Meat Loaf - vocals; Steve Buslowe - bass; Karla DeVito - vocals; Rory Dodd - vocals; Paul Glanz - keyboards; Bob Kulick - guitar; Bruce Kulick - guitar; Joe Stefko - drums; Jim Steinman - piano
A month after his breathrough album, Bat Out of Hell, had been released, Meat Loaf (aka Marvin Lee Aday) performed a series of memorable shows at New York's Bottom Line. This performance, one of several taped during Thanksgiving week in 1977 for the King Biscuit Flower Hour, features the best of this early material including "Bat Out Of Hell," "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth," "For Crying Out Loud," and the maniacal "All Revved Up And No Place To Go," clearly the most energy-packed track of the show.
"Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" is a brilliant ballad and arguably the best song of his career. He gives a memorable performance here, along with a rockin' re-make of the Ike & Tina Turner classic, "River Deep, Mountain High."
Teaming up with pianist/composer Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf had developed an album of rock epics that cleverly combined pop, metal, and opera, while at the same time sounding incredibly fresh and cutting-edge for its time. Out in the showcase clubs of America, Meat Loaf had assembled a band to bring the album to life. However, it would not be long before the show became a bigger-than-life stage presentation; Meat Loaf would soon be a massive superstar and far too big to play a small, trendy club like the Bottom Line.
After the success of Bat Out Of Hell, Meat Loaf and Steinman worked together on 1981's Dead Ringer before problems between them and their business managers led to Loaf's declaring bankruptcy and trying to put out albums without Steinman's help. Eventually, after a series of ups and downs, the two paired together for Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell, which was Meat's biggest success since the original.
Meat Loaf has also been seen on several TV appearances and in a number of films. Every couple of weeks, VH1 Classics shows a self-produced bio-pic. In it, they go into his troubled youth, impassioned love of celebrity, his remarkable voice—and his triumph over what seemed to be every possible adversity.