The misunderstood monster, tormented by his creator
MEAT LOAF was the real life BAT OUT OF HELL
Everything about Meat Loaf is big. The place he was born (Texas), the family he was born into (Meat Loaf weighed nearly 250 Ibs before he was even in his teens); the sound he made and, of course, the records he sold (60 million combined sales of Bat Out Of Hell and Bat Out Of Hell I.
But big doesn't always mean better. There was the alcoholic father who tried to stab him with a hunting knife; the musical mother, who died too young; the school bullies who taunted the young Marvin Lee Aday mercilessly.
So how did an overweight, bullied, near-orphan come to be one of the biggest artists in the world? Cue the entrance of Jim Steinman, the reclusive New York songwriter and composer of Bat Out Of Hell.
Together they cut an odd couple but made an unstoppable force.
However, the globe-straddling success of Bat was only the start of a dream that soon turned into a nightmare. Refusing to become the puppet to Steinman's musical master, years of acrimony followed. Until 1993 when Meat and Jim - the monster and his creator - reunited for Bat Out Of Hell Il and its attendant mega-hit, 'I'd Do Anything For Love But (But I Won't Do That). Suddenly it was like 1977 - only bigger.
The next 25 years found them repeating history - talling out, only to reunite again at the eleventh hour, the one unable to fully exist without the other.
Now with Meat Loaf confessing to author and long-time interviewer Mick Wall that I have made my last record, this is it for me,' and the stage musical version of Bat Out Of Hell finally on view, the time is right for this motorcycle-ride-through-the-fire biography.