Kansas City serving up Meat Loaf over the coming weeks. Here’s where to get it
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kauffman Center schedules Bat Out of Hell musical for April 15.
- Leawood’s Listyning Room hosts Bat Out of Hell full-album listening March 14, 4 p.m.
- Corben’s cover ties Bat Out of Hell to KC; Steinman wrote the album’s songs
Sure, Kansas City is all about the barbecue. But we are a Meat Loaf kinda town, too.
We scooped up tickets when Knuckleheads brought a Meat Loaf tribute band to town the last two years.
And even though the Grammy winner has been dead since 2022, his fans in Kansas City still get sentimental about the late rock ‘n’ roll legend’s concerts here.
Well, Kansas City is about to get a fresh serving of Meat Loaf in two upcoming events.
The Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts announced Monday it will bring “Bat Out of Hell: The Musical,” to Kansas City in April.
Next month, The Listyning Room in Leawood invites Meat Loaf fans to meet there and “experience the operatic grandeur” of the iconic 1977 album, “Bat Out of Hell” — played on vinyl. The Room is home to the nonprofit Center for Recorded Music.
The one-hour listening session begins at 4 p.m. March 14. Tickets are at centerforrecordedmusic.org.
“We’ll open with a brief look at the chaotic birth of this 1977 masterpiece, followed by an uninterrupted, full-album play of the record on high-fidelity vinyl,” the program synopsis says.
“Bat Out of Hell,” produced by Todd Rundgren, is one of the best-selling albums in history with more than 40 million copies sold, sharing the rarefied air of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac.
The album has a special tie to Kansas City.
The late Kansas City comic book artist and illustrator Richard Corben, a Kansas City Art Institute graduate, created the album’s fantasy art cover — a dude with long hair on a motorcycle roaring out of a grave in a fiery, apocalyptic graveyard like a ... bat out of hell.
The rock musical is built around composer/lyricist Jim Steinman’s musical collaborations with Meat Loaf.
The featured songs include “Bat Out of Hell,” “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That),” “Paradise By The Dashboard Light,” “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad,” “Dead Ringer For Love” and “It’s All Coming Back to Me.”
An eight-piece live band shares the stage with the performers.
“Get ready for an electrifying theatrical experience that will ignite your passion for rock ‘n’ roll,” Paul Schofer, Kauffman Center’s president and CEO, said in Monday’s announcement.
The story is described as “Peter Pan” meets “Romeo and Juliet” revolving around Strat, the leader of “The Lost” gang whose members are frozen in time at age 18. He falls in love with Raven, the daughter of the tyrannical ruler of a ruined city named Obsidian.
The musical debuted in February 2017 at the Manchester Opera House in the United Kingdom, moved to London, then began touring North America later that year.
The Kansas City stop has been added to a new North American tour that includes shows in Toronto, Detroit, Chicago and Boston.
The show at the Kauffman Center is set for 7:30 p.m. April 15 in the Muriel Kauffman Theatre. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday through the Kauffman Center ticket office — 816-994-7222 — or tickets.kauffmancenter.org.
Everything about Meat Loaf was larger than life. His voice. His sweaty stage person. The girth that earned him the childhood nickname referencing ground chuck. He reportedly liked that his dad called him “Meat.”
He performed a handful of times in the Kansas City area, including in front of a capacity crowd inside KCK’s Memorial Hall in March 1994.
“Each song, from the opening ‘I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That),’ was stretched to nearly 10 minutes with instrumental embellishments, theatrical exchanges between players and Loaf’s anticipated posturing,” The Star reported.
“He took time during an extending intro on ‘Two Out of Three’ to thank the audience for his phenomenal recurrent success.”
The singer told the crowd that night: “For over 20 years I’ve been able to stand on a stage and do what I’m doing tonight. I stand here a grateful human being.”
He came back on a Friday night in July 1996. At Sandstone, now Azura Amphitheater, “a very large and friendly crowd indulged in his overwrought odes to love and animal magnetism and what usually happens when the twain meet,” The Star’s music critic wrote.
“The night peaked, of course, with ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light,’ the saga about lust and surrender that, 18 years later, still visits too many frat parties, wedding receptions and high school reunions.
“’Paradise’ will forever be Meat Loaf’s signature, his moment, the reason people come to see him, what ‘American Pie’ is to Don McLean.”
He returned to Kansas City in 2005 when one music critic declared that, “for a man named after a blue-plate special who had his last truly great album almost three decades ago, Meat Loaf is one white-hot ticket.
“There are certainly greater mysteries floating unsolved in the pop music universe — is Elvis still alive, who killed Kurt Cobain, what’s up with Garfunkel’s hair — but Meat Loaf’s utterly seductive grasp on a still-ravenous classic-rock audience is a stumper for sure.
“When tickets for the Dallas-born rocker’s recent show in Clearwater. Fla., went on sale, the date sold out in no time flat. With demand so ferocious, a second show was added.
“A similar thing happened with the Ameristar Casino in Kansas City. The show originally scheduled for Sept. 17 was moved to Friday, and a second show was added for Thursday night.”
The cause of death was not officially revealed when he died in January 2022, though news reports suggested he died from complications of COVID-19.
He was not a fan of the COVID vaccine or masks or social distancing, telling a reporter in Pennsylvania, “if I die, I die, but I’m not going to be controlled.”
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