Day 24: Bat on Tour: Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

Bat Out of Hell is finally released, but token few have any faith in its potential. Meat Loaf and Steinman are holding auditions at the "Meat Loft" for the band that will tour with them. Ellen Foley, who laid the tracks on the album and helped convince people with pockets to sign Meat and Steinman doesn't join the line-up for the tour. Steinman is sold on Bat being a theatrical production. Meat knows it has to be rock and roll with a bit of theatrics. Either way, the woman who will perform the duets alongside Meat needs to be a great singer and a great actress...enter Karla DeVito (she of the tiny white leotard and leggings).

Epic decides that Bat's first live show will be opening for Cheap Trick in Chicago. Meat's not a fan of it. He's done the opening act thing back in the Stoney & Meatloaf days. He's gotten thrown off of tours for his antics as an opening act.  Tough. It's the late 70s, gone are the "make love not war" mentalities among the audiences. Nope, they're all about rock and roll, and they're not afraid to shout it.

Meat walks out on the Cheap Trick stage and the audience is silent. Pin-drop silent. Some feeb in the front row yells, "Get off the stage you fat fuck." Meat's shaken, but beyond everything, he's a performer, and goddamnit they've got forty-five minutes to perform as the opening act. Third song into their set, even the guitar player is saying they should run for it while they can. Hell no. Meat won't go.

That miserable experience sticks with Meat for years.

A few days later, the Bat Tour makes it to Jersey. Jersey teens welcome Meat and company with open arms. Queuing in the afternoon for the show he'll put on that evening. He takes the Jersey stage and it's everything he dreamed. Some of the best Bat PR pictures of Meat the Sweatball are from the Jersey shows.

He couldn't win over the execs or Chicago, but Jersey gave him love.

Hell, Two Out of Three Ain't Bad...