I WAS lucky enough to see the late, great Meat Loaf on his very first tour of the UK way back in 1978. Little did I imagine that five years later I’d be babysitting his kids at Britain’s biggest rock festival.

It was August 20, 1983.

Birmingham Mail photographer Alan Tromans and I had backstage access at that year’s Monsters of Rock Festival at Castle Donnington, and mopped up several interviews.

We were chatting with Meat Loaf and his wife Leslie, also a backing singer in the band, outside their trailer just before they were due to go onstage and play a barnstorming set.

We had earlier gotten the mighty Meat to square up to Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider for a fun photo, and we got on well.

As the couple got ready for their set, Alan and I looked after the children as they played and drew pictures of their rock star daddy. Alan snapped this rare picture of the family that Meat Loaf liked so much he later included it in his autobiography!

The Monsters of Rock festival ran at Donington Racetrack from 1980 to 1996 and featured all the big names in heavy and hard rock. It was reborn as Download in 2003, still running to the present day.

Regular readers of the blog will know that during Covid lockdown I cleared out my attic, unearthing boxes of newspaper clippings and music memorabilia from a career in journalism.

I originally wrote about them in my sister music blog, Still Got The Fever, and have been revisiting them of late here.

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