Bat the Symphony creator Steve Steinman on calls from Meat Loaf

Mar 23 2009 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

THE phone rings in Steve Steinman’s office and it’s Meat Loaf. “He’s had a bit of a rant at me occasionally for going out on tour just before he is,” says the creator and star of Bat the Symphony, which is visiting the Liverpool Empire next month.

“He’s a bit wacky. I think he’s all right if you’re doing something good. I don’t think he’s too keen if you’re messing up arrangements.

“I’m not portraying him so he can look at me and think I’m taking the Mickey. I’m not wearing frilly shirts or a daft wig.”

However with Steve singing numbers from the record-breaking album Bat Out of Hell, with the backing of a 40-piece orchestra, pyrotechnics and dancers, the show is not a tribute act in the traditional sense of the expression.

The tribute is being paid to the music – actually written by American composer Jim Steinman rather than by Meat Loaf himself – not to the singer, the show’s creator explains.

“I’m a big bald fella – I couldn’t look any more different than Meat Loaf,” explains Steve.

He has, however, dressed up as the rock musician on several occasions, the most memorable being for the second series of TV series Stars in Their Eyes in the early 1990s.

He did it, he explains, to promote a restaurant he owned at the time, but he found showbusiness suited him.

“I was the maitre d’, I was the front man, so I was kind of a show-off anyway,” he recalls.

“It was nerve-wracking at the time but it was great fun.”

Steve has since created several rock operas as well as a show about Dolly Parton.

His Vampires Rock came to the Echo Arena just before Christmas and will be playing a date at Southport theatre later this year.

“There’s only one or two people you could do it to,” he says. “You couldn’t do a Madonna symphony. Like a Virgin wouldn’t work with an 40-piece orchestra.”