Using your Loaf

STEVE Steinman didn’t realise he was dyslexic until he was in his forties and now appreciates it was the reason he was artistic in other areas… leading to a 20- year performing career as the UK’s top name in Gothic rock musicals.

Having started out as a tribute act with the Meatloaf Story, the producer and performer of Rockman Music gained cult status as Baron Von Rocukula in the constantly touring Vampires Rock and has now gained the rights to Australian rock musical Bad Boy Johnny and the Prophets of Doom – which plays Darlington Civic Theatre on April 15-17.

“When I first started I was doing Meat Loaf covers and there was nobody doing anything with the music I liked and now I’ve got three of the biggest touring rock shows in the country.

“I feel I’m on my own and I’ve got no competition and I think we do it well, which is why there’s no competition. I think we do it so well that others think ‘what’s the point?’ It was risqué for most people and I kinda like that,” he says.

Steinman took 12 months to negotiate a deal with Bad Boy Johnny writer Daniel Abineri, who played Frank N Furter in the West End’s Rocky Horror Show for 13 years, after Abineri read about Steinman in a newspaper article.

“He wanted that rock n rock feel rather than that West End sparkly thing and featuring a proper rock band. He came to see Vampires Rock and thought we were perfect. I’ve bought the world rights to it now and the idea is to have a London run so that everybody in the world knows about it. To reach America and Australia, you have got to have come out of the West End. So we can go to London for a short run and then take on the world,” says Steinman of the 1989 show which, until now, is most famous for giving Russell Crowe one of his first big breaks in musicals.

A two-day showcase in London on May 1-2 will decide if Bad Boy Johnny joins the current West End line-up.

“For a new production it’s going incredibly well. If people are talking about Russell Crowe it’s helping and it was a long time ago that he played the role of Johnny. My part, and the one I’ve always wanted to play is Father Maclean the evil priest and the show is so on the ball at the moment because it features problems for the Pope and the choice of a new one linked to an X-Factor show. It’s incredible how this has all played into our hands,” Steinman laughs.

He finds becoming a stage baddie quite easy but “the hard bit is that there is a lot of scripted stuff and more than I’m used to as a singer in a rock show”.

Steinman’s easiest task was finding his own Russell Crowe to play Johnny because the lead role has been taken by his Vampires Rock guitarist Henry Bird who is starring alongside well-known Teesside musical star Dawn Spence as Johnny’s mother, Mary.

“Henry’s the first Bad Boy Johnny who does look and sing like a rock star and plays a guitar like a rock star. I had all the cast I required so that made life easier for me. We drafted in Dawn who is a West End favorite and has come out of Chicago and she brings real class to the show,” he says.

Asked about his relationship with Meat Loaf, the US performer born Marvin Lee Aday, Steinman says: “He’s a funny fella because I have worked with his band and I know them well. I’ve met him a few times but I wouldn’t say I’d got his phone number in my mobile shall we say. I’ve currently got a Bat Symphony tour with myself and an orchestra and I don’t try to be Meat Loaf and I’ve got an audience who like to see me perform his songs. At the end of the day the songs are not his but belong to Jim Steinman,”

says Steinman of the US record producer and composer with the same surname.

“People think Jim Steinman is my uncle and I just smile and say ‘yes’. He’s another strange one but I’m pretty sure that people like him follow who is doing their songs using the internet,” says the UK Steinman who says that the current female fascination with vampires also hasn’t done his touring shows any harm.

“Every time you turn the telly on or go to the cinema there’s a vampire thing on. Again, I started Vampires Rock eight years ago, just at the right time,” he adds.

Steinman reckons the current recession is nowhere near as bad as in 1992 when his bank pulled the plug on the finance he needed to fund a £100,000 loan to expand the pub he’d inherited from his father.

“Interest rates were 17-and-ahalf per cent and this current recession, to me, is nothing. It’s child’s play really apart from dragging on a little bit. The good thing is that I’ve created shows that people still want to see so I’ve been able to ride through it really,” he says.

So instead of a gastro pub the UK got extra Meat Loaf.

■ Bad Boy Johnny and the Prophets of Doom, Darlington Civic Theatre, April 15-17.

Tickets: £10-£22. Box Office: 01325-486-555 darlingtonarts.co.uk