Fri 10/21 @ 7:30PM
The story of Meat Loaf’s 1977 debut album Bat Out of Hell, which became one of the best-selling albums of all time, is a Cleveland story. That’s why it’s appropriate that the Music Box Supper Club in Cleveland is hosting a 45th anniversary celebration of the album’s release.
Steve Popovich, who had moved to Cleveland from western Pennsylvania in the late ’50s and made his reputation working at the local branch of Columbia Records, had gone on to New York City, where he was rising in the ranks at Columbia and its sister label Epic in promotion & A&R where he launched bands such as Boston, Cheap Trick and Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes. But he couldn’t persuade the label to back Meat Loaf, whose bombastic, Todd Rundgren-produced work had been turned down by every other label as well.
So he left New York, moved back to Cleveland and founded Cleveland International Records with the specific purpose of releasing that album. Working out of his house in Willoughby Hills, he and his two-man team of Bill Catino and Marty Mooney hounded media tirelessly, defying the usual record label practice of giving up on promoting an album if it didn’t take off in a month or two, working the record until it blew up the following year.
Popovich passed away in 2011 (in the midst of a lawsuit with Mat Loaf’s distributor over unpaid royalties). In 2018, his son Steve Jr finally settled outstanding lawsuits and re-launched the label, which has re-released some of the older material and is reissuing live shows from back in the day as well, most recently a 1977 Southside Johnny show at the Cleveland Agora.
The anniversary celebration at the Music Box is titled “Celebrating the Lives of Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman, and Steve Popovich.” (Meat Loaf passed away in 2022; Steinman, who wrote all of Bat Out of Hell’s material, died in 2021.) The evening will feature conversation with Steve Jr.; Meat Loaf drummer Joe Stefko who played during the Bat Out of Hell tour; Ellen Foley, who provided the female duet vocal on the album’s centerpiece track “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and backing vocals on several others; Karla DeVito who sang the parts on the road; Meat Loaf’s daughter, singer Pearl Aday; and John Gorman, program director at WMMS-FM in the 70s and 80s, when the station played a key role in breaking the album. It will be emceed by the Plain Dealer’s Troy Smith.
Admission is $19.77. Doors are at 5:30pm for those who want to eat dinner prior to the 7:30 program. Table reservations are required. Cleveland International merchandise will be available at the show; all proceeds above the expenses of the panelists from the show will go to the Steve Popovich Scholarship Fund for music business/recording arts students at Cuyahoga Community College.