and sales of over 14 million.

“We played one gig in a big shed in the middle of nowhere,” he told me once of the tour of Ireland. “I got off the truck and said, ‘let’s sound-check’. I was told we couldn’t. Because there wasn’t any electricity. There was supposed to be a generator. It hadn’t arrived yet.

“I remember looking around thinking, ‘this place is miles from anywhere – nobody is going to come’. And you know what? That night it was packed. Five, six thousand people showed up. I’ll always have warm memories of Ireland and of those shows.”

perhaps the bottling story is urban/rural legend but the story of the generator is classic