The death of Meat Loaf reminds me of the time I filmed with him and Gerry Ryan many years ago.
e arrived to meet us, in suitable rock and roll style, by helicopter.
Meat (as he liked to be called) had set two conditions on our filming.
The first was that we were not to ask about Fight Club. The part he had played in that movie was someone with large “man boobs”, and he now found the role embarrassing.
The other stipulation was that he did not want to be asked what “that” meant in his hit song “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t do That)”.
The reason for this was straightforward: he said he was sick of being asked that question.
At first, he struck me as an archetypal rock star – with his aviator sun glasses, leather jacket and feisty attitude.
But it soon became clear that Meat – or Marvin Lee Aday, to give his original name – was a thoughtful and intelligent individual.
He had become famous for his operatic performances, but he said that he did not think he was a singer at all, but an actor.
“I can’t sing as myself”, he told us, “I have to be in character and have some sort of story going on before I can sing.”
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Perhaps, the need to lose himself in another persona had its roots in what seemed to have been a troubled childhood.
His father was an alcoholic who could turn violent and abusive.
He told us that his father had once tried to kill him in a drunken rage. Meat headed for Los Angeles, where he joined his first band – Meat Loaf Soul.
The band soon changed its name, but the original one somehow stuck with him.
When the band split up, he auditioned for an acting role in the musical “Hair”.
He got the part, and appeared with the show on Broadway.
It was there he met someone who would change his life. Jim Steinem had written songs, but did not like performing them in public.
It seemed that both men had found their perfect creative partner. When Meat was cast in the movie of the cult musical “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, it opened up new opportunities for him and allowed him to record an album of Steinem’s songs.
They had begun recording songs for this album in 1974, but it wasn’t until 1977 that it was completed and released.
“Bat Out of Hell” was accompanied by a tour in which the complete album was performed in sequence on stage.
At first, audiences were puzzled and slow to respond, but the stage show quickly became a huge success, and the album rocketed to the top of charts throughout the world.
Meat said he regarded Steinem as a playwright and told us that he treated his lyrics in the same way he would approach any drama script – searching for a storyline and layers of meaning.
The album sold in tens of millions – and continues to sell in large numbers almost half-a-century after its first songs were recorded.
Sadly, the huge success of “Bat” and subsequent albums led to Meat and Steinem falling out.
Steinem felt that too much public attention was focused on Meat and not enough on him.
Eventually, he chose to record his own songs and release his own albums.
They were not successful, and, if nothing else, demonstrated how much Meat’s passionate performances had brought to their partnership. The pair re-united in 1994 and released ”I would do Anything for Love”, one of their biggest hits.
That was also Meat Loaf’s last big hit. In subsequent years, he returned to straight acting, and appeared in a number of successful movies.
More recently, he had encountered a number of serious health issues. He told us that he had always been conscious of his weight, and, even as a child, had considered himself fat and unloveable.
He said he had only agreed to feature in the “Southpark” animated series if they undertook to draw him “skinny”.
Meat also told us that his father never went to any of his gigs, never congratulated him on his success, and “never said he was proud of me”.
However, after his father died, Meat found newspaper clippings about himself that had been kept by his father in a scrap book – “so I guess he was kind of proud of me after all.”
