meat loaf

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Meat Loaf (1971)

Meat Loaf ( born September 27, 1947 as Marvin Lee Aday in Dallas , Texas , since 1983 Michael Lee Aday ; † January 20, 2022 in Austin , Texas) was an American rock singer and actor . He was known for his powerful and theatrical concert performances. In his career spanning more than five decades, his albums have sold more than 100 million copies. He has also acted in over 65 films.

origin and family

Meat Loaf (2009)

Marvin Lee Aday was born in Dallas in 1947 to a father of a police officer and a teacher. His mother sang in a local gospel quartet called Vodiodo . He himself heard the songs of Bob Dylan , the Rolling Stones , the Kingston Trio and Mahalia Jackson . He had a problematic relationship with his alcoholic and violent father. Nevertheless, he dedicated the 1977 album Bat Out of Hell to him in addition to his mother.

He was given the nickname “Meat” by his father when he was two years old because he was overweight. When he stepped on his football coach's foot at the age of 13, he was referred to as the "Meat Loaf". How he got his nickname is also mentioned in the song Tear Me Down on Couldn't Have Said It Better . He changed his real first name Marvin to Michael in 1983 . According to his own statement, the reason for this was that the original name reminded him of the ridicule of others in his youth because of his overweight and in a commercial for a well-known jeans brand the sentence fell: "Poor fat Marvin can't wear Levi's ."

On February 23, 1979, Meat Loaf married Leslie G. Edmonds, whom he had met in a recording studio just three weeks earlier. By her he had one daughter, Amanda Aday , born January 21, 1981. His wife also brought into the marriage their daughter, Pearl Aday (b. 1975), who he adopted. While Pearl was a musician, Amanda Aday pursued a career in film and television acting. Her parents' marriage ended in divorce in 2001. Meat Loaf has been married to Deborah Gillespie since 2007. He died in January 2022 at the age of 74.

career as a musician

After his mother died of cancer , he left his father in 1967 and moved to Los Angeles , where he founded various rock bands , some of which played as the opening act for The Who , Joe Cocker and Iggy Pop . He also worked as a parking lot attendant. After a successful audition for the musical Hair , he landed a role in the play. Then the record label Motown became aware of him, where they suggested a duet with Stoney . This is how the 1971 album Stoney and Meat Loaf came about . To market the album, they toured with Jake Wade and the Soul Searchers and opened for Richie Havens , Bob Seger , Alice Cooper and Rare Earth .

After the tour, Meat Loaf appeared again in Hair , this time on Broadway . After hiring an agent, he auditioned for the musical More Than You Deserve . During the audition he met the musical and songwriter Jim Steinman (1947-2021), whose compositional style, according to Steinman, combined gospel, rock 'n' roll and soul with Richard Wagner . The title track was later found on the album Dead Ringer . In 1973, Meat Loaf received an offer to star in the American adaptation of the musical The Rocky Horror Show . He accepted the offer and the following year impersonated the role of Eddie in the performances at The Roxy club in West Hollywood . Meat Loaf also played Eddie in the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show .

Around the same time, Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman were working on Bat Out of Hell . It was originally planned as a musical, titled Neverland , that would bring the classic Peter Pan story to the rocker scene. But the idea gradually faded into the background, and so the two concentrated on a record deal . After a long search and many rejections, Cleveland International Records decided to give the record a chance. Bat Out of Hell was released on October 21, 1977. It is number 5 on the list of the world's best-selling music albums , with sales not really taking off until 1978. By the time AC/DC released Back in Black in 1980 , it was their best-selling rock album and their all-time best-selling in Australia . With 41 million copies, it was 88 weeks in the US charts and 395 weeks and 16 weeks in the top ten of the UK charts and has since held the Guinness World Record as " The Longest Charting Record". It is now one of the top ten best-selling albums of all time. In 1976, while preparing Bat Out of Hell , Meat Loaf took on lead vocals on a few tracks on the Ted Nugent album Free for All .

After a world tour of several years, Meat Loaf got a serious voice disorder in the early 1980s due to the pressure to succeed and a strenuous tour, so that he could not sing the album Renegade Angel as planned. Jim Steinman ended up singing the album himself in 1981, titled Bad for Good , because he didn't want to wait for Meat Loaf to recover. With Meat Loaf's voice restored, Steinman gave him some songs left over from Bad for Good for the follow-up album Dead Ringer (1981), which reached #1 in England. The title track Dead Ringer for Love , a duet with Cher , peaked at number 5 in England and stayed in the chart for 19 weeks. Two other singles were also released: I'm Gonna Love Her For Both of Us and Read 'Em and Weep .

The partnership with Jim Steinman broke up and there was a falling out with Meat Loaf's manager . Due to a contractual obligation to release another album, the 1983 rock album Midnight at the Lost And Found was released, but it was a commercial failure. The 1984 album Bad Attitude was a failed attempt to save Meat Loaf from bankruptcy. Only the single Modern Girl was a minor hit. The album contained two old songs by Jim Steinman. The record company and management canceled the collaboration, which led to a nervous breakdown in Meat Loaf and ended in alcohol addiction . After a successful rehab, the album Blind Before I Stop was released in 1986 , with Frank Farian as producer, but it also flopped due to an unfortunate arrangement. Meat Loaf: "Frank did some weird things to the songs." Despite this, Meat Loaf sang the title track occasionally at live concerts.

It wasn't until 1987, as part of initial ideas for Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell , that Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman reconciled. Nevertheless, the relationship between the two was strained during the work, since Jim Steinman had creative problems and the publication was repeatedly delayed. In the end he resorted to some "canned goods", which did not detract from the success. Meat Loaf made a comeback in 1993 with the release of Bat Out of Hell II (Back into Hell) and won a Grammy for the song I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) . Three years later he released the album Welcome to the Neighborhood with the single I'd Lie for You (And that's the Truth) . With Steinman unable to provide enough tracks, Meat Loaf brought in other songwriters for this album, most notably Diane Warren , who also wrote the main song. He then allowed himself a musical break until the release of Couldn't Have Said It Better (2003) in order to devote himself more intensively to acting, his second mainstay. Nevertheless, in 1999 he released VH1 Storytellers , a live recording in which he interactively told the audience background and anecdotes about his songs and then sang them.

While touring to accompany the album, Meat Loaf collapsed at Wembley Arena on December 15, 2003 . Four days later, he underwent two-hour heart surgery after being diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome . This was followed by Meat Loaf - Live with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (2004), for which he recorded his greatest hits live with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in philharmonic orchestration. On the commentary section of the Bat Out of Hell live with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra DVD , he promised that these musicians would be back on stage when Bat III came out . However, there would be no more world tour.

Meat Loaf (2019)

In October 2006, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose was released . In contrast to the first two Bat albums, this time composer Steinman was only marginally involved. Half of the songs were written by Meat Loaf himself; however, they were arranged and produced by Desmond Child . Guests on the album (either as songwriters or guest musicians) include Motley Crue 's Nikki Sixx , John 5 (formerly with Marilyn Manson ), Brian May and Steve Vai , among others . The first single release was entitled It's All Coming Back to Me Now , a song written by Steinman that he had recorded several times, most successfully in the version by Celine Dion . Marion Raven was engaged as a duet partner . In June and October 2007, Meat Loaf toured Germany again. At the end of October 2007 he abandoned a concert in Newcastle upon Tyne , saying he might never perform again.

On April 23, 2010, the studio album Hang Cool Teddy Bear was released . The first single release was the title Los Angeloser . This was followed on December 2, 2011 by the studio album Hell in a Handbasket . In the 2012 US presidential campaign, Meat Loaf spoke out for Republican candidate Mitt Romney and sang along with Randy Owens and Big & Rich at a campaign event. In December 2012 he announced that the Last at Bat Farewell Tour , completed in 2013, was his big farewell tour and that he had no plans to perform live afterwards. He began the tour with a concert in Newcastle, with ticket prices significantly reduced to compensate for his departure in 2007. After years of living in California , Meat Loaf moved to Texas. In addition to his heart surgery, he also received an artificial knee joint. The album Braver Than We Are was released in 2016. All the songs on the album were once again written by Jim Steinman.

musical style and appearance

music

Composer and Wagner lover Jim Steinman conceived the typical theatrical bombastic Meat Loaf style as a mixture of 1950s rock 'n' roll and art rock , a variant of progressive rock of the 1970s. The terms “rock opera” or “Wagnerian rock” (“Wagner rock”) are often used because of the strong reference to Richard Wagner.

The usually very rapid tempo of the songs and the addition of a piano to the combination of one or two solo electric guitars , electric bass and drums that is otherwise common in hard rock come from rock 'n' roll . The piano usually plays the harmonic framework.

The references to classical music come from art rock, such as the length of the pieces, which is between five and 15 minutes, the use of leitmotifs , the constant changes in tempo , dynamics and instrumentation (there are passages in which only piano and singer can be heard probably based on the art song or the technique of the recitative from the romantic opera) and above all the texts, which are often very dramatic. An example of this is the solo track Heaven Can Wait , which won Meat Loaf a Grammy.

lyrics

Bat Out of Hell is a kind of "rock fairy tale" in which a man says goodbye to his lover in the morning (similar to the song of the day ) and then has an accident on the way. Romantically , however, his heart survives and flies away.

I'd Do Anything for Love also seems melodramatic in its execution. With the whole universe and even the Last Judgment , the protagonist declares his love to the beloved, which in the coda makes the song a duet .

Appear

Appropriately, Meat Loaf initially appeared in a black, later red tailcoat and ruffled shirt, as a sign of "high art" and "classicity". Even at his late concerts it could happen that chandeliers hung over the stage (e.g. at Bat Out of Hell Live ). This was in contrast to the cliché of the rocker in a black leather dress in front of a martial backdrop.

A trademark at live concerts was the red (or at times white and black for sad songs) silk scarf that Meat Loaf used until his death. According to an anecdote , during a performance in a New York bar before his breakthrough, his girlfriend and future wife handed him a red terry towel on stage so that he could wipe his sweat. But he didn't understand that and incorporated the cloth into his performance . He liked it so much that he stayed with it and only switched to "finer" fabrics.

According to another anecdote that tries to explain why that scarf looks like a ribbon on the Bat cover and in the video clip, Meat Loaf was supposed to wear a red knotted headband for the Bat Out of Hell back cover photo shoot. However, that was too annoying for him, so he took it into his own hands. Even during the video shoot, he insisted on holding it in his hand. For optical reasons, however, he then switched to a cloth.

reviews

Newsweek has dubbed Meat Loaf a "post-pubescent heroic tenor" — by the age of 30 he had a multi-octave voice that earned him the nickname "The Voice." British pop journalist Julie Burchill saw him as "the end product of 200 years of McDonald's " (referring to his overweight) who " [shoves] all the rock clichés in your face like a chloroform cotton ball until you want to throw up". .

Described as musically and verbally overloaded, Rolling Stone magazine 's debut album Bat Out Of Hell , where "motorcycles copulate in oil-drenched ecstasy," elicits an "adolescent libido " that "revs its lecherous engines, a libretto that begins with Clearasil . " was written on the bathroom mirror". He sings his way "through every emotion, from King Kong to lonely lover to crazed revenge artist," according to the New York Times . According to critic David Sinclair, the pomp of his live concerts would be enough "to make every concert-goer a vegetarian " - in reference to his stage name.

In his obituary, the German music critic Andreas Borcholte called him “highly emotional, with a powerful voice, a hot, bubbling human volcano that could erupt at any time, no matter how insignificant the occasion […] an overweight blob that seemed unhewn on the outside, but in truth whole tender and vulnerable.”

discography

studio albums

year title Top placement, total weeks, awardchart positionschart positions
(Year, Title, Placements, Weeks, Awards, Notes) 		Remarks
 EN  AT  CH  UK  U.S
1971 Stoney & Meatloaf — — — — —
First published: October 1971
with Shaun Murphy
1977 Bat Out of Hell EN11
platinum
platinum

(67 weeks)EN 		— — UK9
11x platinum
×11
11x platinum

(522 weeks)UK 		U.S14
Diamond + quadruple platinum
Diamond + quadruple platinum
×4
Diamond + quadruple platinum

(82 weeks)U.S
First Release: October 21, 1977
Sales: +43,000,000
1981 Dead Ringer EN8 (31 weeks)
EN 		— — UK1
platinum
platinum

(46 weeks)UK 		U.S45 (11 weeks)
U.S
First Release: September 4, 1981
Sales: +392,500
1983 Midnight at the Lost and Found EN26 (9 weeks)
EN 		— — UK7
gold
gold

(23 weeks)UK 		—
First Release: April 25, 1983
Sales: +100,000
1984 bad attitude EN24 (18 weeks)
EN 		— — UK8th
gold
gold

(16 weeks)UK 		U.S74 (10 weeks)
U.S
First Release: October 29, 1984
Sales: +100,000
1986 Blind Before I Stop EN51 (5 weeks)
EN 		— CH21 (3 weeks)
CH 		UK28
silver
silver

(6 weeks)UK 		—
First Release: September 29, 1986
Sales: +60,000
1993 Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell EN1
double platinum
×2
double platinum

(48 weeks)EN 		AT1
platinum
platinum

(30 weeks)AT 		CH1
platinum
platinum

(36 weeks)CH 		UK1
Six times platinum
×6
Six times platinum

(67 weeks)UK 		U.S1
quintuple platinum
×5
quintuple platinum

(55 weeks)U.S
First Release: September 14, 1993
Sales: +9,295,000
1995 Welcome to the Neighborhood EN10
gold
gold

(22 weeks)EN 		AT44 (1 week)
AT 		CH10 (12 weeks)
CH 		UK3
platinum
platinum

(28 weeks)UK 		U.S17
platinum
platinum

(14 weeks)U.S
First Release: November 14, 1995
Sales: +2,100,000
2003 Couldn't Have Said It Better EN8 (9 weeks)
EN 		AT58 (4 weeks)
AT 		CH44 (10 weeks)
CH 		UK4
gold
gold

(14 weeks)UK 		U.S85 (4 weeks)
U.S
First Release: September 23, 2003
Sales: +300,000
2006 Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose EN2
gold
gold

(18 weeks)EN 		AT5 (7 weeks)
AT 		CH3
gold
gold

(13 weeks)CH 		UK3
platinum
platinum

(12 weeks)UK 		U.S8th
gold
gold

(11 weeks)U.S
First Release: October 20, 2006
Sales: +4,000,000
2010 Hang Cool Teddy Bear EN4 (7 weeks)
EN 		AT11 (4 weeks)
AT 		CH4 (7 weeks)
CH 		UK4
silver
silver

(7 weeks)UK 		U.S27 (3 weeks)
U.S
First Release: April 19, 2010
Sales: +60,000
2011 Hell in a hand basket EN29 (3 weeks)
EN 		— CH49 (1 week)
CH 		UK5 (4 weeks)
UK 		U.S100 (1 week)
U.S
First published: September 30, 2011
2016 Braver than we are EN7 (3 weeks)
EN 		AT27 (2 weeks)
AT 		CH19 (2 weeks)
CH 		UK4 (5 weeks)
UK 		U.S31 (1 week)
U.S
First published: September 9, 2016

gray hatched : no chart data from this year available

acting

As an actor, Meat Loaf appeared as Eddie in the 1975 musical film The Rocky Horror Picture Show prior to the release of Bat Out of Hell . He then acted in numerous films such as Roadie , Fight Club , Wayne's World , The Mighty , The 51st State , Spice World and TV series. In the crime series Nash Bridges he had an appearance in episode 30 in the role of petty criminal Charlie Pep. "I've always thought of myself more as an actor than a musician," he explained in a VH1 report about his work.

In 2006 he played the father of Jables ( Jack Black ) in the film Kings of Rock - Tenacious D (by and with the band of the same name ). In 2009 he had guest roles in the television series Dr. House and Monk , in the 2010 Glee season 2 episode The Rocky Horror Glee Show . From 2018 he starred in the Netflix series Ghost Wars .

Filmography, music videos (selection)

Meat Loaf, MOWOS

film biography

positions

In interviews, Meat Loaf compared rock with classics like Mozart or Beethoven and saw his songs as "mini plays" that had to be staged anew at each performance:

“When I'm in a role on screen, I want people to recognize myself in it. And that’s how you should be able to feel into a song.”

In this connection he mentioned Shakespeare :

"It's not just for me to perform an old song again - it has to do with my acting . The moment counts. People ask me, 'How do you manage that every night?' But – hey: How do you play Richard the Third every night?”

Arguably the best example of such rock drama is Paradise by the Dashboard Light , the sixth track from Bat Out of Hell , in which a young man takes his girlfriend ( played by Ellen Foley , later played by Patti Russo ) to have sex with him wants, but only has to swear eternal loyalty to her when she persistently demands it.

Dead Ringer for Love (the title track of the album Dead Ringer ) is also such a “rock sketch ”: A young man on a drinking spree sees a woman in a bar whom he is keen on and proposes a one-night stand to her. After various defensive reactions on her part (especially since she already has a boyfriend), she then decides to accept the advances. Appropriately, Meat Loaf was able to win Cher as a partner , who is also a singer and actress (e.g. in The Witches of Eastwick ), and the video clip was also designed scenically , just like the Dead Ringer album as a whole was implemented as a feature-length (trashy) promo video.

Accordingly, he rarely wrote his songs himself (which, as he himself admitted, he was not able to do at all), but found himself - like an actor in the play or screenplay - each time anew in the songs:

"I'm not a singer - I'm an actor: I have to live in a moment, create a moment. I have to create a soul, a universe for this song - I have to create all these things. In doing this, I dive down into the characters and search for the existences I am telling about.”

literature

  • Meat Loaf, David Dalton: To Hell And Back . An Autobiography. Virgin, London 2000, ISBN 0-7535-0443-X (English).
  • Patrizia Kurz, Ralph Isenbarth: Meat Loaf. Phoenix from Hell . A biography. Edel Company, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-927801-84-4 .
  • Andreas Fallscheer: Meat Loaf . Zsolnay, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-552-05141-4 .

web links

Commons : Meat Loaf  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Meat Loaf  - Quotes

itemizations

  1. ↑ Mark David, Mark David: Meat Loaf Moves to Texas. In: Variety. 29 May 2012, retrieved 22 January 2022 (American English).
  2. ↑ US singer Meat Loaf dies at 74. In: The daily mirror . 21 January 2022, retrieved 21 January 2022 .
  3. ↑ Tim Dowling: 'The Queen hates me': how Meat Loaf fell out with the Royal Family. In: The Guardian . May 3, 2003, accessed January 21, 2022 (English).
  4. ↑ a b Alex Marshall, Ben Sisario and Derrick Bryson Taylor: Meat Loaf, 'Bat Out of Hell' Singer and Actor, Dies at 74. In: The New York Times . January 21, 2022. Retrieved January 21, 2022 (English).
  5. ↑ Amanda Aday: Biography . IMDb , retrieved September 27, 2017 (English).
  6. ↑ Joanne Kavanagh: Who are Meat Loaf's children Pearl and Amanda Aday? In: the-sun.com . January 21, 2022. Retrieved January 21, 2022 (English).
  7. ↑ Banger and mashed. In: The Sydney Morning Herald . February 20, 2004, accessed January 21, 2022 (English).
  8. ↑ Singer Meat Loaf dies aged 74. In : Welt.de. 21 January 2022, retrieved 21 January 2022 .
  9. ↑ Gareth Davies: Meat Loaf, Bat Out Of Hell singer, dies aged 74. In: The Telegraph . January 21, 2022. Retrieved January 21, 2022 (English).
  10. ↑ Andrew Dansby, Meat Loaf Has Heart Surgery. Rolling Stone , December 25, 2003, retrieved September 27, 2017 (English).
  11. ↑ Gordon Barr: Meat Loaf cuts short Newcastle gig. Chronicle Live, 1 November 2007, retrieved 27 September 2017 (English).
  12. ↑ Meat Loaf Serenades Mitt Romney With 'America the Beautiful' . Rolling Stone , October 26, 2012, retrieved September 27, 2017 (English).
  13. ↑ a b Gordon Barr: Meat Loaf gives tearful interview ahead of Metro Radio Arena gig. Newcastle Chronicle, 15 March 2013, accessed 27 September 2017 (English).
  14. ↑ Ray Waddell, Meat Loaf Explains His 'Completely Different' New Record, Trump's Trolling, 'Rocky Horror' Reunion and a Tour . Billboard , September 3, 2015, retrieved September 27, 2017 (English).
  15. ↑ Andreas Borcholte: The Klops and Hell. In: Mirror Online . 21 January 2022, retrieved 21 January 2022 .
  16. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
  17. ↑ These are the 25 best-selling albums of all time - have you heard them all? February 4, 2020, retrieved July 3, 2020 (German).
  18. ↑ Sales of Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose according to: Paul ODonnell: Federal appeals court sides with Clevelander in 'Bat Out of Hell' dispute . Cleveland.com, November 21, 2007, accessed September 27, 2017 (English).
  19. ↑ syfy.com: Meat Loaf Aday
  20. ↑ Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back. In: Internet Movie Database. Retrieved January 21, 2022 (English).
  21. ↑ Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back. In: Fernsehserien.de. Retrieved January 21, 2022 .
personal data
SURNAME meat loaf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aday, Marvin Lee (birth name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American rock singer and actor
BIRTH DATE September 27, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Dallas , Texas, United States
DATE OF DEATH January 20, 2022
PLACE OF DEATH Austin , Texas, United States