After the fall: The world needs more Meat Loaf

PHOTOS: My only, terrible, mobile phone photo of Meat Loaf on stage, before the fall. Below: The author and his daughter in their Meat Loaf T-shirts, likely to become a collectors’ item if the remaining dates in the concert tour are cancelled.

Readers will forgive me, I hope, for not posting anything last night – being at Meat Loaf’s Edmonton concert with my daughter and having left the Jubilee Auditorium in considerable suspense about how the story was going to end.

It was a relief to learn this morning – interestingly enough via U.S. news sites, not the local media whom one would have thought had good sources within Alberta Health Services, though apparently not – that Mr. Loaf, as the New York Times famously called him, is resting comfortably and recovering well. In other words, that he is not done like dinner. The world needs more Meat Loaf!

I can only say that the end of the concert was dramatic, when the 68-year-old performer hit the boards like a 50-pound sack of flour off the back of a truck and then didn’t move again, not even a twitch of a toe that could be seen from the upper decks of the Jubilee.

It was, as I observed at the time, the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen at a concert – which, given the principal topic of the lyrics, seems an appropriate enough way to describe the scene. There was no panic among the audience, notwithstanding reports to the contrary made up by reporters who were not there. Nothing new about that, of course.

The singer looked unsteady on his pins throughout his otherwise energetic performance. As I Tweeted early on last night, “the poor old guy’s knees are obviously givin’ him (like a bat outta) hell.” Perhaps it was more than his knees and, if so, he was fortunate to find himself in the care of Alberta’s excellent public health care system.

In my critical judgment, it was a great show … until it wasn’t.

Thankfully, there will be no need to rename the Jube the Meat Loaf Memorial Auditorium, as a friend grimly suggested after the fall. Personally, though, I think we should name it after him anyway. Can somebody please organize a petition?