Anything for Loaf...

 

The stage name says it all: Meat Loaf was not your average rockstar. Apparently, the nickname is a combination of his father calling him “meat” as a boy because he was very red at birth, and a coach adding “loaf” later. In any event, you will find more flattering names out there: even Captain Beefheart was a captain… Add to that the rather difficult circumstances of Michael Lee Aday’s (his real name) childhood, with said father being a bad alcoholic, the family not being well off by any means and his mother eventually passing away when he was still a young man — all hardships that would leave most people drained from any sort of ambition in life.

Yet, the man — and artist — prevailed. And that would be the determining factor in Meat Loaf’s career: never would he would let people or events distract him from what he was trying to achieve at any given time. As an actor, he starred in a variety of projects over several decades, often playing quirky and/or character roles that he seem to particularly enjoy. He was still able to score a couple of cult gigs in there, including The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which he performed both on stage and on film and which helped jumpstart his fledgling career. Then you have the later noir classic that is Fight Club, in which he didn’t mind playing an overweight male character (which he was)… with tits.

But it is in music that Meat Loaf arguably created his most important legacy — in his very own and unique way. As a rock musician with a hint of hard / metal rock added to the mix and served by an outstandingly powerful and distinctive voice, the man released no less than 12 studio albums in his 5-decade long career, the last one, Braver Than We Are, being released as recently as 2016. The success of these albums varied, however, with his 1977 debut album Bat Out of Hell not impressing listeners or journalists at launch and several of his subsequent efforts being more successful in the UK than in his home country. Incidentally, the picturesque nature of Meat Loaf’s music can be traced back to this relation to personas, stage performance and the notion of role playing that in many ways defined all aspects of his work.

Back to music: although Bat Ouf of Hell failed to impress at first, it actually became one of the biggest sleeper hits in musical history over the years, eventually selling between 30 and 40 million copies (!). And that’s not all: Meat Loaf decided to make it a trilogy, with the second opus released in 1993 and the last one in 2006, among several other projects. Bat Ouf of Hell II, which did top the charts in the US, is potentially the album he is most widely remembered for globally, spawning the absolute classic that is the 12′-long album version / 7′ 40”-long video version / 5′ 13”-long single version “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”…

When all is said and done, Meat Loaf leaves behind an incredible body of work, one that is as unique as he was… Rest in peace, Mr. Aday!