He's been to Hell and back has Meat Loaf, and some would say, he took a few of us with him.

The former 150 kg rocker has trimmed down to a nearly respectable 110 kg, had a nervous breakdown, bankruptcy, divorce and pretty well everything else along the way.

Not that you'd know it from his Sunday night concert at Western Springs.

From the opening song  Life Is A Lemon (And I Want My Money Back) from Bat II to the closing bars of the encore Bat Out of Hell, Meat Loaf and band, with the Auckland Philharmonia thrown in for good measure, took the sell out crowd on a journey through 25 years on rock history.

The band is in devestating form, Paul Crook on lead guitar must have been brought up on Todd Rundgren licks, with the Marshall stack and seemingly a new guitar for every song he wailed and squealed notes that curled your toes up. Kiwi born guitarist Randy Flowers provided the mellower Strat and Tele tones to the mix while Patti Russo and Carolyn Jablonski (CC) proved to be the perfect rock chicks.

Kasim Sulton on the bass and Mark Alexander with a fist full of 88's completed the line up.

Meat played all the hits including You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Nights), All Revved Up (And No Place To Go), Two Out Of Three Aint Bad, Anything For Love, Paradise By The Dashboard Light as well as songs from his new album Couldn't Have Said It Better.

The show was filmed for a special DVD release after the tour, which is Meat Loaf's last world tour, and as such there were plenty of theatrics, costume changes and interaction with the fans.

Some of the comments were memoerable. For example during the lead in to Hot Summer Nights where the girl who is asked to give her throat to the wolf with the red roses asks in return Would he starve without me?' Meat stops and asks the audience, 'Do I look like someone who has been starving?'

Lot's of ad libs, lots of funny lines and lots of great, great music made this a concert to remember.

I took some of my toys with me and managed to record the last three songs and they are available for download in the Audio Section