Found
here:
March 13, 2008
Meat Loaf and May Pang: Blasts from the Past
Remember
Meat Loaf? A beefy rocker with a mane who in the '70's performed the hit
“Paradise by the Dashboard Light” with
Karla DeVito. With his hands on her ass, the girl sings “Will you love me forever?,” he sings “Let me sleep on it. I'll give you an answer in the morning.” And in the background a sports announcer's voice calls out their every move. The excitement of that drama was recalled at the premiere of an excellent new documentary
“Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise” directed by
Bruce David Klein last night at the
IFC Center, just a few blocks west of the
Bottom Linein the village where Meat Loaf was a headliner in my youth. With a follow-up album to his hugely successful
“Bat Out of Hell”, (selling more than the
Beatles' Sgt. Pepper according to the film) Meat Loaf at 59 is still a dynamite performer, and the movie follows him and his band through the rigors of missed flights and lost luggage in a world tour starting in
Canada. Only this time the girl is singer
Aspen Miller, a brunette who seems too young to Meat Loaf critics, making the lovers look like a grandpa in a sweaty and unwanted grope with a teenager. In the process of sleaze control, the film shows Meat Loaf fitted for a wig so he can return to his youthful look as a parody of himself in those heady '70's. Doesn't anybody get, this is theater, asks the film. Overriding all, of course, is the music: a highlight is
Dennis Quaid joining Meat in
“Gloria”, Meat Loaf himself doing
“I'd Do Anything For Love”.
Melvin Van Peeples and
Debby Harry attended the opening, as did
Jerry Della Femina and
Judy Licht. The topic of the day came up and Jerry shared that he did not think
Eliot Spitzer should have lost his career, his marriage yes, but not his career. Meat Loaf, I might add, now 60, never looked better.
