He had an imposing physique and a stage name that sounded like a joke in English, but his stentorian voice and his music made Meat Loaf, deceased at the age of 74, an unmistakable artist on the rock scene.
Legend has it that Marvin Lee Aday was given the name “meatloaf” by his father, a nickname quickly picked up by schoolmates to taunt him.
That alcoholic father left other scars on his son. “I have already forgiven him of his attempted murder with a butcher knife,” Meat Loaf once explained to the British newspaper. The Telegraph.
Born in Texas, he started out as a musician, alternating work with bodyguarding, in the early 1970s.
In the middle of that decade everything accelerated: he had a role in musical comedies “Hair” Y “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and the film version of the latter gave it momentum.
He knew how to seize the opportunity with the disc “Bat Out Of Hell” (1977). More than 40 million copies were sold. In 1993, he struck again with “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”.
In total, he sold more than 100 million albums throughout his long career.
Musically, it was his meeting with Jim Steinman, lyricist and composer, that changed his luck.
“Bat out of the hell” was produced by a key man in rock history, Todd Rundgren, disciple of the legendary producer Phil Spector, which created the famous “wall of sound” with the massive use of strings and wind instruments to back bombastic rock works.
“Everyone criticized it when it came out,” Meat Loaf recalled years later in a television interview. He needed the support of two of his best friends, the actors John Belushi Y Gilda Radner, so that the album managed to break prejudices.
“John and Gilda lobbied producer Lorne Michaels for nine months to invite me to his (television) broadcast”Saturday Night Live“. He scheduled me in the last show of 1978. And that changed everything.”
The tour to present that album was legendary. Meat Loaf, with long hair, histrionic poses and a long scarf in his hands, caused love or hate in equal parts.
Drug and abuse wreaked havoc. Starting in the 2000s, health problems, including fainting on stage, accumulated.
“It is with a broken heart that we announce that the incomparable Meat Loaf passed away tonight,” announced a message from his Facebook account on Friday. “His daughters Pearl and Amanda and close friends have been with him for the last 24 hours.”
The message did not specify the cause of his death.
