This was a brilliant concert in an extremely hot and crowded hall - by the end of the concert all the band members had damp hair (under all those lights) as did a lot of the audience too! I started off further back than normal (as it was so full - why didn't they hold it in the much larger Olympahalle as they did in 1996?) but by the end I was quite near the front as so many people couldn't stand the heat!
There are two things that will really stand out in my memory about this concert (besides the heat!). The first thing was the "acoustic" set which was the longest yet as it consisted of 11 songs!!! It started with a country music-feel song called I was Sold my Soul to the Company Store (I think). After the usual Honky Tonk Woman (great sounding first verse again!!) and "Stump the Band" when once again the audience managed to supposedly shout out 1999 and I Love Rock'n'Roll, Meat Loaf apparently heard someone shout out a little known Beatles song called Slow Down. Luckily the band knew how to play it (!) so we were treated with Kasim singing the first verse and Ray the second! After this Meat Loaf sang the last part of For Crying Out Loud (only the fifth time since 1978) and then he sang my favourite track from the DeadRinger album More Than You Deserved. He reckoned that this was the first time that he's sung it, other than at rehearsals, since 1972 but I seemed to recollect that he sang it at the taping of StoryTellers. It was good to hear though !!!
The second really memorable part of this concert was the fact that as the hall got hotter, Kasim undid more and more of his shirt buttons !!! He was wearing his usual black trousers and a short sleeved grey shirt. he started the concert with a black jacket with a velvet collar that he wore t the Wembley concert but he didn't wear it for long!
For the first time, the inflatable bat didn't appear during Bat Out of Hell - had it developed a puncture?!
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