At least that's what he told Rolling Stone in Before getting part of his cranium caved in he apparently couldn't "carry a tune in a bucket. He instantly had a "three-and-a-half-octave vocal range.
These accounts might read more like tall tales three stories tall, at least , and Meat has admitted to lying habitually during interviews. But he does have a documented history of onstage accidents and health troubles. Per Rolling Stone , in , he underwent heart surgery after collapsing mid-concert. He was reportedly diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome, which creates "an extra electrical pathway in the heart.
According to Meat Loaf, he had a special front-row seat to one of history's most infamous killings, and in a separate incident one of history's most infamous killers had a seat in the singer's car. As recounted by HowardStern. Per that version of events, he and his friends drove to the hospital on their own, and someone with a badge halted them as they neared the emergency room.
There they supposedly saw Jackie Kennedy, still dressed in her "blood-spattered pink suit," emerge from a limo. In another dark anecdote, the singer allegedly picked up a hitchhiking Charles Manson without realizing it.
Manson mentioned the Beach Boys and asked if Meat wanted to meet them. They supposedly rode to Dennis Wilson's house, where they were greeted by zero Beach Boys and Manson declared the world would soon end. Jim Steinman, the songwriter for the first two Bat Out of Hell albums, didn't need to sleep on it when deciding whether to make sweet music with Meat Loaf.
In , Steinman said , "Meat was the most mesmerizing thing I'd ever seen. He was much bigger than he is now Meat reached his Dionysian climax while performing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," during which he would make out with singing partner Karla Devito on stage. Devito told Louder Sound that the kissing was totally unscripted, calling it "improvisational theatre.
It's like he's doing a stomach X-ray with his tongue! According to Stefko, Meat once got so carried away that he threw Devito off the stage. Meat Loaf's backing singer, Karla Devito described him as "a tortured guy. His temper was almost as short as his breathing. When he insisted on starting a show by giving speeches instead of singing, the band got booed and Meat flipped out about it backstage.
The singer "destroyed the dressing room," chucking chairs and other objects "all over the place. He threw mic stands at his band and at fans. He wrecked dressing rooms and eventually wrecked his own body.
Quoting Sally Fields [sic], Meat Loaf wrote, "When you give everything you have to give in a performance, it is like cutting yourself with razor-blades. Out of control and hooked on cocaine, Meat suffered a nervous breakdown and threatened to leap from the ledge of a high-rise building.
Fortunately, road manager Sam Ellis talked him down from the ledge. By May he had become one of the most high-profile performers on Earth, according to Louder Sound. His band grappled with infighting, insurrection, and drug abuse, and Meat Loaf teetered on the edge of self-destruction.
Rundgren recalled that Meat popped the question in a comically creative way. At the Bear Cafe he presented Leslie with "a giant whole salmon. And it was as if a bear had proposed to his mate. Instead of a ring, a salmon. It really seems to burn Meat Loaf's gravy when people say his voice worsened with age. For example, after getting panned for his performance at the Australian Football League grand final, he feuded with the AFL for years, per the Guardian. Still fuming in , Meat called the league "the cheapest people I've ever seen in my life.
He also blamed bleeding vocal cords for his less than stellar showing, telling Billboard , "It was like you're slicing a vegetable and you cut your finger really bad and it's bleeding everywhere, that's how blood was coming out of my throat. And miserable is not how you want Meat Loaf to look.
A born-to-lose Texas redneck who teamed up with a genius-type songwriter-producer named Jim Steinman and beat the odds to become a rock star, a fine bit-part movie actor and a temper-tantrum-thrower of some renown. Or he kibitzes with people on his Facebook page, where if you tick him off, you better watch out, because he can spew with the best of them.
Learn something about tone. They call it flat or out of key. And that, in fact, is one of the great things about Loaf.
I bought those motherfucking paints! A girl gets kidnapped on some TV show, he cries. A record-company exec gives him a Babe Ruth autograph, he cries. Whitney Houston dies, he cries. His team wins on Celebrity Apprentice, he cries. So this is how Loaf lives today. He rarely stops to breathe. His albums have just kept piling up, 12 of them altogether since , the best of them being the two Bat ones he made with Steinman.
He used to be indefatigable. What else can a targeted guy like that do but keep running and, in his case, run fast, because what a big target he is and always has been. He weighed in the fifth grade, by the seventh.
He was bullied about his weight constantly. His father was a violent alcoholic who would disappear for days at a time. The year has been variously reported as either , , or Meat has a bit of a reputation as a fabulist. He told people all kinds of stories about how he got the name Meat Loaf, when the truth was his daddy gave him the nickname when he was still a baby, long before his size would come to make it seem like a taunt.
When I suggest that the confusion over the date of birth may be equally deliberate, he leans across the table, pulls his passport out of his back pocket and holds it open for my inspection. It says By this gesture I am given to understand that he wishes to put an end to the matter, but it doesn't quite erase the sentence "I was born on September 27 ", which comes from his own autobiography. I suppose the legal document takes precedent. The date seems important if only because Meat's life as he tells it is a picaresque journey through late 20th-century American popular history.
In his book he recounts being in a car that was commandeered by a Secret Service agent on the day of Kennedy's assassination, of being at Parkland Hospital when the president's limo pulled up and Jackie got out. He says he once picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be Charles Manson, dropping him off at the home of one of the Beach Boys.
He talks about being the fat kid persecuted by his peers because of a local radio advert. He decreed it on the spot. He was in a few bands before he got the part in Hair. When it was released in , the industry response was overwhelmingly negative. Meat's own record company hated it. One critic made a point of reviewing the album two months before its release, and gave it half a star.
That sold more records. I went to do Central Park, there's 35, people They called you the worst rock and roll band in the world and everybody wanted to come and see you. By the time they made up the platinum record plaques, the album was double platinum. It has gone on to sell, at last count, more than 30m copies. Over night the sweating, lb singer with the handkerchief and the frilly sleeves became a star, but Meat couldn't cope with the demands of fame.
His performing style was intense, draining. He required oxygen at the end of most shows. His heart stopped after a show in Atlanta, and he woke up in hospital. He had the usual battles with drugs and alcohol, some tantrums, a nervous breakdown. He suffered at the hands of appalling management.
He lost his voice and couldn't record the album that was meant to follow Bat Out of Hell. He and Jim Steinman became estranged. He met his wife Leslie at the beginning of his success, which is to say just as all the trouble started. Lawsuits began to pile up. During the difficult years he stayed home in Connecticut, coaching Little League baseball, junior football and having his goods and chattels occasionally seized by the tax man. He released other albums, which performed respectably in Europe, but fared poorly at home.
He returned to acting, his first love. I don't read novels. I read about Brando. I read about De Niro.
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