I really struggle to name the best concert I've ever been to, but I can most certainly name the weirdest.
My younger brother Jeff got super into Meat Loaf during my junior year of high school. I wasn't really a card-carrying fan myself, but I heard Jeff blasting the songs in the shower enough to at least be casually familiar with a lot of them, and "I'd Do Anything For Love" was in regular rotation on family car rides. As luck would have it, Meat Loaf was touring the country that year and would be making a short stop in Waukegan, Illinois, a handful of weeks after my brother's birthday. The opportunity was too perfect to pass up. My mom bought us all tickets to the show as a birthday present for Jeff.
The show was on Wednesday, April 6th, 2016. Making the 45-minute drive to Waukegan and arriving just in time for the show meant having to leave tennis practice a half hour early, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't embarrassed to tell my teammates I had to leave practice early to get to a Meat Loaf concert. But then I remembered my coach had left practice early one day the previous season to go to a Neil Diamond concert, and that was far worse, so I knew I had at least some shield from criticism.
Now let me be clear: I had absolutely zero expectations for this concert. I was just hoping my brother enjoyed the show, and any joy I got out of it was purely supplemental. I had heard crazy rumors about Meat Loaf collapsing on stage sometimes because he puts so much energy into each set, and while I definitely wasn't hoping for any medical emergencies, I was certainly hoping Meat Loaf would at least be a spectacle that even a casual fan like me could still watch and enjoy.
The 2,400-capacity Genesee Theatre in Waukegan was well-equipped for this sort of spectacle, with crystal chandeliers, bright-red vaudeville curtains, and ornate, gold-trimmed decorations on every wall. It was a theatre in every sense of the word, clearly designed for musicals, ballets, orchestral concerts, and Meat Loafs. Looking around the venue, it was pretty obvious that my mom and my brother and I were three of maybe only eight or nine people who didn't qualify for Medicare. I shouldn't have been surprised; these were clearly all folks who had their high school years soundtracked by Bat Out of Hell, and it was certainly me crashing their party rather than the other way around.
When the lights did fall, the audience let out a collective roar, and then there he was, confidently strolling toward center stage in a black button-down glistening with colorful sequins. The audience was already swooning in admiration, stoked to see such an icon in the flesh, before Meat Loaf even uttered his first words. The band rumbled to life, Meat Loaf grabbed the microphone, hobbled into the spotlight, and...
Saying his voice sounded somewhere between asthmatic weezing and road-rage screaming is still probably fairly generous. The dude had nothing in him anymore. The passion was still there, and the stage presence that made him such a memorable part of The Rocky Horror Picture Show was still at full-throttle. But rather than delivering the songs with the tenor that graced so many classic rock staples, he delivered them with a sort of aggressive slam poetry aesthetic, shouting the words into the mic and aching at the effort of it all. Not to mention he was 68 and it was showing in both his size and his mobility. It was pretty sad to see. My chin practically hit the floor when I first heard him. The voice was just gone.
Yet, after every song, the audience erupted with the same fervor they did when Meat Loaf first walked out despite him being only a relic of the performer he once was. And even though his singing voice had clearly already retired, Meat Loaf showed nothing but love and passion for performing that night. He didn't hit any of the notes correctly, but he certainly hit all of them with more passion than the previous five artists on that stage combined. Calling it a "Meat Loaf concert" feels a bit liberal, but calling it a "Meat Loaf celebration" could hardly be more accurate. Someone should have told him to stop by this point. But Meat Loaf built an unbelievably successful career by sticking his middle finger up to anyone who told him he couldn't do something, and this just felt like another example. He clearly still adored being on stage, and the audience clearly adored watching him, so why should he stop? What's more rock 'n roll than to die doing what you love?
When he let out his final wail at the end of his last song, I was ready to give him a standing ovation too. Both his talent and his 68-year-old body were exhausted, but true to his reputation, he certainly put on a show. It's simultaneously the worst concert I've ever been to from a musicality standpoint and one of the concert memories I would least like to trade.
Rest in peace Meat Loaf, a rock n' roll icon sure to be long outlived by the rock epics he brought to our ears and the passion for performing he always delivered to his fans.
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