By JASON MacNEIL -- Toronto Sun
Meat Loaf says his album Couldn't Have Said It Better, set
for release Tuesday, was supposed to be his last. But there's been a slight
change of plans.
"Yeah, we're doing it," he says from his Toronto hotel room, the "it"
referring to Bat Out Of Hell III. "That's why I said this was going to be the
last record, but we're going to do III. I'm not going to tour. I may do a show
or two but I'm not going to tour."
The musician, who wants to concentrate on his acting career under his real
name Michael Lee Aday, is currently in the middle of his last world tour. It's
a tour he knew would be his last for some time.
"I wish it was over already," he says. "I've just had a bad summer, I've had
(emergency intestinal) surgery, and then I got really ill, and then I got
freaked out, and I've been stressed. When we went out on tour last summer and
it was called the Just Having Fun For The Summer Tour, it really was fun.
"Not all the shows have been as good as I wanted. I had these terrible nights
in the dry climate and I'm sick and I don't actually know I'm sick. I hate
cancelling so I just keep going anyway. And then people can tell me how good
the show was and I want to shoot them."
Meat Loaf rose to stardom with an appearance in The Rocky Horror Picture Show,
but his fame reached new heights with his 1977 album Bat Out Of Hell, which
has sold more than 30 million copies. The songs he wrote with Jim Steinman,
such as Paradise By The Dashboard Light and the title track, were instant
classics.
The 57-year-old says his new album was more enjoyable to make than 1995's
Welcome To The Neighborhood.
"Welcome To The Neighborhood was a rush-rush, push-push thing," he says. "In
fact every album except Bat and this one have been rush-rush, push-push. You
gotta get it done! You gotta get it done! Every one of them!
"So I said, 'I'll never do it again.' And I didn't, I waited until I thought,
'Okay, I have nothing else left to say right now on this record. I have no
other scenes in my head.' It's really not what I'm saying but what scene I'm
playing, and have all the scenes been played inside this little play? All the
scenes that should have been there were there."
Meat Loaf says that while he juggles both acting and music, he doesn't see any
difference between the two.
"What you take is reality, you make them real," he says. "That's what acting
is and that's what it should be when you're on stage. But I don't see too many
performers on a rock stage who make it real. You're just singing words and
singing melodies if you're paying attention to the audience.
"It would be like going to see Shakespeare and the guy is doing, 'All the
world's a stage...' from As You Like It. Instead of being in that world, he's
out cruising the front row and then giving them high-fives. People would be
going, 'What is this clown doing?' If you're going to sing a song, there's no
difference."
The singer says he might consider running for politics given the state of the
world. He lost two friends in the 9/11 terrorist attacks while he was at the
Toronto International Film Festival promoting the film Focus.
"(The world) is almost like Alice In Wonderland, The Mad Hatter, it's lost its
mind," he says. "It's completely insane. It's just completely gone to hell in
a hand basket.
"At least if I go do a show, I'm going to Kansas and 12,000 people show up
they don't have to worry about what's going on for the next two, or
two-and-a-half hours. Let's go off on a dream, let's go on a road trip."
One thing you'll never find him doing is reading his own press, and for good
reason.
"There was a show that I got sick and we cancelled," he recounts with a laugh.
"And the next day we were still in that town. There was a review of the show
in the paper. And it was a good review, too!"