Meat Loaf, the singer and actor who was born Marvin Lee Aday, has died. He won a gramophone for his 1977 debut album, Bat Out of Hell, and also starred in films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Fight Club. The cause of death has not been released.
Meat Loaf got his first real success in musical theater, a medium that would influence many of the greatest triumphs of his career, even though he was already performing in bands from the age of 20. After playing a role in a Los Angeles production of Hair, he was cast in the Broadway cast and met the man who would be his partner for the rest of his life.
In Steinman, Meat Loaf found a partner who was musically fixated on many of the same topics he was: Sex, motorcycles, soaring guitar solo, sex again, and, above all, a particularly idiosyncratic version of "rock and roll" that pulled as much from showtunes as it did Steinman found a voice that could power the melodies that had been kicking around in his head. After meeting, they began working on the songs that would become Bat Out Of Hell.
Meat Loaf joined the cast of an obscure L.A. stage musical called The Rocky Horror Show in the dual parts of greaser-turned-dinner Eddie and his uncle. He reprised the first of those roles for the 1975 film adaptation of the play, thus becoming part of a million midnight showings and their attendant spoon-hurling rituals.
Meat Loaf and Steinman tried to convince people that the odd rock opera they had been cooking up together was a hit even as they continued to work as actors. The duo eventually lured in Todd Rundgren to play on the album and produce, but even then their opus was a hard sell to labels, turned off by its hybrid genre, and radio-defiant tracks that stretched to nearly 10 minutes in length. Bat Out Of Hell went on to sell 43 million copies.
Meat Loaf was transformed into a rock star, a flamboyant performer with stage presence and a voice that could handle anything Steinman could throw at it, thanks to the album and its accompanying, minimalist music videos. The song "Paradise By The Dashboard Light", which is functionally a nine-minute extended joke song about pre-marital sex, became a staple of classic rock station setlists.
The course of Meat Loaf's career was marked by wide variations in how effective, or silly, his style of rock was. It never paid because of changing tastes, record label politics, and occasional conflict with Steinman. You never knew when the Steinman-penned single, "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)", would come along and smash back into the charts.
Meat Loaf continued his career as an actor, appearing in more than 100 projects across the decades. He received praise for his role as martyr-to-the-cause Bob in Fight Club, but not for his role as the bus driver in Spice World. He continued to perform and tour despite health issues that affected his throat and vocal cords.
Meat Loaf's legacy was marred by more failed albums than successes, and he had a personal friendship with Donald Trump that stretched back to an appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice. He said that he had never really been taken seriously.
When he and Steinman hit, they did so like a freight train, propelled by a voice that could somehow make the corniest anthem and ballads ring true.
Meat Loaf died late on Thursday night, according to his agent.
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