SOUL SURMISE

PRAYERS FOR BLOODY SUNDAY, POPE FRANCIS & CHURCH LEADERS

photo: Neil Craigan

 

This is the script of my introduction and words at the opening event of the 10th Anniversary 4 Corners Festival 2022

For years it has been a standing joke in our planning group… Sure we’ll get The Archbishop of Canterbury or Pope Francis for that. To have Justin Welby closing our Festival next Sunday is a dream. Austen Ivereigh was as close to Pope Francis that we could get. His biographer and co-worker on Pope Francis’s last book let US Dream which I loved. 

When Austen said he could get us and then did get us a message from the Pope we were beyond our imaginings. So tonight as we begin our 10th Festival let us hear from Pope Francis…

- THE POPE'S MESSAGE IS SHOWN -

WOW! What I picked up most from this message is Pope Francis's humility. He asks us to pray for him. So in a moment we will.

As well as marking our 10th Anniversary today marks the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday. We wanted to mark that. Anniversaries are never easy in Northern Ireland.

On Friday night at a Mass for the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday Bishop Donal McKeown said:

“But there is another way. It seeks to acknowledge the past but to have compassion and forgiveness for those who were caught up in systems and situations that they can now look at with other eyes. There is a grace-filled art in forgiving and remembering.”

This morning Rev Dr David Bruce, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland Tweeted:

"We lament the violent deaths of Bloody Sunday today. The very possibility of reconciliation in light of such deeds, might seem to be beyond us. Yet the gospel calls us to live beyond ourselves. Bless these and all grieving families, to whom we send love in Christ's name today. 

After I pray we will have the first song from our musicians. Caroline Orr, Peter Greer and Norman McKinney… At one of our first events Pope Francis was announced as Pope. Caroline sang a couple of Chriaty Moore that evening and she will later on… brings it all full circle.

Lord in this 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday

We stop to remember the wounds of Derry today

The bullets of that day and the lives lost

The bullets that have continued to fly through these 50 years

The bullets still travelling in hearts, minds and souls

We pray for Derry today

And we pray for every other murderous event of our Troubles

And for all who were lost

And for all who have grieved

And for all who continue to grieve

May the Holy Spirit be their comforter

May you send the peace that Jesus said was beyond our understanding

Peace on our streets…. Peace in all our hearts

Lord inspire us to live beyond ourselves to bring reconciliation in a fractured society

And give us grace-filled art in the ways of forgiving and remembering.

Lord do more than we can imagine or dream

 

And Lord

Pope Francis has asked us to pray for him

And so we do

We pray for Pope Francis

And the Archbishop Of Canterbury

And indeed the 4 leaders of our traditional denominations here in Ireland

Father reveal to them the height and depth and breadth of your love

Jesus may they know you and your revolutionary ways and lead us into authentic discipleship

Holy Spirit in your Pentecost power be their companion, their counsellor, their comforter and their courage to prophetically lead us to bring your will on earth as it is in heaven.

- THE NEEDED TIME IS SUNG -

FOR THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF BLOODY SUNDAY - LET THE TRUTH STING

 

For the people of Derry on the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday... and for ALL who were lost... and ALL who still feel the trauma...

 

"You are the salt of the earth"

- Jesus

 

"We lament the violent deaths of Bloody Sunday today. The very possibility of reconciliation in light of such deeds, might seem to be beyond us. Yet the gospel calls us to live beyond ourselves. Bless these and all grieving families, to whom we send love in Christ's name today."

Rev Dr David Bruce, Presbyterian Moderator by Tweet

 

"There are various attitudes that can be employed. There are those prefer to stoke the flames of rage, believing that the fire of anger will cleanse the wound r promote a modern agenda. There are others who want to let sleeping dogs lie and prefer not to grapple with uncomfortable truths that might disturb our comfort in the present.  But there is another way. It seeks to acknowledge the past but to have compassion and forgiveness for those who were caught up in systems and situations that they can now look at with other eyes. There is a grace-filled art in forgiving and remembering. It takes a wise heart to look at the rubble of what has been shattered in the past and to make it into a foundation for the future. If all we do with the past is to use it as a heap of angry stones to throw at other people, then we cannot build. Either we process the rubbish of the past and make it into life-giving compost - or it lies in the corner and benefits no-one. I hope that our celebrations this weekend will help us all to build a future full of hope for our young people and not nourish them on bitter anger that can only kills and destroy. A new society on the island needs big hearts. It will not be created by small minds."

from Bishop Donal McKeown’s homily at the 50th anniversary Mass of Remembrance for the Victims of Bloody Sunday

 

"And here watching the night

As it opens like a flower

And the day starts to rust

Feeling time pound

Like a silent hammer

On this empire of dust

And I'm thinking bout the bullet

And the TV screen, the dollar, and the clenched fist

And if we're searching for peace

How come we still believe 

In hatred as the catalyst

Oh through the borderline

In front and behind

One pain ending

While another begins

Lies, ruin, disease

Into wounds like these

Let the truth sing

Yeah 

Let the truth sting"

- from David Gray's song Let The Truth Sting

 

LET THE TRUTH STING

Lord in this 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday

We stop to remember the wounds of Derry today

The bullets of that day and the lives lost

The bullets that have continued to fly through these 50 years

The bullets still travelling in hearts, minds and souls

We pray for Derry today

And we pray for every other murderous event of our Troubles

And for all who were lost

And for all who have grieved

And fore all who continue to grieve

May the Holy Spirit be their comforter

God show us the wounds of our world

Show us the wounds of our society

Lord show us the wounds of our communities

Lord show us the wounds of our Churches

Lord show us the wounds of our friends

Lord show us our own wounds

Show us the lies, The ruin, The disease

Lord into wounds like these

Let the truth sting with healing and challenge

The truth of your love

The truth of your mercy

The truth of your justice

The truth of your cross and resurrection

The truth of your alternative Kingdom

Your will on earth as it is in heaven

Lord may I be the one who let’s the truth sting

May I live to let it sting

May I live to release it from leather pages

And lovely songs

And Church buildings

May I be the salt of the earth

To let the truth sting 

From my life

In my love

In my joy

In my peace

In my patience

In my kindness

In my goodness

In my faithfulness

In my gentleness 

And in my self control

Lord make the truth come alive in my flesh and blood

So, into lies, ruin, disease

Into wounds like these

Let the truth sting.

THE OPENING NIGHT OF THE 10TH FOUR CORNERS FESTIVAL - PREVIEWED!

The 10th 4 Corners Festival begins tomorrow evening at St Anne's Cathedral at 7pm. I am so excited about this event as the opener.

It is a jam evening packed with goodness, joy and challenge.

To celebrate our 10 years we have asked a variety of people to send us messages around items that remind them of the Festival. These will go out on social media daily but we have two live ones. Writer Tony Macauley, who was the first ever contributor to the Festival, will be sharing at our closing event with the Archbishop of Canterbury in St Peter's Cathedral next Sunday..

Tomorrow night's item will be shared by Jasper Rutherford. Jasper is European Director for Christ In Youth and spent some time with us on the 4 Corners Planning group.

From Jasper we will move on to Pope Francis. The Pope has sent a beautiful message to the Festival and it will be a treat to share it in St Anne's.

The Pope ends his message very humbly and ask us to pray for him. So we will and as we do we will remember that it is the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

Music on the evening shows another circle of things. At our first Festival our Gospel According To... Christy Moore event was cancelled due to snow. The west Belfast Feile allowed us to add it to their Spring Festival and it was held in Clonard Monastery the very night that Pope Francis was elected Pope.

Caroline Orr sang that night and might have been the one who publicly announced it. Ten years later and the Pope is sending us a message and Caroline is singing Christy Moore again! She will be accompanied by Peter Greer and Norman McKinley. It'll be beautiful.

We haven't even got to our actual event yet. Gladys Ganiel will interview Austen Ivereigh. Austen is journalist, author, commentator and Fellow in Contemporary Church History at Campion Hall, Oxford. He is also biographer of Pope Francis and worked with Pope Francis on the Pope's last book Let Us Dream.

Austen will close the evening by sharing that Let us Dream book and how it particularly applies to us in the four corners of Belfast.

One more big sleep. My hoodie is ready. Bring it on!

 

check out tickets in St Annes and online here 4 corners festival

 

BELFAST - THE MOVIE

I was around 8 years of age. Sitting in the back of my dad’s Ford Cortina I overheard my dad tell my mum that she had to check that they had £100. My paranoid 8 year old mind kicked in. Why? Does dad need to pay a fine? Will he go to jail? Or were they thinking of moving house? The overthinking of a child when your whole universe is the inside of that  car.

It seems to me that that is what Kenneth Brannagh has done in his movie Belfast. For those who go expecting a movie about The Troubles, who expect more violence, who expect more political intrigue. Go see Omagh or Bloody Sunday.

Brannagh’s Belfast is as he remembers it as a child. This is the world through the eyes of a 9 year old. Buddy’s entire universe is his terraced house, his family, a few streets in north Belfast and his classroom. Like me as a child, he is a little paranoid about his dad going off to work in England, his Granda's illness and whether his parents might move him away from all he knows.

More sinister characters and events have just entered the Belfast landscape but they are not understood by a 9 year old as we clearly see when caught up with the wrong gang he looted a box of Omo washing powder from the local Stewart’s Supermarket. When his angry mother asks why he can only say, “It’s Biological!” Speaking to a friend we both remember at that age when Biological Washing powder was all over TV advertisements!

Belfast needs understood for what it is. It six months in the life of a 9 year old, as 1969 turns to 1970. His safe street shakes to riots and barricades, his grandpa is dying and his father and mother are wrestling over whether to make a new start in England, then Belfast can be seen as almost a poem to innocence too quickly becoming experience and trauma. It will be a little sentimental. Of course it will. Think back on your own childhood!

If we see Belfast as that poem, a personal ode to the city of Brannagh’s childhood then it can only be seen as an utterly beautiful movie. Filmed in black and white and often in wide lens Kenneth Brannagh has produced a love poem not only to Belfast, but his childhood and built it all around the love stories of his parents and grandparents. The resilience of Belfast's people is shown in how normal life continues and their humour goes on as abnormal threats start to change the atmosphere.

When the credits ended I was bursting with love. Love for my city and my wife. I walked to the car amazed that our wee place had given the world the cinematic genius of Kenneth Branagh and the musical genius of Van Morrison, whose songs fill the soundtrack pricisely placed. They really are the spirit of Belfast made music and help us all forgave him for his Covid talking nonsense! Ending with The Healing Has Begun... yes!

Then there is Jamie Dornan. Perfectly cast in his hometown. Ciaran Hinds is superb playing at home too. Judi Dench struggles very occasionally with the accent but she is so like a Belfast granny that she more than compensates. Dublin born and Monaghan raised Catriona Balfe rises to the occasion as Buddy’s mother. Jude Hill as Buddy is simply astonishing. 

For a 9 year old to carry a movie is tricky. He does great with his lines but it is his facial expressions of shock and fear and sadness and love. Surely an Oscar!  

My daughter told us to bring our tissues. I got through pretty well until at the very end as the credits are ready to roll Brannagh dedicates the movie to “those who stayed” “those who left” and “all those who were lost”. Like Buddy’s dad in one of the last scenes Brannagh is uniting us. He takes no sides because a 9 year old probably couldn’t or shouldn’t. He includes us all. A tear seeped down… 

JAMIE DORNAN - IS LOSING YOUR MEMORY A GET OUT?

 

(My Thought For The Day on BBC Radio Ulster on January 27, 2022)

 

How well did our boy Jamie Dornan do in the recent TV drama The Tourist. I love it when he can do his own accent. A Belfast man in the outback of Australia. Amongst a few unbelievable things the biggest had to be that a Belfast man can go missing. Surely if they asked any other Irish person in the whole of Australia they would have ended up being Elliott Stanley’s cousin or someone he threw stones at as a wee lad. I mean everyone knows everyone in this wee place.

 

I do not want to play down the trauma of losing all of your memory but if you have done something very bad in your past it might be a good get out clause. A new start. I mean for a good lot of The Tourist Jamie was an affable Belfast man that you’d be happy to have a coffee with… unless the seat had a bomb under it!

 

Our past. How we remember it. How we see it. 

 

Pope Francis, who I am delighted to say has sent a message for next week’s 4 Corners Festival, wrote about how we deal with the past in his 2020 book Let Us Dream. His co-writer Austen Ivereigh will unpack that at St. Annes Cathedral on Sunday night.

 

I was drawn to a few of his thoughts about how to deal with the past. Pope Francis warned against the “reducing a person’s history to the wrong that they did.” Is that what we do with Elliott in The Tourist. Is that what we do across our society. 

 

We see Jesus NOT doing this with the social outcast Zaccheus, that wee tax collector up a tree in Jericho. Jesus doesn’t reduce Zaccheus to his past but gives him a new start.  

Pope Francis also writes that we should  “look at the past critically but with empathy.”

Again Jesus does with Zaccheus. Jesus empathy invites himself for lunch with the outcast. He doesn’t forget his past, Zaacheus gives back 4 times what he has stolen… but with empathy, Jesus concentrates on a better future. 

Jesus is all about new starts. Almost like wiping the memory. Imagine if Northern Ireland woke up this morning and like Jamie Dornan’s character Elliott Stanley had lost all our memories. How would that change the the day?

POPE FRANCIS AT 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2022

Breaking news on social media today is Pope Francis at the 4 Corners Festival. I mean… come on! We are in disbelief. For years it has been a standing joke on our planning committee - “sure we should ask the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury”. 

Indeed last week at our Directors meeting when someone said “well if we are starting the Festival with the Pope and ending with the Archbishop…” I shouted STOP! Can you please repeat that sentence and poke me in the eye so that I know that I am not dreaming!

Can I just make it clear. Pope Francis will not be in Belfast on January 30th in person. However he has sent a message to the Festival and that message will be how we will begin our 10th Anniversary Festival.

Now, I hear you asking, how did this happen? Well, I shared a few weeks ago in my BBC Radio Ulster Thought For The Day how God has blessed us in our short 10 year history by opening doors and sending resourses we could never have dreamed of when we started. This is perhaps the biggest of such stories.

Early on in our planning for our 10th Anniversary Festival we hoped and prayed that we might get the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby as a speaker. David Porter Chief of Staff and Strategy to the Archbishop was a founding member of ECONI (Evangelical Contribution On Northern Ireland) at the height of our Troubles and knows our situation. He has indeed spoken at a previous Festival. David was our link and we are so thankful the Archbishop agreed to come over.

Truthfully the only way to balance that in denominational terms was the Pope. We didn’t even try! However, about a year ago Máirtin Ó Muilleoir asked me to review the Pope’s latest book Let Us Dream. I did and loved it. Some of it resonated prophetically with our divisions here in Northern Ireland.

Talking about it at a planning committee someone said that Austen Ivereigh had written that book with the Pope. I had no idea. Before long we had asked Austen to come to the Festival to speak about the book. He agreed. When Fr Martin and I Zoomed him he even suggested he might get us a message from the Pope.

Fr Martin and I smiled at each other but dared not to dream I mean… come on! 

Well, last week, Austen was with Pope Francis discussing another book and lo and behold he sent us a message from the Pope. Now, I am a Presbyterian from Ballymena but even I understand that this is a big deal. Even I am excited. Fr Martin has had the widest grin on his face for days!

Like all good TV dramas, I do not want to give spoilers on the message. It is very warm and he commends the purposes of the festival, his love of Festivals in general and his delight that the Archbishop of Canterbury is speaking.

If you want to be there for a big moment for 4 Corners Festival, and indeed in many ways for Belfast, then Pope Francis’s message will be the opening of our Festival, on the evening that Austen Ivereigh speaks about the Pope’s book in St Anne’s Cathedral on January 30th. 

It seems prophetically symbolic to what 4 Corners Festival are trying to do in bringing Belfast together, that the Pope in an Anglican Cathedral opens our 10th Festival and the Archbishop of Canterbury in a Catholic Cathedral brings it to a close on February 6th. 

BOOK NOW - https://4cornersfestival.com

JOHN MELLENCAMP - STRICTLY A ONE-EYED JACK

There’s a line in the Old Testament Book Of Ruth - “and as it happened”. It sounds like a a throw away linking phrase but holds a weighty theology of providence. Serendipity they now call it.

And as it happened I ordered a friend the biography of John Mellencamp for Christmas. I then got so intrigued by it that I ordered it for myself. 

The New Testament describes John The Baptist as someone who paved the way for Jesus. He came to make the paths straight, get us ready for the Christ.

Paul Rees’ biography did something like that, preparing me for the arrival of John Mellencamp’s 24th studio record. I had lost Mellencamp along the way and missed the revival of his essentiality these last fifteen years. 

When Mellencamp threw off the shackles of the demand for radio relevance, hit singles and big sales he discovered his muse, his reason to be an artist. T-Bone Burnett helped as producer and near pastor, working on Life, Death, Love and Freedom and Better Than This, and John Mellencamp has turned 70 making one of the best albums of his life.

Strictly A One-Eyed Jack grabs your throat in the tenderest of ways a few seconds in and refuses to let you go. It reeks of maturity like a long long oak barrelled whiskey. It reminds me a lot of Dylan’s Oh Mercy.

Mellencamp has been blessed. For many other singers such excessive smoking might have wrecked the voice. Instead Mellencamp has been given a new expressive instrument. His voice is now deep and ragged somewhere between Heart of Saturday Night Tom Waits and Mad Dogs and Englishmen Joe Cocker. 

Though at times he sounds ageing, this record comes across as musically vivid and vital. The playing is uncluttered but precise like the painter that Mellencamp has becomes over these last thirty years. 

I Am A Man That Worries is straight out of the Woody Guthrie legacy, protesty and campfire loose. And, when he is not trying, Say Did You Say Such a Thing could be a monster of a hit, so darn catchy and Springsteen on for good measure. The New Jersey Boss is on 3 tracks. Wasted Days could be on either’s record. It also gives us clarity to Mellencamp’s mind:

 

How many summers still remain?

How many days are lost in vain?

Who’s counting out these last dramatic years?

How many minutes do we have here?

 

The more rocking Lie To Me also talks about the shortening of time on this earth. Gone So Soon starts all crooners piano and end up as if it is lifted straight off an early Waits record. A poignant and beautiful piece of heartache. 

So, Strictly A One Eyed Jack is certainly one of the elders sharing how it is at the other end of life from Jack and Diane. It is personal. Eking out what is left. Missing those already gone. It is also littered with lies and seems to be implying there are liars afoot. Read that how you will!

The closing A Life Full of Rain lacks a little in hope, hope that has always appeared across recent Mellencamp records but even after its sombre close I am thinking that I hope that this guy has time for another few records yet. I wasn’t thinking that back in November!

THE MERCY NOW PRAYER

I created this prayer song and liturgy for a BBC Radio 4 Service that Fr Martin Magill and I did on January 23, 2022. In their infinite wisdom and in my opinion lack of taste and grounding in the real world, Radio 4 cut it out. I then used it in Fitzroy for our Sunday Service. At least I have a say there!

READ: LUKE 6: 35-36

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

LISTEN: MERCY NOW by MARY GAUTHIER

NO… listen… these prayers will not make sense if you don’t listen…

PRAYERS

 

Lord we gather your Churches across the world

On the Week of Prayer For Christian Unity 

Across the miles

Across the ages

Across the denominations

Across the experiences of the week past

The anxieties and anticipations of the one ahead

And Lord… 

We could use a little mercy now

 

We think of our families

Ill, waiting for texts, facing tough decisions, grieving

Lord our families

Could use a little mercy now

 

We think of our Churches

Lord we confess we are not who we should be

On this Week of Prayer For Christian Unity 

We confess we are divided

A result of our theological arrogance and lack of mercy

We have paralysed ourselves as conduits of peace makers

Our witness has been weak, at times hurting others

Pushing away, rather than gathering in

We long for your forgiveness and your Holy Spirit’s oneness

Lord our churches 

Could use a little mercy now

 

We think of our country

This pandemic has taken a toll

We are at the end of our tether

And at times our leaders have been found lacking

Here in NI we seem to be as polarised as ever

Every single policy seems to divide us

Lord our country 

Could use a little mercy now

 

We think of planet earth

It is your art

So often we bask in its awe and wonder

Our favourite breath taking scenery

Yet, most days we our complicit in its destruction

The clock ticks on an environmental catastrophe

Lord our planet

Could use a little mercy now

 

Ourselves

Stumbling and tumbling after Jesus

Doing what we don’t want to do

Not doing what we long to do

Lord we ourselves

Could use a little mercy now

 

In Jesus name 

Amen

PEACEMAKING - GOD'S MANDATE - TOMORROW in FITZROY, RADIO 4 AND RADIO ULSTER - 23.1.22

photo: Sheila McNeill

 

On Week Of Prayer For Christian Unity Sunday I can be found in a few places in the morning.

I have already blogged about Fr Martin Magill and I doing the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Service (8.10am). We were asked on this particular Sunday to share our story. So we do. We share our journey but also the Biblical basis for what we believe we are called to do. 

I am very frustrated that being Radio 4 they have changed my music. I compromised as it was BUT felt that there is no better way to end prayers than Mary Gauthier's Mercy Now. Even that has been replaced... so I am afraid that this is my first and last Radio 4 Service. The music is as important to me as what I say so to have no creative control of that is so disappointing.

Anyway, that Service is also repeated on BBC Radio Ulster at 10.20am after David Campton, Mylie Brennan and Sue Divin talk about 4 Corners Festival .

Then at 11am I will be live in Fitzroy and streaming on Fitzroy TV.

At this service I will be preaching about Fitzroy's Peacemaking history and the Biblical basis for that. 

I would never call myself as an ecumenist though many of my critics would wonder why. I am far more interested in peace making, of reaching across our sectarian and denomination divides than I am about one massive global ecclesiological entity. I'd be suspicious of that.

I do believe though that we can learn from brothers and sisters, following Christ, in other denominations. I also think we need to be united in God's mission, in bringing God's Kingdom and in the Biblical mandate for peace making.

Fr Gerry Reynolds, so vital in Fitzroy's peace making work with Clonard Monastery, once said, "A divided Church has little or nothing to offer towards leading a divided people into the way of peace." How I agree. Prophetic.... but more of that in the morning! 

 

BAT OUT OF HELL, JESUS & ME - MY TRIBUTE TO MEAT LOAF

It was with sadness that I heard the news this morning of Meat Loaf's death. I am first and foremost a pastor and my thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Deborah and his daughters Pearl and Amanda. Below is my personal tribute, from a blog I wrote two years ago...

 

Meat Loaf might be seen as a really guilty pleasure. I was watching a documentary on Meat Loaf recently and it took me back to early 1978. 

I do not only remember Meat Loaf’s debut performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test but also the conversations the next day in school. Those of us particularly interested in music were all over this performance. We had seen or heard nothing like it. Bat Out of Hell blew us away.

The album however was not easy to get. Bat Out of Hell was originally a slow burn (forgive the pun!). It took awhile to find its way into Ballymena record shops. My first copy was a recording on cassette. It would be the end of the summer before I bought my own copy, during The British Open at St. Andrews!

I remember days where I listened to that record all day long. That was not something I tended to do. I had played Sweet’s Block Buster so many times in a row that I got bored with it so my policy was always play something else before replaying a single or album.  

I could not get enough of Meat Loaf and even now I can see what it was that caught our attention. Bat Out Of Hell was Queen through a blender with Bruce Springsteen. Indeed, E Street Band member Roy Bittan played piano and it was how a friend introduced me to Born To Run. Bat Out Of Hell was bombastic and dramatic but Jim Steinman’s songs were so strong that you forgave that and maybe secretly liked it. I mean Two Out of Three and You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth are great songs. When my daughters play The Greatest Showman or Hamilton I hear Steinman!

Bat Out Of Hell was full of desire, a lot of it sexual. It is not lost on my looking back four decades later that I was sixteen and not doing well with girls so it probably reached my teenage hormones. Jim Steinman’s songs though have more going on than sexual lust.

There is a lust for life. These are songs about milking all that life has to offer. I was a year away from finding Jesus. In my favourite verse in John 10:10 Jesus speaks about “life in all its fulness.” Bat Out of Hell might not have the creed, though heaven and hell are a core part of Steinman’s lyrics, but it is an adrenaline rushed soundtrack of that life in all its fulness.

To be fair it really helped that producer Todd Rundgren understood songwriter Jim Steinman’s vision and crafted the songs into a stunning piece of rock music. The melodies are strong. The playing has flourish. Meat Loaf has charisma. Some songs are long but there is not a wasted second.

For Meat Loaf it never got better. Oh I enjoyed Jim Steinman’s solo record Bad For Good and Meat Loaf’s eventual follow up Deadringer but nothing ever quite reached the heights.

Indeed when in 1993 Bat Out Of Hell II was contrived from its sound to its cover to how they sold it. The music business svengalis conned us all into buying the follow up. They gave us the sound, the image and took us back but I was almost twice my age with different tastes in music and at a different stage of life. We all bought the nostalgia and though there were some good songs, it was no longer who we were. When I took it to a second hand shop they refused to take it. They had so many already!

Yet, down the year I still came across Meat Loaf’s songs that I liked. A song on the radio or a documentary on television had me seeking out familiar songs and trailing new ones. At regular intervals, I want to hear that voice, that Steinman arrangement, a little bombast.

Maybe I am looking at that wee bit of nostalgia that was overdosed on Bat Out Of Hell II. Maybe I am looking for that adrenaline rush that thankfully for me is more than a rock roll dream come through but a real life imaginative way to live!

Thank sir. Thank you for the music and the memories.