Meat Loaf

Michael Lee Aday (born Marvin Lee Aday; September 27, 1947 – January 20, 2022), better known by his stage name Meat Loaf, was an American singer and actor. He was known for his powerful, wide-ranging voice and theatrical live shows. His Bat Out of Hell album trilogy—Bat Out of Hell (1977), Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell (1993), and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose (2006)—has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. The first album stayed on the charts for over nine years and is one of the best-selling albums in history, still selling an estimated 200,000 copies annually as of 2016.

Despite the commercial success of Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, and earning a Grammy Award for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for the song "I'd Do Anything for Love", Meat Loaf nevertheless experienced some difficulty establishing a steady career within the United States. However, his career still saw success due to his popularity in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He received the 1994 Brit Award in the United Kingdom for best-selling album and single, and was ranked 23rd for the number of weeks spent on the UK charts in 2006. He ranks 96th on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock".

Meat Loaf also acted in over 50 films and television shows, sometimes as himself or as characters resembling his stage persona. His notable film roles include Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the bus driver in Spice World (1997), and Robert Paulson in Fight Club (1999). His early stage work included dual roles in the original Broadway cast of The Rocky Horror Show; he also appeared in the musical Hair, both on and Off-Broadway.

Early life

Marvin Lee Aday was born in Dallas, Texas, on September 27, 1947, the son of Wilma Artie (née Hukel), a schoolteacher and member of the Vo-di-o-do Girls gospel music quartet, and Orvis Wesley Aday, a former police officer who went into business selling a homemade cough remedy with his wife and a friend under the name of the Griffin Grocery Company. He stated in an interview that when he was born, he was "bright red and stayed that way for days" and that his father said he looked like "nine pounds of ground chuck", and convinced hospital staff to put the name "Meat" on his crib. He was later called "M.L." in reference to his initials, but when his weight increased, his seventh-grade classmates referred to him as "Meat Loaf", referring to his then 5-foot-2-inch (157 cm), 240-pound (110 kg) stature. He also attributed the nickname to an incident where, after he stepped on a football coach's foot, the coach yelled "Get off my foot, you hunk of meatloaf!"

Meat Loaf's father would binge-drink alcohol for days at a time, a habit he started when he was medically discharged from the U.S. Army during World War II after being wounded by fragments from a mortar shell. Meat Loaf often accompanied his mother in driving to the bars in Dallas to look for his father, and often stayed with his grandmother. He attended church and Bible study every Sunday.

He was 16 years old on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That morning, Meat Loaf had seen the President when he arrived at Dallas Love Field. Later, after hearing of Kennedy's death, he and a friend drove to Parkland Hospital where he witnessed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, covered in her husband's blood, getting out of the car that brought her to the hospital.

In 1965, Meat Loaf graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School, having appeared in school stage productions such as Where's Charley? and The Music Man. He played high school football as a defensive tackle. After attending college at Lubbock Christian College, he transferred to North Texas State University (now the University of North Texas).

In 1967, when Meat Loaf was 19 years old, his mother died of cancer, and his father lunged at him with a knife after falsely accusing the teen of having girls in his bedroom. Meat Loaf used the money his mother left him to rent an apartment in Dallas, where he isolated for three and a half months, at which time a friend found him. Soon after, he went to the airport and caught the next flight to Los Angeles.

Meat Loaf intentionally gained 60 pounds (27 kg) to fail his physical examination for the Vietnam War draft. Despite this strategy, he still received his notice to appear before his local draft board, but chose to ignore it.

Career

Early career

In Los Angeles, Meat Loaf formed his first band, Meat Loaf Soul. The band received several recording contracts. Meat Loaf Soul's first gig was in Huntington Beach, California in 1968 at the Cave, opening for Van Morrison's band Them and Question Mark and the Mysterians. Meat Loaf later described his early days in the music industry as being treated like a "circus clown."

The band underwent several changes of lead guitarists, changing the name of the band each time, to names including Popcorn Blizzard and Floating Circus. As Floating Circus, they opened for the Who, the Fugs, the Stooges, MC5, the Grateful Dead, and the Grease Band. Their regional success led them to release a single, "Once Upon a Time", backed with "Hello". Meat Loaf then joined the Los Angeles production of the musical Hair.

1970s

With the publicity generated from Hair, Meat Loaf accepted an invitation by Motown, in Detroit. In addition to appearing as "Mother" and "Ulysses S. Grant" at Detroit's Vest Pocket Theatre, he recorded the vocals with fellow Hair performer Shaun "Stoney" Murphy on an album of songs written and selected by the Motown production team. The album, titled Stoney & Meatloaf (with Meatloaf spelled as one word), was released in September 1971 and included the single "What You See Is What You Get"; it reached number 36 on the Best Selling Soul Singles chart and number 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Meat Loaf and Stoney toured with Jake Wade and the Soul Searchers, opening for Richie Havens, the Who, the Stooges, Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, and Rare Earth. Meat Loaf left Motown soon after the label replaced his and Stoney's vocals from the one song he liked, "Who Is the Leader of the People?" with new vocals by Edwin Starr. He moved to Freeland, Michigan, for a year and was the opening act at the Grande Ballroom 80 times.

In December 1972, Meat Loaf was in the original off-Broadway production of Rainbow at the Orpheum Theatre in New York. After the tour, Meat Loaf rejoined the cast of Hair, this time at a Broadway theater. After he hired an agent, he auditioned for the Public Theater's production of More Than You Deserve. During the audition, Meat Loaf met Jim Steinman. He sang a Stoney and Meat Loaf favorite of his, "(I'd Love to Be) As Heavy as Jesus", and subsequently got the part of Rabbit, a maniac that blows up his fellow soldiers so they can "go home." Ron Silver and Fred Gwynne were also in the show. In the summer between the show's workshop production (April 1973) and full production (November 1973 – January 1974), Meat Loaf appeared in a Shakespeare in the Park production of As You Like It with Raul Julia and Mary Beth Hurt.

In late 1973, Meat Loaf was cast in the original L.A. Roxy cast of The Rocky Horror Show, playing the parts of both Eddie and Dr. Scott. The success of the musical led to the filming of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in which Meat Loaf played only Eddie while Jonathan Adams was cast as Dr. Scott, a decision Meat Loaf said made the movie not as good as the musical.

About the same time, Meat Loaf and Steinman started work on Bat Out of Hell. Meat Loaf convinced Epic Records to shoot music videos for four songs, "Bat Out of Hell", "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth", and "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" and convinced Lou Adler, the producer of Rocky Horror, to run the "Paradise" video as a trailer to the movie. During his recording of the soundtrack for Rocky Horror, Meat Loaf recorded two more songs: "Stand by Me" (a Ben E. King cover), and "Clap Your Hands." They remained unreleased for a decade, until 1984, when they appeared as B-sides to the "Nowhere Fast" single.

In 1976, Meat Loaf recorded lead vocals for Ted Nugent's album Free-for-All when regular Nugent lead vocalist Derek St. Holmes temporarily quit the band. Meat Loaf sang lead on five of the album's nine tracks. That same year, Meat Loaf appeared in his final theatrical show in New York City, the short-lived Broadway production of Gower Champion's rock musical Rockabye Hamlet. It closed two weeks into its initial run.

Meat Loaf and Steinman started working on Bat Out of Hell in 1972, but did not get serious about it until the end of 1974. Meat Loaf then decided to leave theater and concentrate exclusively on music. Meat Loaf was cast as an understudy for John Belushi in The National Lampoon Show. It was at the Lampoon show that Meat Loaf met Ellen Foley, the co-star who sang "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and "Bat Out of Hell" with him on the album Bat Out of Hell.