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Photo: Artist’s Facebook page
UNCERTAIN SUPERSTAR: Meat Loaf was not mentally or physically prepared for the pressures of success or large-scale touring.
D uncan Wheeler
Meat Loaf: Complicated musical giant u
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idiculed by critics and custodians of cool, Meat Loaf’s bombastic performances were loved by millions, providing the soundtrack to the lives of various generations. The man born Marvin Lee Aday was something of an unreliable narrator. He offered contradictory accounts in interviews of such basic details as his date of birth, real name, or why and how he came to be known as Meat Loaf. According to his autobiography, an inheritance from his mother allowed him, as a disturbed and distressed teen-
ager, to leave the house of a violent alcoholic father to live, first in Dallas, and subsequently California. Meat Loaf – who died on January 22 – was cast in the original Los Angeles productions of both Hair and The Rocky Horror Show, also appearing in the 1975 film adaptation of the latter. On auditioning for budding playwright/songwriter Jim Steinman’s More Than You Deserve musical – the title track of which would later pop up on the Dead Ringer album – Steinman identified his ideal leading man for the Bat out of Hell project.
Record executives were less convinced. They thought that the pairing of a large sweaty singer with unorthodox musical arrangements, pitched somewhere between Phil Spector and Wagner, was a complete anomaly in the age of punk and disco. The odd pair were eventually signed by independent label Cleveland after getting Todd Rundgren onboard as a producer. The Texan-born singer and actor outlived his chief collaborator by less than a year. Their signing with Cleveland would be the start to a career full of hits and as many ColdType | March 2022 | www.coldtype.net
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