Chocolate Starfish just love to keep busy. Since their resurgence with the release of ‘Spider’ back in 2017, the band have been ever present on the Australian live scene once more. Whether is it galivanting around the stage at Red Hot Summer shows, playing their original music or touring national & regional venues with the Classic Album Series, which has included Meat Loaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’ and INXS’ ‘Kick’, the band seem at their happiest out there performing to a live audience, whatever the occasion maybe.
The creation of another full length album in ‘Beautiful Addiction’ allowed the band to get back into the studio and release more new music, with festivals beckoning again with appearances at By the C alongside the likes of Noiseworks, The Angels & Suzi Quatro.
But 2023 has been a year where the band has been able to return to the iconic ‘Bat Out of Hell’ album and tour it around the country once again. Reviews of the shows have reported only great things, with big crowds turning out to celebrate the music of Jim Steinman & Meatloaf, both of whom have now sadly departed, but who’s legacies live on.
Its a baton that frontman Adam Thompson is honoured to pick up, wave about and hold aloft. Ever the showman, Thompson has an air of confidence when it comes to tackling songs of such esteem – His Bohemian Rhapsody shows a few years back were executed with a theatrical precision that even Mercury himself would have been impressed with! Only a few shows into the tour, we spoke with Mr Chocolate about complexity of the songs that Steinman wrote and the challenges in putting the show together musically.
Sean: Adam, how are you?
Adam: Very well mate. Great to chat to you again.
Sean: Well, there is only one way I can start this interview…On a hot summer afternoon would you offer an interview to the wolf with the red rose? [laughs]
Adam: [laughs] I would say abso-friggin-lutely!
Sean: [laughs] I bet you say that to all the interviewers!
Adam: [laughs]
Sean: I am so excited to see this show because I missed this the first time round in 2017 and of course it’s a lot more poignant and emotive with the passing of both Jim Steinman and Meatloaf.
Adam: Yes, it is. I think when we first dabbled in it it was around the same time that Meatloaf did that Grand Final. You know, there was a lot of bad publicity around that performance and unfortunately the way social media rolls, even if the songs are some of the best of all time – and they are by the way – something like that just turns people off because they can’t differentiate between the two and I think with the passage of time and with the passing of both Meatloaf & Jim people are now reflecting on the magnificence of the music, especially that first album. It’s incredible how those songs shaped a generation. You and I have talked about the legacy Bohemian Rhapsody & the songs of Queen have left and I think there is a similarity between the two bands in the sense that there is those semi-operatic, longer songs like Bohemian where they are epics in their structure. Very few writers and performers have the ability to pull that sort of style well and convincingly. It’s been two years since we lost Jim and Meatloaf only last year but the response to these shows has been great, especially the reaction from the audience which has been quite astounding.
Sean: I had the album on early today and you just forget sometimes how monumental these songs are. For an album that is only seven songs long it is just a collection of epic tracks.
Adam: They are almost like twenty songs in seven.
Sean: Exactly – three songs are over eight minutes long…
Adam: But its also about the dynamic. That’s where is suits Chocolate Starfish because we are able to play with the theatre and dynamics of the songs – there are pin drop moments like ‘Heaven Can Wait’ or ‘Crying Out Loud’ and then the rambunctious all out rockers like ‘All Revved Up’ and ‘Bat Out of Hell’. Then there is the fun in ‘Paradise by the Dashboard’. We can do all that because we have the capacity and that is why it suits us.
Sean: You’re never one to shy away from the theatrical side of a performance. We’ve spoken before about your love and admiration for Freddie (Mercury) and you touched on it just then that Meat had that side to him too. He was able to tell a story with his performance. I got to see him when he visited Perth for the final time and you could tell his health wasn’t at its best and his performance was well below par but his sheer presence just made you sit up and realise that he was one of the great rock n roll singers of our generation.
Adam: Absolutely. He definitely was. I had the opportunity to meet him several times. He literally had his arm around me on his 50th birthday back stage at Rod Laver. It was just good timing; same record company, Hayman Islands a few weeks before that, he invited me along, and there we were hanging out together… then his daughter Pearl called me into the circle and at the time I was standing right beside him… you know as a fourteen year old kid, if you told me I’d be arm in arm with a guy I grew up fanboying and enjoying his music like I did… you couldn’t almost write the script – but it happened.
Sean: Wow, Incredible. Are they challenging songs to sing? Bohemian Rhapsody was a big powerful stage show that you did and ‘Kick’ was another that was great fun with a lot of energy, what is ‘Bat Out of Hell’ like as a comparison?
Adam: I think it as difficult for the band as much as it is for me because no two parts are the same in any of the songs so there is always slight variations audibly and lyrically – that’s the magic of Steinman. He wouldn’t have been any good on Pro-Tools because everything is a little bit different. For me to sing and the band to play, you almost can’t come in at a certain spot because your not sure if its the first chord when we do it this way or that way or another chord when it resolves, if that makes sense. One of the best examples is when we do the duet version of Celine Dion’s hit ‘All Coming Back to Me’, which Meatloaf released with Marion Raven. Every time he gets to a chorus or verse he slightly changes the lyric so its never the same. Its like having to memorise a script. If you get one word wrong it doesn’t lead on to the next bit.
Sean: It goes back to that story telling thing we mentioned.
Adam: It is but its also is it the male voice first or the female voice first, is it I or is it you… its just never the same. Its very interesting and its taken us quite a while not just to learn it but to feel comfortable delivering it in a way that’s us and not just sounding like a cover band.
Sean: I spotted the rehearsals for ‘Heaven Can Wait’ on social media a while back and have to say it left me pretty breathless. It was very much a Meatloaf delivery the way you were performing it.
Adam: Thanks mate. And I’m not trying to emulate him, and I talk about this during the show. I talk about the fact we are not a tribute band but what we do in this particular circumstance is to try to honour the songs with a reverence and passion that they were written with originally. That requires you to go breathy or into your power voice, how to lean on certain words. I’m all about lyrics as you well know and I try to put the right meaning and right expression to each part of the song… and I try to feel it. So thank you for that compliment. I think ‘For Crying Out Loud’ is one of the most beautiful love songs I’ve ever heard and I talk about the complexity of what that is song and the lines that it uses to talk about love. Its just magnificent. When I’m doing it I’m kneeling at the front of the stage and no one is speaking… Norm is playing away at the piano and than the band comes in and generates that power in the second half of the song. Its one of those things you really need to feel it but I think its at that point now where both Chocolate Starfish fans and people that love that music are sort of finding each other – a commonality if you can call it that [laughs].
Sean: If the lyrics of ‘For Crying Out Loud’ don’t get you then Norm’s piano certainly will!
Adam: It really is stunning and then those strings come in [Adam starts singing down the phone] ah its just incredible.
Sean: I don’t need to get a ticket now as I’ve just heard one of the songs [laughs]
Adam: [laughs]
Sean: I will most certainly be grabbing some tickets because as a big fan not only of Meatloaf I love what you guys too, so I’m excited to see this one. The tour dates have and will be taking you everywhere around the country, so if anyone says they had no idea you were in their neck of the woods then they are crazy. You are literally taking this countrywide.
Adam: We will have done thirty dates by the time we finish in July. We’ll be visiting you over in Perth on the 14th April so it will great to see you after the show. Its pretty spectacular. You may have seen clips on social media showing how the audience engage. We pretty much sold out the Palais in St Kilda back in June last year so there are snippets of that floating about. We also have the album live from that night on Spotify if anyone wants to check that out too.
Sean: Well all the dates can be found on your website which is www.chocolatestarfish.com.au and I see you have my good mate Chris Murphy kicking things off for you here in Perth.
Adam: Yeah, we are very happy to have Chris along. He’s a great mate of ours as well. I’ve known Chris for many years and we are really happy to have him start things off for us on the night. All in all its going to be a great night of music. I know there has been a theatrical version doing the rounds with actors doing a Bat Out of Hell musical and with out being disparaging its a totally different show to what we do. Ours is songs played by a rock band and you are able to enjoy them as a rock band. It doesn’t mater if your in a theatre. You’ll be up dancing for the rock songs and then we diverge into the last couple of songs from the main set and because Meat was in Rocky Horror we go into some of that and then we do a forty minute Starfish encore so its pretty fun.
Sean: Fantastic. Unfair question time… what’s your favourite song from the album to perform?
Adam: I have to say its ‘For Crying Out Loud’ because its my biggest challenge to sing, to get it right and to do it the way I want it to be heard but for fun its probably ‘Paradise’. With ‘Paradise’, and I know we are in a politically correct world now both myself and the female singer who performs it with me, Julie, we have to be pretty mindful of overstepping what might have been the original intent back in the 70s, which I think we ride really well. We still give it that bit of cheek and fun about it but that sparkle in the eyes of anyone over forty five who hear that song and remember it from when it was back in those romance days of the 70s is pretty amazing. You can see it in their eyes and in their passion for the song… its really fun. And what I love is seeing couples wrapping their arms round each other and singing to each other and that’s just the blokes [laughs]
Sean: I was going to say that’s just you a Zakk on stage [laughs]
Adam: Exactly! [laughs] I don’t know. It just resonates in such a fun way and then the next song is ‘For Crying Out Loud’. We do the album in its entirety then we do some other Steinman songs like ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ – one of the girls does that beautifully, Kate Daley. We are on stage for two hours each night.
Sean: Well, its something I’m most certainly will be looking forward to. One of my favourite artists being celebrated by one of the most fun bands in Australia, who always deliver a show with a huge smile. We wish you all the best for the remaining dates of the tour and can’t wait to catch up with you here at the Astor Theatre on the 14th of April. Thanks so much for your time as always Adam.
Adam: Its always a pleasure to catch up mate and we are really looking forward to making the Astor really come alive so grab some tickets and come join us for afun night of rock n roll.
