One of the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll once came to a rural ballroom in Tipperary, for reasons that remain a mystery.
THE LIBERTY MUSIC FESTIVAL is upon us again.
And it has come to my attention that this year’s lineup will include a Meat Loaf tribute act. He calls himself Peat Loaf, which I’m not sure was the best idea in the long history of choosing stage names, bringing to mind as it does the image of an extra large sod of turf. But we all have a fondness for the bit of turf, and its first cousin the briquette, so we’ll give old Peat Loaf a pass on this one.
Of course, this will not be the first time the music of Meat Loaf has been heard on a live stage in Thurles. As the elderly among us will remember, the great man played the first Féile in 1990, and put on a very fine show while he was at it.
What might not be so well known, however, is that this wasn’t Meat Loaf’s first trip to Tipp. It wasn’t even his first time here that year.
About six months earlier, my friends and I learned to our great surprise that the Big Man would be bringing his operatic rock ‘n’ roll show to the dance hall in Dundrum.
I’ll say that again, since I can scarcely believe it myself, 35 years down the road.
Meat Loaf was coming to Dundrum.
Now, with all respect to the fine people of Dundrum, in 1990 it was basically a crooked crossroads in the middle of nowhere, in the depths of rural Tipperary. For a fellow like Meat Loaf, this might as well have been the remotest badlands of Borneo.
Which begs the question — what was he doing there?
And I suppose there are really only two possible answers.
One, he had made some weird deal with the Irish promoter whereby, for every stadium show that was scheduled, he was contractually obliged to play a couple of rural ballrooms on what used to be known as the showband circuit.
Or two, like any rock star worth his salt, Meat Loaf was naturally drawn to the dark and lonely crossroads of this world, in the hope that one day he too might negotiate a deal for the sale of his soul, in the fashion of our old friend Robert Johnson.
If the crossroads in question hapoens to be a crooked crossroads, you would imagine his chances would be greatly increased. If this crooked crossroads happens to be within a hundred yards of a regular crossroads, as it is in Dundrum, then surely a man could be almost certain of a diabolical encounter.
We may never know the answer. But whatever the case, he came to Dundrum, we all went along, and he and his band put on just as big a show as they might have done if they’d been in Croke Park. Or Semple Stadium, for that matter.
But it is not the music or the showmanship that stands out most in my mind when I think about that night.
It is the extraordinary number of fights that erupted among the large culchie contingent in the audience, the hardy lads who turned up for the big occasion wearing their best woolly jumpers and their favourite brand of aftershave. I’m not entirely sure of the name of this fragrance but if I had to hazard a guess, it would be Eau de Slurry.
At one point in the evening, one of these fine young savages was knocked unconscious at my feet, and to my amazement his friends just carried on dancing as if this was an everyday occurrence. (I say dancing here, but there is actually no word in the English language that might accurately describe the kind of moves they were making. Imagine, if you will, a bullock doing a jig while simultaneously in the throes of a fatal electric shock.)
I don’t recall if this young man eventually came round of his own accord, or if an ambulance had to be summoned in the end, when his companions finally wore themselves out doing the Bovine Boogie.
And I have no idea where Meat Loaf went from there, or how many more far-flung rural outposts he had to visit before finally coming almost full circle and landing in Thurles on an August bank holiday weekend that has gone down in legend.
But I suspect there were a few more dark nights of the soul on that tour, when he’d be giving it his all in the village ballroom while the savages below on the dance floor boxed the heads off each other to the beat of Bat Out Of Hell.
And it’s not hard to imagine him up there on stage, surveying this terrible scene, quietly contemplating the cruel cosmic forces that brought him to this point in his life.
And finally thinking to himself, “I wonder is there a crossroads near here? I’d feel safer with the devil.”
We all would, Meat. We all would.
Loughtagalla Times 
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