R.I.P. to the Singer Mealoaf (Dead at 74)

Singer and Actor Meat Loaf Dead at 74
He was best known for his hit album Bat Out of Hell
By ANDY GREENE
Meat Loaf Dead at 74

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Meat Loaf, the singer and actor best known for his best-selling Bat Out of Hell albums and roles in films as varied as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Fight Club, died Thursday at the age of 74.

The news was confirmed by the singer’s family in a post on his official Facebook page. A cause of death was not given.

Meat Loaf first found success on the Broadway stage in the groundbreaking musical Hair, and he had a brief, but memorable role in the Rocky Horror Picture Show as the ill-fated delivery boy Eddie, but it was his 1977 album Bat Out of Hell that turned him into a superstar and rock and roll icon.

The songs on Bat Out of Hell were written by stage composer Jim Steinman, but Meat Loaf’s boundless passion and bravado brought them to life in incredible ways. “I sang every song we ever did in character,” Meat Loaf told Rolling Stone in 2021. “I left me. I was not method. I didn’t have to find something in my past life to be able to sing his songs. I became the song.”

That explains why Meat Loaf always saw himself as a very unique figure in the rock world. “I’m different from Bette [Midler] or Cher or Sinatra,” Meat Loaf told Rolling Stone in 1993. “This might be a huge ego thing, but I tend to think of myself as the Robert De Niro of rock. I know that’s absurd, but my idols are either sports figures or Robert De Niro.”

The Robert De Niro of rock saw Bat Out of Hell go platinum 14 times over thank to the hit singles “Paradise By The Dashboard Light,” “You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Nights),” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.” But the pressure to create an aftermath caused Meat Loaf to have an emotional breakdown, and he temporarily lost his singing voice.

It was the beginning of a very dark chapter of his life marked by lawsuits, commercially disastrous records, and significant financial woes. “I felt like a leper,” Meat Loaf said in 1993. “I felt like I was on an island with my wife and my two daughters.”

But a miracle took place in 1993 when he re-teamed with Steinman to record Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, and it went on to sell an astounding 14 million copies, thanks in large part to the worldwide hit single “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That).” It’s one of the most stunning comebacks in rock history.

Marvin Lee Aday was born in Dallas, Texas on September 27th, 1947. He was a chunky baby and he claimed his father named him “Meat” when he was just four-days old. His father was also a violent alcoholic that regularly beat him, and things at school weren’t much better since his large size caused the kids to mercilessly tease him. Things turned around in high school when his large size proved to be an asset on the football team. He also discovered he suddenly had a three and a half octave vocal range his sophomore year after a 12-pound shot landed on his head during a track and field event. (For the rest of his life, he believed the accident somehow created his singing voice.) ...SEE MORE IN LINK TO ARTICLE

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