Photo by Caryl Burton:

Review by SueW:
It was back to the MEN Arena again tonight and another great concert! There was an exhibition on in Manchester that I’d been wanting to see for a while so I went there in the day and then met a friend for dinner so by the time I got to the venue I’d already felt that I’d had a great day out! I opted not to see Marion Raven again so instead I wandered around the venue a bit and looked at the merchandise. There seems to be a large selection of various T-shirts, sweatshirts, caps and things but it all seemed rather pricey to me. Maybe it’s because of the low US dollar at the moment but T-shirts seemed to be about £30 ($60) and there was a sweatshirt for a whopping £60 ($120)! The programmes are £15 ($30) but I did buy one of those as I like a souvenir of the tour. I went to see Bryan Adams at Wembley Arena last night and his programmes were only £8 ($16) - although Meat Loaf’s programmes have 7 photos of Kasim in them so that makes it worth the money!

For this concert FanFire had come up trumps for me as I’d bought through them a seat right in the middle of the middle block in the front row. As I would have been right in front of Meat Loaf I opted to swap with a friend (who is a big Meat Loaf fan) who had a seat in the second row but more towards Kasim side so I was very happy with my view!

The concert started slightly earlier than on Thursday evening and personally I thought this was a better concert (Thursday was good and this one I thought was brilliant). In fact out of the three so far, this was easily my favourite!

Photo by Saeko Crawford:

Kasim wore a blue and white smock and his black trousers for the 1977 part of the show and today Meat Loaf came on with a shoulder length wig similar to how he used to look back in 1977. During the chatting part of Paradise By The Dashboard Light (which thankfully didn’t go on for too long!) there was a really funny part as Aspen Miller said how embarrassing it was when middle aged men wear bad wigs and pulled his off and threw it on the floor. Meat Loaf then picked it up and started stroking it and talking to it!

Kasim changed into a black shirt for the remainder of this set and they played the same songs as they had on Thursday. One of the highlights for me was again Out Of The Frying Pan (And Into The Fire) with those amazing flames. I remember back on the 1994 tour they used to have two massive shoots of flame at the front of the stage in part of the song built these seem more impressive somehow. They also use something like a sparkler display during Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams (which is also very impressive!) so there is quite a strong acrid smell in the venue after that! When Meat Loaf put on his guitar during that song he turned around to Kasim and Kasim appeared to be calling out the chords to him initially.

Meat Loaf appeared to be in a really jovial mood tonight as he told us before the start of Objects In The Rear View Mirror that no expense had been spared as on stage they had not one but two red stools! He uses one to sing the beginning of Anything For Love when he sits by Mark Alexander on the piano and the other at the front of the stage for Objects.

Photo by Saeko Crawford:

Tonight there was no interval between sets as they just darkened the arena and played the Meat Loaf movie montage to the recording of Alive. In The second set, after the extract from Seize The Night, instead of playing The Monster Is Loose they changed the set list slightly and played (for the first time ever on stage) In The Land Of The Pigs (The Butcher Is King). This was accompanied by clips from some almost McCarthy-like black and white movies plus a pig cartoon. They also changed the order of Break It, Blind As A Bat and Bad For Good.

In the second set Kasim wore a new (to me) suit which was grey in colour and a lilac shirt. I think it’s a very close competition as to whether Aspen Miller changes her clothes or Paul Crook changes his guitars more in the concert! It’s no wonder that Kasim uses only two basses as I doubt the trucks have room for more than that!

Photo by Caryl Burton:

Photo by Saeko Crawford:

Many thanks to Caryl Burton and Saeko Crawford for all the photos on this page - more will be added soon.

Meat Loaf Bat Out Of Hell III Tour