Meat Loaf: In and Out of Hell (2015) Movie Script
1
This programme contains
some strong language from the start
"Paradise By The
Dashboard Light" by Meat Loaf
# Well, it was long ago
and it was far away
# And it was so much better
than it is today
# It was long ago and it was far away
# Never felt so good
# And it was so much better
than it is today
It never felt so right
# Glowing like the metal
on the edge of a knife... #
MUSIC FADES
WIND WHISTLES
So, when people came in, uh,
they were asked to fill out some
cards with some questions on 'em.
The first question is this.
When you close your eyes,
and I guess that means
when I close my eyes to sing,
how old am I?
SCATTERED LAUGHS
I am as old as the person is
in that song.
WHOOPING AND APPLAUSE
And the reason I say that to you
is because
I don't listen to myself sing.
I have absolutely no fucking idea
what I'm doing.
LAUGHTER
Paradise...
I'm 17.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
"I Got Texas In My Soul"
by Tex Williams
# Dallas, Fort Worth, San Angelo
# Houston, Austin or El Paso
# I gotta go
Gotta go!
# I got Texas in my soul... #
This here was, uh,
Meat Loaf's house back in the, uh,
late '50s, early '60s,
where he grew up in Dallas.
I grew up down the road
about five blocks,
and, uh, we were best friends
during high school.
His mom was a schoolteacher.
He was an only child.
They were very close.
But, uh, Meat Loaf's house
wasn't like a place you'd come
and Mom would fix milk and cookies
and you'd sit down, and...
You know, you would come,
you would get the car and go,
and, uh, you'd avoid his dad
and say hi to Mom
and move ahead.
Growing up in that era in Texas,
which was, erm,
much different than, let's say,
California or New York.
It was not a place where you
wanted to be a rebel.
My father was an alcoholic,
and he would always, uh,
beat me up as a kid.
Threw me through a plate glass
window, threw me through a door...
Put, you know...
Put me where I had to go to
the hospital
and get stitches in my head
several times.
Meat grew up in Dallas, Texas,
and, erm, it's a
good old boy hometown place,
and a lot of people kind of made
fun of him,
cos he was the fat kid,
and, uh, he had to get through that.
One of the stories he used to tell
was that's how he got his name,
Meat Loaf, cos he had his
initials on his locker, ML,
and ML stood for Marvin Lee, cos
that was his name, Marvin Lee Aday.
This is where Meat Loaf
got his name, right here.
He was playing defensive line,
it was, uh, the coach was lining up
behind him, uh, to show him how to
properly stand in his position.
Coaches, you know,
they're all Neanderthals,
but it wasn't really enlightened
coaching.
Uh, the caveman technique.
Meat stood up to ask a question,
but when he did he turned around
and he happened to step on
that coach's foot.
The first thing out of the
coach's mouth was,
"You meat loaf son of a gun!"
And that's where his name evolved.
We all knew him as ML, but from that
day on everybody called him Meat.
How big was he when he was a kid?
Jesus, he was bigger than
three people, you know?
I mean, his thighs were
bigger than I was.
He was a rather large individual,
uh, but he was very ambitious,
he liked to do things,
he was very music inclined through
going through high school.
I think he was in the choir,
along with playing sports.
Yeah, you're right.
I think he even was in a bunch of
musicals that we had. But, er...
He came out of the box with a lot of
presence and a lot of, uh,
a lot of centre stage ability
that was just natural.
I think with a lot of great artists
there is a sadness,
there is a...
they have vulnerability.
Meat would talk about his mom.
You know...
..and I saw pictures of her.
They were kind of similar,
and I think she was his...
she was his haven, you know,
his safe place.
And then she passed away
and I don't think he kind of
ever recovered from that.
His father was a troubled man.
He had, you know,
a disease, alcoholism,
and he lost his wife
very early in life,
and, of course,
Meat lost his mother.
And when she was gone
it became violent.
In a scary way.
See this, uh,
gentleman right here?
Uh, that's my dad.
His name was Orvis.
Unbelievable.
HE GASPS EXASPERATEDLY
Orvis!
That's actually worse than Meat.
'He came home drunk and tried to
kill me with a butcher knife.'
And that particular day, erm,
because I was fighting for my life,
I actually...
They told me
I put him in the hospital.
And I left home with
a pair of, erm...
A T-shirt, barefooted, and a pair of,
erm, shorts from the football team
that I played in high school with,
and went to my best friend's house
in Dallas named Billy Slocum.
Things in Dallas were bad.
He was 20,
and he...
Like he sometimes does,
he just decided to disappear.
"Walk On The Wild Side"
by Lou Reed
And I went to the airport
and whatever plane was leaving,
wherever it was going,
it could have been going to Omaha,
that's where I was going.
And the next plane was going to LA.
When I got there I couldn't figure
out what the hell I was doing there.
Finally a taxi pulled up and says
to me, "You want to go somewhere?"
I went, "Yeah, take me to the..."
"..Whisky a Go Go."
He goes, "OK." So I...
..got out of the car, and it was...
It was like a Fellini movie.
It was the most bizarre...
I mean, people, long hair,
guys with Afros this big that
when they were walking in the street
were blowing like this. I've got...
And they used to call me
Hair God in Texas,
because my hair would
hang over my ears.
Then he started putting bands
together because, erm,
you know, in Texas he had sung
pretty much gospel stuff.
So, it was the late '60s.
While he was pursuing, erm,
his rock 'n' roll dream, Meat was
doing odd jobs in LA, and one of
them was parking cars at a theatre.
And this guy pulls up
and gets out of the car,
and he goes,
"What are you doing?"
He's like, "What do you mean?"
He goes, "Are you auditioning?"
He goes, "No, I'm..." as Meat would,
"No, I'm parking cars!"
The guy went,
"Do you want to audition?"
He goes, "What is it?"
He goes, "It's a show,
it's a musical. Can you sing?"
He goes, "Yeah, I can sing."
He goes, "Well, come with me."
He goes, "What about
all these people?"
He goes, "Don't worry about them."
And, bam, he was in Hair.
He wanted rock 'n' roll so badly,
but if you were in Hair,
it was a big, big thing,
because people were using it
as a springboard to other stage
plays, record deals and movies.
Motown came to me and said, "We'd
like to sign you to a contract,"
and I said, "OK."
And they said,
"We'd like you to it as a duet."
When Meat was doing Hair,
he hooked up with
a woman named Stoney,
and they put together an act,
Stoney and Meat Loaf,
and they got signed to
Motown Records,
so that was really his first
foray into actual recording.
# Ain't no hidden treasure
# In this pot of gold, you see
# Ain't no way for you to make
# No silky purse out of me
# I'm never, ever going to
change your ways
# I'll take you as you are... #
But music was getting a little
harder rock at that point,
by the time we'd gotten to
the early '70s, so, uh,
it wasn't something that made
his career catapult.
Tim Curry, thank you for
coming along and talking to us.
Thank you very much.
The Rocky Horror Show opened in
the Royal Court in June 1973,
and has now moved to the King's Road.
There were radio reports
and TV coverage of something that
had been put together in England.
And maybe it was the
logical extension of Hair,
and that Tim Curry was
going to be in a new play, wow!
They asked me to audition for
the Rocky Horror Show,
and I knew Richard O'Brien,
who wrote everything -
the book, the music and lyrics -
vaguely, because we'd both been
in Hair.
He'd been in the touring company,
I'd been playing it in London,
and, erm, so he knew of me,
and, er, I just went and auditioned
and sang, er, Tutti Frutti by
Little Richard.
The Rocky Horror Show in
Los Angeles opened in early '74.
The English part of the
production came over and, er,
we started casting at that point.
Jim Sharman, the director,
brought up Meat Loaf,
and he was positive
that he wanted him for Eddie,
both from size and from his voice.
He wanted a combination of
theatrical and rock.
So they hired all the cast,
and we were just learning the songs.
Meat is basically
a Texas boy, you know,
and this was as far from Texas
as you could possibly get.
And the two back doors open...
..and Tim Curry comes in
in full make-up, that hair blown up,
wearing that leather jacket,
fish-net stockings with a
garter belt and high heels,
and starts singing
I'm A Sweet Transvestite.
# I'm just a sweet transvestite
# From transsexual Transylvania... #
Well, this southern boy
gets up and goes,
"No fucking way!"
And I leave.
I think it was beyond
the edge of Dallas, you know.
I mean, this was an edge that was
beyond anything in theatre.
And they lived that lifestyle.
And they're going, "No, you don't
understand. It's a comedy."
Eddie is basically the first love
and first experiment of
Frank-N-Furter.
So essentially what happens is that
Frank-N-Furter is addressing
the assembled Transylvanians,
and suddenly Eddie, Meat Loaf,
breaks out of this vault
and has his one big number.
# Woo!
# Whatever happened to
Saturday night
# When you dressed up sharp
and you felt all right?
# It don't seem the same
since cosmic light
# Came into my life... #
He comes out of the vault
with this Frankenstein scar
across his head, and he sings
Whatever Happened To Saturday Night?
# Hot Patootie, bless my soul
# I really love that rock 'n' roll
# Hot Patootie, bless my soul
# I really love that rock 'n' roll
# Hot Patootie, bless my soul
# I really love that... #
Meat Loaf's entire role in that film
was to be the embodiment of
the '50s rock 'n' roll dream -
everything was fabulous,
you dressed all right,
you get the girl on your bike
and you sha-la-la-la,
all that stuff.
# Hot Patootie, bless my soul
# I really love
that rock 'n' roll... #
And he basically drives all the way
around the balcony, which is where
all the assembled Transylvanians
are, knocking everybody off,
scaring everybody, and in the end,
he's chased back into the vault by
Frank-N-Furter, who goes in
after him with an axe...
..and then he comes out, the axe is
all bloodied and he says...
One from the vaults.
Although it's basically one song,
going from the Roxy to
Broadway to the movie,
he took it as a starring part.
Meat Loaf really
happened off of that.
Around this time in New York,
Meat Loaf met Jim Steinman,
an amazing songwriter,
and, uh, as an artist,
as a vocalist who does not
write their own material, to find
that songwriter and composer that
really wants to write for you
and is inspired to write for you,
it's just, like, spectacular!
Jim was just out of college
and had written the music for a show
called More Than You Deserve,
which was down at the
public theatre at the time.
And I walked into the audition,
and there was only one person there.
And it was Steinman.
Jim envisioned himself as this
svengali - eccentric,
demanding, very talented,
and always said that his music was
kind of a combination of Wagner
and Little Richard,
and, erm, Meat and Jim would put
together shows in New York.
Jim's songs were
a little over-the-top,
they weren't your normal song.
Is the guy a little bit
left of centre?
Always was.
Always was a little weird.
In fact, the show used to
start with him taking off these
hockey gloves and banging on the
piano and all of that, and...
"On a hot summer night,
"would you offer your throat to
the wolf with the red rose?!"
On a hot summer night,
would you offer your throat
to the wolf with the red roses?
Yes.
I bet you say that to all the boys.
He didn't really start writing for
Bat Out Of Hell until,
er, late '74.
I said, "We need a pop song." And
he started writing Took The Words.
That was the first one.
Once most of the songs were written,
we went out and started
auditioning for record companies to
try to get a record deal.
People thought we were crazy
but we couldn't demo them.
Er, we would go and sing live.
We would, you know,
just give our souls to it,
and the people would be,
you know, a few feet away,
and Meat Loaf would sweat on them,
and they would get his spit on them
cos they were that close,
and, you know, most people
thought it was pretty scary.
I remember one guy
sort of running out in fear
because he thought that something
bad was going to happen to him.
We'd wander in and
they'd throw us right out.
Everybody said the same thing,
about, uh, all the stuff
I had been doing for years,
they said it was too dramatic,
too theatrical,
too explicitly sexual,
a little too violent.
They had been turned down by every
single record company in existence.
Nobody wanted to touch... They were
kicked out of Clive Davis's office,
they were told, "This music is
crap," you know, "Go get a day job."
It was Clive's comments about Jimmy,
"Do you know anything about
rock 'n' roll?
"Do you ever listen to
rock 'n' roll?
"You know, it's A-B-C, B-C,
verse, bridge, chorus,
"verse, bridge, chorus,
that's rock 'n' roll.
"And I don't know what you're doing,
you're doing A-B-Z-D-G-F-B!"
And then he calls me Ethel Merman.
As they were doing these shows,
auditions for record companies in
New York, erm, they caught the eye
and caught the ear of Todd Rundgren.
I didn't have the same reaction,
I guess, that most other
producers had,
which is, you know,
"Where's the single?"
Or, "This guy is kind of hideous,"
you know, "How are we going to
make a star out of him?"
And, uh, fortunately,
I had a relationship with
Bearsville Records that allowed me
to use all of the facilities.
He kind of took it and melded it
and moulded it into Bat Out Of Hell.
Steinman wanted this kind of frantic
sort of intro to the whole thing,
uh, that centred around this
very busy sort of piano riff.
Jim was used to listening to operas
that were several hours long, so,
to him, building up a three-minute
intro to a song seemed economical.
The opening track goes on for, like,
whatever it is, seven, eight,
nine minutes,
and that Bat Out Of Hell track
itself plays out like a great big
long overblown retro opera in
the manner of something like
Bohemian Rhapsody.
# The sirens are screaming
and the fires are howling
# Way down in the valley tonight
# There's a man in the shadows
with a gun in his eye
# And a blade shining
oh so bright... #
The lyrics of Bat Out Of Hell
really told a story,
this vision that was in Jim's mind.
When you have a song that says...
# Oh, and down in the tunnel
where the deadly are rising
# Oh, I swear I saw a young boy
down in the gutter
# He was starting to
foam in the heat... #
I mean, it's like...
It's quite a vision,
and that sets up I think the
entire vision for the record.
# Oh, baby, you're the only thing
in this whole world
# That's pure and good and right... #
Uh, this dystopian world
filled with teenage angst
and then turning to the girl
and going,
"Baby, you're the only thing
in this whole world
"that's good and pure and right."
It's just very romantic.
# So we've gotta make the most of
our one night together... #
And then to get to the point
where he, you know,
"Like a bat out of hell I'll be
gone when the morning comes,"
when he's on that motorcycle
and he's just taking off...!
# Like a bat out of hell
I'll be gone when the morning comes
# When the night is over
Like a bat out of hell
# I'll be gone, gone, gone
# Like a bat out of hell
I'll be gone when the morning comes
# But when the day is done
and the sun goes down
# And the moonlight's shining through
# Then like a sinner
before the gates of Heaven
# I'll come crawling on
back to you... #
It has resonated all these years.
This is a long time for one album
to have that kind of meaning.
It's, you know,
it's just really kick-ass!
And we were working on
Bat Out Of Hell,
I got to the end of the first chorus,
and I said, "Where's the rest of it?"
And he looked at me, he goes,
"What do you mean?"
I go, "Well, you've got me into this
story, I gotta finish my story."
Here's this guy
and he's on this motorcycle,
it's a larger than life creature.
It's actually,
it's got a crash in it, you know,
cos he goes faster than
any other boy has ever gone.
He rides it, you know,
into his death,
into the huge romance
that is rock 'n' roll.
# Oh, I can see myself
tearing up the road
# Faster than any other boy
has ever gone
# And my skin is raw
but my soul is ripe
# And no-one's going to stop me now
I'm going to make my escape
# But I can't stop thinking of you
# And I never see the sudden curve
till it's way too late. #
There are three moments in
Bat Out Of Hell, the title track,
when you think the song's finished,
and then it starts again!
# Then I'm dying at the bottom
of a pit in the blazing sun... #
Then I got him to repeat, "Then
I'm dying at the bottom of a pit,"
shooting up the octave, and changing
the chords and changing the words.
# Then I'm dying at the bottom
of a pit in the blazing sun
# Torn and twisted at the foot
of a burning bike... #
The senseless death, the...!
HE LAUGHS
And yet the redemption at the end,
uh, of the heart breaking
out of his chest and flying
away like a bat out of hell.
# And the last thing I see
is my heart
# Still beating
# Still beating
# Breaking out of my body
and flying away
# Like a bat out of hell
# Oh, like a bat out of hell...
And when you hear Meat Loaf
just pounding out those last,
"Like a bat out of hell," just
giving everything in his soul.
# Oh, like a bat out of hell. #
Meat Loaf and Steinman
always visualise things
in these theatrical terms
and Bat Out of Hell is almost
a little movie in itself.
The way that I think the album
is sequenced,
each song tells a story
and somehow the songs
are wound together
in this kind of play.
The first song is Bat Out of Hell
and it starts, probably,
at the end of somebody's life
and I think the rest of the record
is like a sort of a fevered dream
of this person who's dying
and then we see, sort of, him
remembering everything in the past.
# Baby, you took the words
right out my mouth
# Oh, must have been
while you were kissing me. #
And then it goes back and it sort of
tells about how he met this girl,
how a romance starts and how
beautiful it is and how hot it is.
And then, if you want to see it
as a progress,
you get Two Out of Three Ain't Bad,
"I want you, I need you,
"but there ain't no way
I'm ever gonna love you."
# See, I want you
I want you
# I need you
I need you
# But there ain't no way
I'm ever gonna love you
# Now don't be sad
# Don't be sad
# Because two out
of three ain't bad. #
You have the long,
involved narrative
of Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
# Well, I remember
every little thing
# As if it happened only yesterday
# Parking by the lake and there was
not another car in sight... #
This guy asks this girl up
to the lovers' lane
and they start to make out.
# We're gonna go all the way tonight
# We're gonna go all the way tonight,
tonight
# We're gonna go all
the way tonight...
And, you know, he wanted to go
all the way
and she says, "Stop Right there!"
# I gotta know right now
# Before we go any further
do you love me...
He's like, "Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, you know, anything.
"I'll do it because
I want to get laid,"
and then you go into the future.
# So now I'm praying for
the end of time
# To hurry up and arrive
# Because if I've got to spend
another minute with you
# I don't think that I can really
survive... #
And then they're both praying
for the end of time
because, you know, they're not going
to split up until death,
so they're both eagerly
awaiting death.
These songs that you just go, "Wow."
To sing that... You cannot sing any
of those songs without feeling it.
That's why that album works.
That's why that album is
still today just...
It's iconic.
# And it was so much better
than it is today
# It was long ago and it was far away
# It felt so good and
it just felt so right
# And we were glowing like the metal
on the edge of a knife. #
Round about '76, '77,
punk kicks off,
and the whole ethic of punk
is you're no longer having
all that epic, pompous,
overblown stuff.
Everybody's doing everything
very sort of lo-fi,
and, when Bat Out of Hell came out,
firstly, it had this cover which
was basically what looked like
a piece of comic strip art.
Everything was very
sort of overblown.
Anything that was sort of big
and pompous and rocky
was not the kind of thing
that you liked.
You know, it was kind of campy
and I think that's what helped
make the songs unique.
At that time, there was no-one
close to writing stuff like that
and presenting it to an audience.
So, in the summer of '77,
the album is done, it's packaged
and we get ready to go out on tour.
I think that there is probably
an air of mystery
and, of course, drama, around
the fact of, you know,
Ellen Foley did the record,
but she's not on tour.
Ellen and Meat had had a falling
out. I got a call from Jim,
when they said they needed someone
to be the girl in the band.
First gig is Chicago,
opening for Cheap Trick.
And out comes the band with Steinman
in his gloves, banging on the piano.
The audience was enraged right
from the beginning
and then Meat Loaf comes out
and they're like,
"This huge guy in a tuxedo?
"What is that?"
And the first three rows
pretty much stood up
and started screaming
"Get off the stage you fat fuck!"
It was a slow growth album but
the band went on the road a lot.
They kept going out
and working the same album.
This is Susan Blond back with you
after quite a long absence,
and this is a really exciting
interview that we're going to have,
we hope. This is Meat Loaf
and this is Jim Steinman,
the guy who writes all the songs.
First time, I had sensed that
there was some tension
between Meat and Jim Steinman was
on a drive back from Woodstock,
and a discussion started,
"Well what's the album going
to be called?"
The cover of the record was
"Meat Loaf!" "Jim Steinman."
That was difficult for Jim
because I think that, in Jim's mind,
he had just as much, if not more, to
do with the success of the record.
I, to this day,
completely understand it.
He thought that he would get as
much recognition as I would.
And if you saw pictures of him
and Steinman together,
Steinman is kind of
wincing and hiding.
He just keeps his mouth shut.
He writes the material,
he arranges it, you know.
He lets me take it on the stage,
and it works out well that way.
It was like Batman and Robin, but
he was kind of the Robin guy,
kind of pushing himself
out of the spotlight.
His passport from 1968 -
he looks like a skinny leader
of a motorcycle gang
and he looks like a
motorcycle gang leader now,
only he's not mean enough.
You know, we go on this huge tour,
where we're going to England,
we're going to Germany,
we're going to Australia...
..and so we're met at the airport
by the Hells Angels
and a crowd of people and we
drove in limousines to the hotel
with a Hells Angels escort.
You know, the fixation was
on Meat and Karla.
Why? Because that's what people saw,
and so he may have felt slighted.
How do you describe
your style of music?
Let Jimmy describe
our style of music.
How do I describe my style of music?
Good, Jimmy, get right in there!
Jump on in, Jimmy.
I describe it as feverish, strong,
romantic, violent, rebellious,
fun and heroic.
But, at the time, Bat Out of Hell
took a long time
to really reach its retail legs.
The first single I don't think
did well.
You Took The Words Right Out
of My Mouth,
I don't think that kind of
made a dent in the top 40.
Radio was only interested in
programming four minute songs
and here we are with 10,
12 minute songs.
We continued to play,
we continued to tour.
We got to England.
The pressure was on
because we knew that the TV shows
were the key.
All the label people from England
were there.
It was the challenge. Again, another
challenge, another chance to show,
"No, it's not just a bunch of hype.
"No, it's not just a fat guy
and hamburger helpers. It's magic."
# Well, I remember every little thing
# As if it happened only yesterday
# Parking by the lake and there was
not another car in sight... #
It's always been... My entire career
has been beauty and the beast
when I walk on a rock 'n' roll stage.
# It never felt so good
It never felt so right... #
The Old Grey Whistle Test was energy
from the second we got there.
# Hold on tight
Hold on tight
# Oh, it's cold and it's lonely
in the deep dark night
# I can see paradise by the
dashboard light... #
Before we ever performed it live,
I turned to Jim and said,
"So, Jim, what exactly is going
to happen in here?"
And he said, "You'll figure it out
when you get out there."
# Gonna go all the way tonight
# We're gonna go all
the way tonight #
The best classes that I ever took
were in improvisational comedy
at Second City in Chicago.
# Hey, Karla, sweetheart
# Karla... #
What I learned was being in the now,
being in the moment.
Karla was Betty Boop, the way
she looked, you know,
and she was the perfect foil
for him.
# OK, here we go
# We got a real pressure cooker
going here
# Two down, nobody on
No score, bottom of the ninth... #
She was gorgeous,
she was a great singer,
and she could tolerate being mauled
by him on stage every night,
which, literally, was what happened.
# He's not letting up at all
He's going to try for second
# The ball has bobbled out
at centre... #
I came from the theatre and,
to me, it never felt weird.
We never dated, I will tell you
that. We were really professional.
# Batter steps up to the plate and
here's the pitch and he's going... #
And I did have to explain that
to my adorable mother,
"There will be this song
where I will, basically,
"be making out with this guy on
stage and it's going to be crazy."
# Pitcher glances on and winds up
# And it's butter down
the third base line
# The suicide squeezes on
# Here he comes, squeeze play
It's going to be close... #
You have to love Jim
for writing that part.
For the woman to be able
to just say...
# Stop right there
# I gotta know right now
# Before we go any further
do you love me?
# Do you love me for ever?
Do you need me?
# Will you never leave me?
# Will you make me so happy
for the rest of my life?
# Will you take me away
and will you make me your wife?
# Do you love me?
Will you love me for ever... #
She says, "Will you
love me for ever?"
# Will you never leave me?
Will you make me so happy... #
"Will you never leave me?" I mean,
it's like she wants those answers
before they go all the way, but
because it's lyrics by Jim Steinman,
he keeps going and
he doesn't just leave it off
at that passionate moment, he
tells you what happens in the end.
You know, that they really
probably didn't have
that great of a relationship.
We were inventing things.
I mean, you know, it was
always ad-libbing.
# I'm so sick of you I could spew up
# You already did, fat boy
# Oh, shut up, bitch
# It was long ago and it was far away
It never felt so good
# And it was so much better
than it is today
# Glowing like the metal
on the edge of a knife
# And it was so much better
than it is today... #
You get your moment. It is
that moment to just belt it out
and tell them like it is.
# One of these days
# Fuck you
# I
# Can't
# Take it
# Any
# More. #
And, at the very end when I put
my foot up on his back
and he's like bent over
and totally wrecked,
we really played it
to the nth degree.
Hot fun in the summertime.
That's Meat Loaf.
When we came off the road,
we were riding high.
It was a success from a
popular sense of the record.
Bat Out of Hell, by July '78, was
selling 700-800,000 copies a week.
It went from nothing to 7 million
in two and a half months.
And everybody was anticipating
the next record.
And we started recording
Bad for Good
which was supposed to be
Bat Out of Hell II,
and that was in 1979, I think,
and we got about halfway through
and then it all just fell apart.
No, there was a whisper,
whisper, whisper.
You know, Meat's having a problem.
We tried to get Meat to record some
of the scratch vocals...
..and it wasn't happening.
It was frightening.
Jim and I had, in November
and about six weeks before,
worked on Bad for Good
and I was singing fine
and then he left and went off with
somebody, we won't get into this,
I'm not going to get into that.
That really upset me
and, then, I had a nervous breakdown.
And the ultimate solution,
at least in Steinman's mind,
was to not wait for Meat,
but to sing it himself
and have Corben, the artist who did
the cover for Bat Out of Hell
and for Bad for Good, to paint his
head on top of a big He-Man body.
I just thought that was hysterical.
# You can't run away for ever
# But there's nothing wrong with
getting a good head start
# You want to shut out the night
# You want to shut down the sun
# You want to shut away the pieces
of a broken heart. #
Jim was not as good a singer
as Meat Loaf.
I mean, that was, you know...
But was Meat Loaf singing
as good as Meat Loaf? No.
Jim didn't have that presence.
# I remember everything
# I remember every little thing as
if it happened only yesterday
# I was barely 17... #
I know Jim fancied himself
as Jim Morrison
and, poetically and in terms
of his songwriting,
he was Jim Morrison.
In terms of his presence on stage,
he was not.
# And I said, Goddamn it, Daddy
# You know I love you
# But you've got a hell of a lot
to learn about rock'n'roll. #
You know, the way I would
describe it was that
Steinman was Dr Frankenstein,
Meat Loaf was the monster.
The personification of what
Steinman needed to do his songs,
because, when Steinman
put out the record
that would have been Meat Loaf's,
it was a total failure.
Meat Loaf, what kind of
a team is this?
What kind of a team is this? Yeah.
It's a team of alcoholics
we gathered up in the park.
They sort of play the game.
It's good rehabilitation for them.
No, this is a softball team.
What's going to happen
after this victory?
What? What's going to happen
after this victory?
The whole team's going to get drunk.
After the decision was made
that Bad for Good
would not be a Meat Loaf record,
it would be a Jim Steinman record,
then Jim wrote a whole new album,
Dead Ringer,
which became Meat's second record.
What's happening with
the second album?
It's almost finished. I've got
my fingers crossed for that one.
# Every night I grab some money
and I go down to the bar
# I got my buddies and a beer
I got a dream, I need a car
# You got me begging on my knees
Come on and throw the dog a bone
# A man, he doesn't live by
rock 'n' roll and brew alone
# Baby, baby
Rock 'n' roll and brew
# Rock 'n' roll and brew
# They don't mean a thing when
I compare them next to you
# Rock 'n' roll and brew
Rock 'n' roll and brew
# I know that you and I
We got better things to do
# I don't know who you are
What you do
# Where you go when you're not around
# I don't know anything
about you, baby
# But you're everything
I'm dreaming of
# I don't know who you are but you're
a real dead ringer for love... #
The whole thing about Dead Ringer
is it is like a small pop version
of all the stuff that was going on
on Bat Out of Hell.
# Ever since I can remember you've
been hanging around this joint
# You've been trying
to look away... #
It's nicely worked out because
she says this and he says this.
"Ever since I can't remember
you've been hanging around,"
"Now you've finally got the point,"
and they have the thing
and then they actually do lines
off each other.
You know, "Da-da," "Da-da,"
"Da-da-da!"
# Oh, you've got the kind of legs
that do more than walk
# I don't have to listen
to your whimpering talk
# You got the kind of eyes
that do more than see
# You've got a lot of nerve
to come on to me
# Oh, you got the kind of legs
that do more than drink
# You've got the kind of mind
that does less than think
# But since I'm feeling kind of
lonely and my defences are low
# Why don't we give it shot
and get ready to go?
# I'm looking for anonymous
and fleeting satisfaction
# I want to tell my daddy
I'll be missing in action... #
It's a three-minute pop song
with a story.
"I've been coming to this bar
for ages." "Yeah, you have."
"You're not interested." "Yeah,
maybe I am." "Oh, all right."
And then they leave together.
The end.
# Dead ringer for love
# Dead ringer for love. #
There's a guy looking at England
for his music cues sometimes.
Dead Ringer was a massive hit
single in England,
but didn't get much airplay
in the United States,
and, after Dead Ringer,
it was harder for Meat
in the United States.
Hi. I'm Meat Loaf and we're
in Miami, Florida.
Oh, stop for one second. Time!
Midnight at the Lost and Found,
Tom Dowd was brought in to, well,
maybe we needed to tone it down a
bit and get some simpler songs
and all of that stuff,
and, you know, the material
just raised his edge
and all of that, maybe good songs,
Midnight at the Lost and Found.
We've got to do it again.
It wasn't Bat Out of Hell,
it wasn't Two Out of Three,
it wasn't Paradise by the
Dashboard Light.
He should've done the Bonnie Tyler
song Total Eclipse of the Heart
which was written by Jim Steinman.
# Turn around
Every now and then
# I get a little bit lonely and
you're never coming round... #
I had Jim Steinman's songs
that we were going to do
on Midnight at the Lost and Found and
it was being produced by Tom Dowd
and CBS call up Tom Dowd and say,
"Don't record any of these songs.
We're not paying for it."
Jim Steinman produced
my latest album
and it was really exciting
working with him.
He'd worked as a songwriter
and producer with Meat Loaf,
and he's sold over 10 million
albums around the world,
so I felt really thrilled when he
said he wanted to work with me.
# Every now and then I
get a little bit lonely
# And you're never coming round...
That's it.
# Every now and then I get
a little bit tired
# Of listening to
the sound of my tears...
I know Meat would have
loved that song
and I know that Meat Loaf
always says
that he was offered that song first.
We were recording Midnight
at the Lost and Found
and all we had was stupid songs that
I write, but I hate what I write.
I can understand that Meat Loaf
might have thought,
"Oh, I could've done that song,"
you know,
but swings and roundabouts!
There it is again, you know,
I got it! Ha-ha-ha!
The superstar just became star
or less.
In Europe, he was still huge,
but, in the States, he had
burned a lot of bridges
and today's flavour was not
Meat Loaf any longer.
This is the house that Meat built,
but this placid suburban retreat
has nothing to do
with the Chicago Stock Yards because
it was built by another kind of Meat
- a 280 lbs rock'n'roll
earthquake named Meat Loaf.
David Sonenberg was Meat's manager
when I came on.
Dave was a young lawyer.
When things were falling apart,
Meat Loaf left David Sonenberg
for another manager
and David Sonenberg took Meat
to court.
He sued him for breach of contract.
Leslie, his ex-wife, and him told me
that they got a knock on the door
one day and they opened the door
and it was the sheriff.
He said, "Would you please step
out of the house?"
And they padlocked the front door.
They couldn't take a thing
out of the house
and they got in their car and drove
away and they lost everything.
He went through a two-year period
of complete and utter depression
and devastation,
and then he woke up one day
and went,
"Well, I can't record,
but I can perform."
And he got a band together
and he started performing
and going up and down the East Coast
in little bars
and, you know, he was this huge star
and, all of a sudden,
there he is, playing
in some blues bar.
No-one of my generation cared
or knew
or, you know, like, my dad
was some fossil from the '70s
for all the kids I went
to school with cared.
And then, in the late 1980s, Meat
and Jim started being in touch again
and I think enough time had passed.
I think enough time had passed.
He came out to my house, '89 or '90,
came out to the house and played me
I'd Do Anything for Love
and he hadn't finished it.
He goes, "I'm not finished.
"It's a duet and
the girl comes in here."
I'm going, "Well, so far,
it's great, Jimmy."
His management and his
record company and Jim and me
saw lightning in a bottle if the
two of them could get together again
and make one more album.
There is a possibility that
lightning would strike again
and it did.
And the song comes in...
I'm walking. Tell them I'm walking.
..that just blows everybody away.
People are calling this a comeback.
Do you consider this a comeback?
No, I never went anywhere.
It winds up charting 11 weeks at
number one on the Billboard chart,
the Billboard singles charts.
The album, I think, was nine weeks
at number one.
# And I would do anything for love
# I'd run right up to hell
and back...
That song has act one, act two...
# I would do anything for love...
..intermission, act three, act four,
and then I get the finale.
# No, I won't do that
# Would you raise me up?
Would you help me down...
And the girl who was supposed
to sing it was Ellen Foley,
I believe, and they said,
"Will you go in there and
sing that with Meat Loaf?"
"Are you kidding me? Me?"
When Lorraine sang it,
she owned it.
# Will you cater to
every fantasy I got?
# Will you hose me down with
holy water if I get too hot...
The part I regret is not
being in the video.
Gorgeous looking model,
but, as soon as my voice came out,
it made everybody think
that she was singing.
# I know the territory
I've been around
# It'll all turn to dust
and we'll all fall down...
But Meat Loaf and Jim
had been so kind to me
and I was on a number one record.
Why are you going to bite
the hand that feeds you
when they've given you
a great opportunity?
# No, I won't do that. #
And then this came from Bob.
How many movies have you been in?
I have been in 59 films.
CROWD CHEERS
Sh! Don't applaud!
27 of them suck.
So, after Bat Out of Hell II,
Meat Loaf kind of spent more and
more time doing screen acting
and he appears in a number of movies
until, finally, towards
the end of the '90s,
he has a very significant role
in Fight Club.
And this is how I met
the big moosy.
His eyes already shrink-wrapped
in tears.
Knees together,
those awkward little steps.
My name is Bob. Bob.
At which point, everyone, weirdly,
sits up and goes,
"Wow, Meat Loaf is a really
decent actor. Who knew?"
It's me. Bob.
Hey, Bob.
What Fight Club is about is men
secretly getting together
and beating each other up,
but, actually, it's about men
idolising other men.
Wow.
First rule is - I'm not supposed
to talk about it.
And the second rule is -
I'm not supposed to talk about it.
And the third rule is...
Bob, Bob, I'm a member.
When, you know, I'm talking about
Fight Club with someone, I'm like...
Everybody goes, "You were on set
on Fight Club?"
"Why were you on set on Fight Club?
Who did you know on Fight Club?"
I'm like, "My dad."
And everyone goes, "Oh, yeah!"
Meat Loaf's character,
he's a character
who is having a crisis of maleness.
He's a character whose body seems
to be not male enough for him.
We're still men.
Yes, we're men.
Men is what we are.
He's fragile and feminised and
anxious and undercut and worried,
which is all the things that he
never, ever was in his music.
OK. You cry now.
In recent years, Meat Loaf
has continued his journey.
He's actually, through his
sheer force of nature,
created this melting pot
demographic.
He had a big platinum album called
Welcome to the Neighbourhood,
and then you have
Hang Cool Teddy Bear,
and the interesting thing
about that record is
it sort of steers Meat Loaf
into a new Hollywood
where guys like Jack Black meet
the traditional guitarists
like Brian May of Queen.
And then there was a big top 10
hit in 2006,
It's All Coming Back to Me Now.
A duet with Marion Raven.
# If you forgive me all this
Forgive me all this
# If I forgive you all that
Forgive you all that
# We forgive and forget
# And it's all coming back
to me now...
That song was huge in Norway,
obviously.
Marion Raven's from Norway.
Huge hit in Europe.
He constantly is a presence.
# It's all coming back to me now. #
He's been here for nearly 40 years.
You're still getting Meat Loaf
and those platinum albums
and he's been there for
a third of a century.
I don't think anybody foresaw that.
The Apartment
by Duncan Lamont
If you were to see Meat Loaf
in the afternoon,
you would kind of wonder,
"Who's this guy?"
We'll get into, like, a warm-up,
maybe an hour out of the show,
and it's like this thing comes
in the room, you know,
and it's like,
"Holy shit. It's Meat Loaf."
What are we going to do? ALL: Kill!
What do we need to do? ALL: Kill!
What do we always do? ALL: Kill!
What do big dogs do? Kill!
At the moment, he has hairline
fractures in his foot.
He limps because of it and
he also had a knee replacement
where they had to remove some bone
and put rods in,
and he's on stage every night,
so that gives you an idea
of how tough he is,
and that was driven in to him
in Texas when he was a boy.
You know, playing football
and by his father.
There are eight Jim Steinman songs
on the new record
and there hasn't been that much
of an involvement with Jim
since '92 on Bat II.
In fact, I'm doing one of the songs
which was meant to go
on Bat Out of Hell
and Todd threw off of
Bat Out of Hell.
It's called Who Needs the Young?
What he sings is...
I call it rock'n'roll opera.
The songs, in and of themselves,
are so difficult for a singer.
I don't want to say it's impossible,
but it's difficult.
# Just can't seem to make it tell...
But, to his credit...
# You took the words right
out of my mouth. #
Meat Loaf has an ability to work an
audience like no-one I've ever seen.
You took the words right
out of my mouth!
Must have been when
you were kissing me!
No!
His ability to entertain and capture
and hold an audience is still there.
He loves his fanbase like I've never
seen anybody love a fanbase before.
He cares about everything.
Hi, my name is Parker.
Hi, Parker. How are you?
I...
It's OK, honey.
Your music kept me alive.
Well, hey, I think my music's
kept me alive too.
It's not about Meat Loaf, it's about
him wanting to perform for his fans.
Once he was accepted,
it's sort of like the
fat kid finds love
and that will be such a loyal love
for the rest of his life.
I never thought I would meet you.
Never.
Well, there's no need
to cry, darling.
But it was you that kept yourself
alive, because you wanted to be here.
Oh, boy. See, so fate brought us
together. There you go.
It was a fabulous concert.
Well, thank you very much.
For an old man, I go for it.
For an old lady, I liked it.
The audience is always the
most important thing to me.
I'm going to fucking cry here.
Because I live for these people who
spend their money on these seats...
..and they mean more to me
than I do to myself.
I...
..I don't mean anything.
They do.
This programme contains
some strong language from the start
"Paradise By The
Dashboard Light" by Meat Loaf
# Well, it was long ago
and it was far away
# And it was so much better
than it is today
# It was long ago and it was far away
# Never felt so good
# And it was so much better
than it is today
It never felt so right
# Glowing like the metal
on the edge of a knife... #
MUSIC FADES
WIND WHISTLES
So, when people came in, uh,
they were asked to fill out some
cards with some questions on 'em.
The first question is this.
When you close your eyes,
and I guess that means
when I close my eyes to sing,
how old am I?
SCATTERED LAUGHS
I am as old as the person is
in that song.
WHOOPING AND APPLAUSE
And the reason I say that to you
is because
I don't listen to myself sing.
I have absolutely no fucking idea
what I'm doing.
LAUGHTER
Paradise...
I'm 17.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
"I Got Texas In My Soul"
by Tex Williams
# Dallas, Fort Worth, San Angelo
# Houston, Austin or El Paso
# I gotta go
Gotta go!
# I got Texas in my soul... #
This here was, uh,
Meat Loaf's house back in the, uh,
late '50s, early '60s,
where he grew up in Dallas.
I grew up down the road
about five blocks,
and, uh, we were best friends
during high school.
His mom was a schoolteacher.
He was an only child.
They were very close.
But, uh, Meat Loaf's house
wasn't like a place you'd come
and Mom would fix milk and cookies
and you'd sit down, and...
You know, you would come,
you would get the car and go,
and, uh, you'd avoid his dad
and say hi to Mom
and move ahead.
Growing up in that era in Texas,
which was, erm,
much different than, let's say,
California or New York.
It was not a place where you
wanted to be a rebel.
My father was an alcoholic,
and he would always, uh,
beat me up as a kid.
Threw me through a plate glass
window, threw me through a door...
Put, you know...
Put me where I had to go to
the hospital
and get stitches in my head
several times.
Meat grew up in Dallas, Texas,
and, erm, it's a
good old boy hometown place,
and a lot of people kind of made
fun of him,
cos he was the fat kid,
and, uh, he had to get through that.
One of the stories he used to tell
was that's how he got his name,
Meat Loaf, cos he had his
initials on his locker, ML,
and ML stood for Marvin Lee, cos
that was his name, Marvin Lee Aday.
This is where Meat Loaf
got his name, right here.
He was playing defensive line,
it was, uh, the coach was lining up
behind him, uh, to show him how to
properly stand in his position.
Coaches, you know,
they're all Neanderthals,
but it wasn't really enlightened
coaching.
Uh, the caveman technique.
Meat stood up to ask a question,
but when he did he turned around
and he happened to step on
that coach's foot.
The first thing out of the
coach's mouth was,
"You meat loaf son of a gun!"
And that's where his name evolved.
We all knew him as ML, but from that
day on everybody called him Meat.
How big was he when he was a kid?
Jesus, he was bigger than
three people, you know?
I mean, his thighs were
bigger than I was.
He was a rather large individual,
uh, but he was very ambitious,
he liked to do things,
he was very music inclined through
going through high school.
I think he was in the choir,
along with playing sports.
Yeah, you're right.
I think he even was in a bunch of
musicals that we had. But, er...
He came out of the box with a lot of
presence and a lot of, uh,
a lot of centre stage ability
that was just natural.
I think with a lot of great artists
there is a sadness,
there is a...
they have vulnerability.
Meat would talk about his mom.
You know...
..and I saw pictures of her.
They were kind of similar,
and I think she was his...
she was his haven, you know,
his safe place.
And then she passed away
and I don't think he kind of
ever recovered from that.
His father was a troubled man.
He had, you know,
a disease, alcoholism,
and he lost his wife
very early in life,
and, of course,
Meat lost his mother.
And when she was gone
it became violent.
In a scary way.
See this, uh,
gentleman right here?
Uh, that's my dad.
His name was Orvis.
Unbelievable.
HE GASPS EXASPERATEDLY
Orvis!
That's actually worse than Meat.
'He came home drunk and tried to
kill me with a butcher knife.'
And that particular day, erm,
because I was fighting for my life,
I actually...
They told me
I put him in the hospital.
And I left home with
a pair of, erm...
A T-shirt, barefooted, and a pair of,
erm, shorts from the football team
that I played in high school with,
and went to my best friend's house
in Dallas named Billy Slocum.
Things in Dallas were bad.
He was 20,
and he...
Like he sometimes does,
he just decided to disappear.
"Walk On The Wild Side"
by Lou Reed
And I went to the airport
and whatever plane was leaving,
wherever it was going,
it could have been going to Omaha,
that's where I was going.
And the next plane was going to LA.
When I got there I couldn't figure
out what the hell I was doing there.
Finally a taxi pulled up and says
to me, "You want to go somewhere?"
I went, "Yeah, take me to the..."
"..Whisky a Go Go."
He goes, "OK." So I...
..got out of the car, and it was...
It was like a Fellini movie.
It was the most bizarre...
I mean, people, long hair,
guys with Afros this big that
when they were walking in the street
were blowing like this. I've got...
And they used to call me
Hair God in Texas,
because my hair would
hang over my ears.
Then he started putting bands
together because, erm,
you know, in Texas he had sung
pretty much gospel stuff.
So, it was the late '60s.
While he was pursuing, erm,
his rock 'n' roll dream, Meat was
doing odd jobs in LA, and one of
them was parking cars at a theatre.
And this guy pulls up
and gets out of the car,
and he goes,
"What are you doing?"
He's like, "What do you mean?"
He goes, "Are you auditioning?"
He goes, "No, I'm..." as Meat would,
"No, I'm parking cars!"
The guy went,
"Do you want to audition?"
He goes, "What is it?"
He goes, "It's a show,
it's a musical. Can you sing?"
He goes, "Yeah, I can sing."
He goes, "Well, come with me."
He goes, "What about
all these people?"
He goes, "Don't worry about them."
And, bam, he was in Hair.
He wanted rock 'n' roll so badly,
but if you were in Hair,
it was a big, big thing,
because people were using it
as a springboard to other stage
plays, record deals and movies.
Motown came to me and said, "We'd
like to sign you to a contract,"
and I said, "OK."
And they said,
"We'd like you to it as a duet."
When Meat was doing Hair,
he hooked up with
a woman named Stoney,
and they put together an act,
Stoney and Meat Loaf,
and they got signed to
Motown Records,
so that was really his first
foray into actual recording.
# Ain't no hidden treasure
# In this pot of gold, you see
# Ain't no way for you to make
# No silky purse out of me
# I'm never, ever going to
change your ways
# I'll take you as you are... #
But music was getting a little
harder rock at that point,
by the time we'd gotten to
the early '70s, so, uh,
it wasn't something that made
his career catapult.
Tim Curry, thank you for
coming along and talking to us.
Thank you very much.
The Rocky Horror Show opened in
the Royal Court in June 1973,
and has now moved to the King's Road.
There were radio reports
and TV coverage of something that
had been put together in England.
And maybe it was the
logical extension of Hair,
and that Tim Curry was
going to be in a new play, wow!
They asked me to audition for
the Rocky Horror Show,
and I knew Richard O'Brien,
who wrote everything -
the book, the music and lyrics -
vaguely, because we'd both been
in Hair.
He'd been in the touring company,
I'd been playing it in London,
and, erm, so he knew of me,
and, er, I just went and auditioned
and sang, er, Tutti Frutti by
Little Richard.
The Rocky Horror Show in
Los Angeles opened in early '74.
The English part of the
production came over and, er,
we started casting at that point.
Jim Sharman, the director,
brought up Meat Loaf,
and he was positive
that he wanted him for Eddie,
both from size and from his voice.
He wanted a combination of
theatrical and rock.
So they hired all the cast,
and we were just learning the songs.
Meat is basically
a Texas boy, you know,
and this was as far from Texas
as you could possibly get.
And the two back doors open...
..and Tim Curry comes in
in full make-up, that hair blown up,
wearing that leather jacket,
fish-net stockings with a
garter belt and high heels,
and starts singing
I'm A Sweet Transvestite.
# I'm just a sweet transvestite
# From transsexual Transylvania... #
Well, this southern boy
gets up and goes,
"No fucking way!"
And I leave.
I think it was beyond
the edge of Dallas, you know.
I mean, this was an edge that was
beyond anything in theatre.
And they lived that lifestyle.
And they're going, "No, you don't
understand. It's a comedy."
Eddie is basically the first love
and first experiment of
Frank-N-Furter.
So essentially what happens is that
Frank-N-Furter is addressing
the assembled Transylvanians,
and suddenly Eddie, Meat Loaf,
breaks out of this vault
and has his one big number.
# Woo!
# Whatever happened to
Saturday night
# When you dressed up sharp
and you felt all right?
# It don't seem the same
since cosmic light
# Came into my life... #
He comes out of the vault
with this Frankenstein scar
across his head, and he sings
Whatever Happened To Saturday Night?
# Hot Patootie, bless my soul
# I really love that rock 'n' roll
# Hot Patootie, bless my soul
# I really love that rock 'n' roll
# Hot Patootie, bless my soul
# I really love that... #
Meat Loaf's entire role in that film
was to be the embodiment of
the '50s rock 'n' roll dream -
everything was fabulous,
you dressed all right,
you get the girl on your bike
and you sha-la-la-la,
all that stuff.
# Hot Patootie, bless my soul
# I really love
that rock 'n' roll... #
And he basically drives all the way
around the balcony, which is where
all the assembled Transylvanians
are, knocking everybody off,
scaring everybody, and in the end,
he's chased back into the vault by
Frank-N-Furter, who goes in
after him with an axe...
..and then he comes out, the axe is
all bloodied and he says...
One from the vaults.
Although it's basically one song,
going from the Roxy to
Broadway to the movie,
he took it as a starring part.
Meat Loaf really
happened off of that.
Around this time in New York,
Meat Loaf met Jim Steinman,
an amazing songwriter,
and, uh, as an artist,
as a vocalist who does not
write their own material, to find
that songwriter and composer that
really wants to write for you
and is inspired to write for you,
it's just, like, spectacular!
Jim was just out of college
and had written the music for a show
called More Than You Deserve,
which was down at the
public theatre at the time.
And I walked into the audition,
and there was only one person there.
And it was Steinman.
Jim envisioned himself as this
svengali - eccentric,
demanding, very talented,
and always said that his music was
kind of a combination of Wagner
and Little Richard,
and, erm, Meat and Jim would put
together shows in New York.
Jim's songs were
a little over-the-top,
they weren't your normal song.
Is the guy a little bit
left of centre?
Always was.
Always was a little weird.
In fact, the show used to
start with him taking off these
hockey gloves and banging on the
piano and all of that, and...
"On a hot summer night,
"would you offer your throat to
the wolf with the red rose?!"
On a hot summer night,
would you offer your throat
to the wolf with the red roses?
Yes.
I bet you say that to all the boys.
He didn't really start writing for
Bat Out Of Hell until,
er, late '74.
I said, "We need a pop song." And
he started writing Took The Words.
That was the first one.
Once most of the songs were written,
we went out and started
auditioning for record companies to
try to get a record deal.
People thought we were crazy
but we couldn't demo them.
Er, we would go and sing live.
We would, you know,
just give our souls to it,
and the people would be,
you know, a few feet away,
and Meat Loaf would sweat on them,
and they would get his spit on them
cos they were that close,
and, you know, most people
thought it was pretty scary.
I remember one guy
sort of running out in fear
because he thought that something
bad was going to happen to him.
We'd wander in and
they'd throw us right out.
Everybody said the same thing,
about, uh, all the stuff
I had been doing for years,
they said it was too dramatic,
too theatrical,
too explicitly sexual,
a little too violent.
They had been turned down by every
single record company in existence.
Nobody wanted to touch... They were
kicked out of Clive Davis's office,
they were told, "This music is
crap," you know, "Go get a day job."
It was Clive's comments about Jimmy,
"Do you know anything about
rock 'n' roll?
"Do you ever listen to
rock 'n' roll?
"You know, it's A-B-C, B-C,
verse, bridge, chorus,
"verse, bridge, chorus,
that's rock 'n' roll.
"And I don't know what you're doing,
you're doing A-B-Z-D-G-F-B!"
And then he calls me Ethel Merman.
As they were doing these shows,
auditions for record companies in
New York, erm, they caught the eye
and caught the ear of Todd Rundgren.
I didn't have the same reaction,
I guess, that most other
producers had,
which is, you know,
"Where's the single?"
Or, "This guy is kind of hideous,"
you know, "How are we going to
make a star out of him?"
And, uh, fortunately,
I had a relationship with
Bearsville Records that allowed me
to use all of the facilities.
He kind of took it and melded it
and moulded it into Bat Out Of Hell.
Steinman wanted this kind of frantic
sort of intro to the whole thing,
uh, that centred around this
very busy sort of piano riff.
Jim was used to listening to operas
that were several hours long, so,
to him, building up a three-minute
intro to a song seemed economical.
The opening track goes on for, like,
whatever it is, seven, eight,
nine minutes,
and that Bat Out Of Hell track
itself plays out like a great big
long overblown retro opera in
the manner of something like
Bohemian Rhapsody.
# The sirens are screaming
and the fires are howling
# Way down in the valley tonight
# There's a man in the shadows
with a gun in his eye
# And a blade shining
oh so bright... #
The lyrics of Bat Out Of Hell
really told a story,
this vision that was in Jim's mind.
When you have a song that says...
# Oh, and down in the tunnel
where the deadly are rising
# Oh, I swear I saw a young boy
down in the gutter
# He was starting to
foam in the heat... #
I mean, it's like...
It's quite a vision,
and that sets up I think the
entire vision for the record.
# Oh, baby, you're the only thing
in this whole world
# That's pure and good and right... #
Uh, this dystopian world
filled with teenage angst
and then turning to the girl
and going,
"Baby, you're the only thing
in this whole world
"that's good and pure and right."
It's just very romantic.
# So we've gotta make the most of
our one night together... #
And then to get to the point
where he, you know,
"Like a bat out of hell I'll be
gone when the morning comes,"
when he's on that motorcycle
and he's just taking off...!
# Like a bat out of hell
I'll be gone when the morning comes
# When the night is over
Like a bat out of hell
# I'll be gone, gone, gone
# Like a bat out of hell
I'll be gone when the morning comes
# But when the day is done
and the sun goes down
# And the moonlight's shining through
# Then like a sinner
before the gates of Heaven
# I'll come crawling on
back to you... #
It has resonated all these years.
This is a long time for one album
to have that kind of meaning.
It's, you know,
it's just really kick-ass!
And we were working on
Bat Out Of Hell,
I got to the end of the first chorus,
and I said, "Where's the rest of it?"
And he looked at me, he goes,
"What do you mean?"
I go, "Well, you've got me into this
story, I gotta finish my story."
Here's this guy
and he's on this motorcycle,
it's a larger than life creature.
It's actually,
it's got a crash in it, you know,
cos he goes faster than
any other boy has ever gone.
He rides it, you know,
into his death,
into the huge romance
that is rock 'n' roll.
# Oh, I can see myself
tearing up the road
# Faster than any other boy
has ever gone
# And my skin is raw
but my soul is ripe
# And no-one's going to stop me now
I'm going to make my escape
# But I can't stop thinking of you
# And I never see the sudden curve
till it's way too late. #
There are three moments in
Bat Out Of Hell, the title track,
when you think the song's finished,
and then it starts again!
# Then I'm dying at the bottom
of a pit in the blazing sun... #
Then I got him to repeat, "Then
I'm dying at the bottom of a pit,"
shooting up the octave, and changing
the chords and changing the words.
# Then I'm dying at the bottom
of a pit in the blazing sun
# Torn and twisted at the foot
of a burning bike... #
The senseless death, the...!
HE LAUGHS
And yet the redemption at the end,
uh, of the heart breaking
out of his chest and flying
away like a bat out of hell.
# And the last thing I see
is my heart
# Still beating
# Still beating
# Breaking out of my body
and flying away
# Like a bat out of hell
# Oh, like a bat out of hell...
And when you hear Meat Loaf
just pounding out those last,
"Like a bat out of hell," just
giving everything in his soul.
# Oh, like a bat out of hell. #
Meat Loaf and Steinman
always visualise things
in these theatrical terms
and Bat Out of Hell is almost
a little movie in itself.
The way that I think the album
is sequenced,
each song tells a story
and somehow the songs
are wound together
in this kind of play.
The first song is Bat Out of Hell
and it starts, probably,
at the end of somebody's life
and I think the rest of the record
is like a sort of a fevered dream
of this person who's dying
and then we see, sort of, him
remembering everything in the past.
# Baby, you took the words
right out my mouth
# Oh, must have been
while you were kissing me. #
And then it goes back and it sort of
tells about how he met this girl,
how a romance starts and how
beautiful it is and how hot it is.
And then, if you want to see it
as a progress,
you get Two Out of Three Ain't Bad,
"I want you, I need you,
"but there ain't no way
I'm ever gonna love you."
# See, I want you
I want you
# I need you
I need you
# But there ain't no way
I'm ever gonna love you
# Now don't be sad
# Don't be sad
# Because two out
of three ain't bad. #
You have the long,
involved narrative
of Paradise by the Dashboard Light.
# Well, I remember
every little thing
# As if it happened only yesterday
# Parking by the lake and there was
not another car in sight... #
This guy asks this girl up
to the lovers' lane
and they start to make out.
# We're gonna go all the way tonight
# We're gonna go all the way tonight,
tonight
# We're gonna go all
the way tonight...
And, you know, he wanted to go
all the way
and she says, "Stop Right there!"
# I gotta know right now
# Before we go any further
do you love me...
He's like, "Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, you know, anything.
"I'll do it because
I want to get laid,"
and then you go into the future.
# So now I'm praying for
the end of time
# To hurry up and arrive
# Because if I've got to spend
another minute with you
# I don't think that I can really
survive... #
And then they're both praying
for the end of time
because, you know, they're not going
to split up until death,
so they're both eagerly
awaiting death.
These songs that you just go, "Wow."
To sing that... You cannot sing any
of those songs without feeling it.
That's why that album works.
That's why that album is
still today just...
It's iconic.
# And it was so much better
than it is today
# It was long ago and it was far away
# It felt so good and
it just felt so right
# And we were glowing like the metal
on the edge of a knife. #
Round about '76, '77,
punk kicks off,
and the whole ethic of punk
is you're no longer having
all that epic, pompous,
overblown stuff.
Everybody's doing everything
very sort of lo-fi,
and, when Bat Out of Hell came out,
firstly, it had this cover which
was basically what looked like
a piece of comic strip art.
Everything was very
sort of overblown.
Anything that was sort of big
and pompous and rocky
was not the kind of thing
that you liked.
You know, it was kind of campy
and I think that's what helped
make the songs unique.
At that time, there was no-one
close to writing stuff like that
and presenting it to an audience.
So, in the summer of '77,
the album is done, it's packaged
and we get ready to go out on tour.
I think that there is probably
an air of mystery
and, of course, drama, around
the fact of, you know,
Ellen Foley did the record,
but she's not on tour.
Ellen and Meat had had a falling
out. I got a call from Jim,
when they said they needed someone
to be the girl in the band.
First gig is Chicago,
opening for Cheap Trick.
And out comes the band with Steinman
in his gloves, banging on the piano.
The audience was enraged right
from the beginning
and then Meat Loaf comes out
and they're like,
"This huge guy in a tuxedo?
"What is that?"
And the first three rows
pretty much stood up
and started screaming
"Get off the stage you fat fuck!"
It was a slow growth album but
the band went on the road a lot.
They kept going out
and working the same album.
This is Susan Blond back with you
after quite a long absence,
and this is a really exciting
interview that we're going to have,
we hope. This is Meat Loaf
and this is Jim Steinman,
the guy who writes all the songs.
First time, I had sensed that
there was some tension
between Meat and Jim Steinman was
on a drive back from Woodstock,
and a discussion started,
"Well what's the album going
to be called?"
The cover of the record was
"Meat Loaf!" "Jim Steinman."
That was difficult for Jim
because I think that, in Jim's mind,
he had just as much, if not more, to
do with the success of the record.
I, to this day,
completely understand it.
He thought that he would get as
much recognition as I would.
And if you saw pictures of him
and Steinman together,
Steinman is kind of
wincing and hiding.
He just keeps his mouth shut.
He writes the material,
he arranges it, you know.
He lets me take it on the stage,
and it works out well that way.
It was like Batman and Robin, but
he was kind of the Robin guy,
kind of pushing himself
out of the spotlight.
His passport from 1968 -
he looks like a skinny leader
of a motorcycle gang
and he looks like a
motorcycle gang leader now,
only he's not mean enough.
You know, we go on this huge tour,
where we're going to England,
we're going to Germany,
we're going to Australia...
..and so we're met at the airport
by the Hells Angels
and a crowd of people and we
drove in limousines to the hotel
with a Hells Angels escort.
You know, the fixation was
on Meat and Karla.
Why? Because that's what people saw,
and so he may have felt slighted.
How do you describe
your style of music?
Let Jimmy describe
our style of music.
How do I describe my style of music?
Good, Jimmy, get right in there!
Jump on in, Jimmy.
I describe it as feverish, strong,
romantic, violent, rebellious,
fun and heroic.
But, at the time, Bat Out of Hell
took a long time
to really reach its retail legs.
The first single I don't think
did well.
You Took The Words Right Out
of My Mouth,
I don't think that kind of
made a dent in the top 40.
Radio was only interested in
programming four minute songs
and here we are with 10,
12 minute songs.
We continued to play,
we continued to tour.
We got to England.
The pressure was on
because we knew that the TV shows
were the key.
All the label people from England
were there.
It was the challenge. Again, another
challenge, another chance to show,
"No, it's not just a bunch of hype.
"No, it's not just a fat guy
and hamburger helpers. It's magic."
# Well, I remember every little thing
# As if it happened only yesterday
# Parking by the lake and there was
not another car in sight... #
It's always been... My entire career
has been beauty and the beast
when I walk on a rock 'n' roll stage.
# It never felt so good
It never felt so right... #
The Old Grey Whistle Test was energy
from the second we got there.
# Hold on tight
Hold on tight
# Oh, it's cold and it's lonely
in the deep dark night
# I can see paradise by the
dashboard light... #
Before we ever performed it live,
I turned to Jim and said,
"So, Jim, what exactly is going
to happen in here?"
And he said, "You'll figure it out
when you get out there."
# Gonna go all the way tonight
# We're gonna go all
the way tonight #
The best classes that I ever took
were in improvisational comedy
at Second City in Chicago.
# Hey, Karla, sweetheart
# Karla... #
What I learned was being in the now,
being in the moment.
Karla was Betty Boop, the way
she looked, you know,
and she was the perfect foil
for him.
# OK, here we go
# We got a real pressure cooker
going here
# Two down, nobody on
No score, bottom of the ninth... #
She was gorgeous,
she was a great singer,
and she could tolerate being mauled
by him on stage every night,
which, literally, was what happened.
# He's not letting up at all
He's going to try for second
# The ball has bobbled out
at centre... #
I came from the theatre and,
to me, it never felt weird.
We never dated, I will tell you
that. We were really professional.
# Batter steps up to the plate and
here's the pitch and he's going... #
And I did have to explain that
to my adorable mother,
"There will be this song
where I will, basically,
"be making out with this guy on
stage and it's going to be crazy."
# Pitcher glances on and winds up
# And it's butter down
the third base line
# The suicide squeezes on
# Here he comes, squeeze play
It's going to be close... #
You have to love Jim
for writing that part.
For the woman to be able
to just say...
# Stop right there
# I gotta know right now
# Before we go any further
do you love me?
# Do you love me for ever?
Do you need me?
# Will you never leave me?
# Will you make me so happy
for the rest of my life?
# Will you take me away
and will you make me your wife?
# Do you love me?
Will you love me for ever... #
She says, "Will you
love me for ever?"
# Will you never leave me?
Will you make me so happy... #
"Will you never leave me?" I mean,
it's like she wants those answers
before they go all the way, but
because it's lyrics by Jim Steinman,
he keeps going and
he doesn't just leave it off
at that passionate moment, he
tells you what happens in the end.
You know, that they really
probably didn't have
that great of a relationship.
We were inventing things.
I mean, you know, it was
always ad-libbing.
# I'm so sick of you I could spew up
# You already did, fat boy
# Oh, shut up, bitch
# It was long ago and it was far away
It never felt so good
# And it was so much better
than it is today
# Glowing like the metal
on the edge of a knife
# And it was so much better
than it is today... #
You get your moment. It is
that moment to just belt it out
and tell them like it is.
# One of these days
# Fuck you
# I
# Can't
# Take it
# Any
# More. #
And, at the very end when I put
my foot up on his back
and he's like bent over
and totally wrecked,
we really played it
to the nth degree.
Hot fun in the summertime.
That's Meat Loaf.
When we came off the road,
we were riding high.
It was a success from a
popular sense of the record.
Bat Out of Hell, by July '78, was
selling 700-800,000 copies a week.
It went from nothing to 7 million
in two and a half months.
And everybody was anticipating
the next record.
And we started recording
Bad for Good
which was supposed to be
Bat Out of Hell II,
and that was in 1979, I think,
and we got about halfway through
and then it all just fell apart.
No, there was a whisper,
whisper, whisper.
You know, Meat's having a problem.
We tried to get Meat to record some
of the scratch vocals...
..and it wasn't happening.
It was frightening.
Jim and I had, in November
and about six weeks before,
worked on Bad for Good
and I was singing fine
and then he left and went off with
somebody, we won't get into this,
I'm not going to get into that.
That really upset me
and, then, I had a nervous breakdown.
And the ultimate solution,
at least in Steinman's mind,
was to not wait for Meat,
but to sing it himself
and have Corben, the artist who did
the cover for Bat Out of Hell
and for Bad for Good, to paint his
head on top of a big He-Man body.
I just thought that was hysterical.
# You can't run away for ever
# But there's nothing wrong with
getting a good head start
# You want to shut out the night
# You want to shut down the sun
# You want to shut away the pieces
of a broken heart. #
Jim was not as good a singer
as Meat Loaf.
I mean, that was, you know...
But was Meat Loaf singing
as good as Meat Loaf? No.
Jim didn't have that presence.
# I remember everything
# I remember every little thing as
if it happened only yesterday
# I was barely 17... #
I know Jim fancied himself
as Jim Morrison
and, poetically and in terms
of his songwriting,
he was Jim Morrison.
In terms of his presence on stage,
he was not.
# And I said, Goddamn it, Daddy
# You know I love you
# But you've got a hell of a lot
to learn about rock'n'roll. #
You know, the way I would
describe it was that
Steinman was Dr Frankenstein,
Meat Loaf was the monster.
The personification of what
Steinman needed to do his songs,
because, when Steinman
put out the record
that would have been Meat Loaf's,
it was a total failure.
Meat Loaf, what kind of
a team is this?
What kind of a team is this? Yeah.
It's a team of alcoholics
we gathered up in the park.
They sort of play the game.
It's good rehabilitation for them.
No, this is a softball team.
What's going to happen
after this victory?
What? What's going to happen
after this victory?
The whole team's going to get drunk.
After the decision was made
that Bad for Good
would not be a Meat Loaf record,
it would be a Jim Steinman record,
then Jim wrote a whole new album,
Dead Ringer,
which became Meat's second record.
What's happening with
the second album?
It's almost finished. I've got
my fingers crossed for that one.
# Every night I grab some money
and I go down to the bar
# I got my buddies and a beer
I got a dream, I need a car
# You got me begging on my knees
Come on and throw the dog a bone
# A man, he doesn't live by
rock 'n' roll and brew alone
# Baby, baby
Rock 'n' roll and brew
# Rock 'n' roll and brew
# They don't mean a thing when
I compare them next to you
# Rock 'n' roll and brew
Rock 'n' roll and brew
# I know that you and I
We got better things to do
# I don't know who you are
What you do
# Where you go when you're not around
# I don't know anything
about you, baby
# But you're everything
I'm dreaming of
# I don't know who you are but you're
a real dead ringer for love... #
The whole thing about Dead Ringer
is it is like a small pop version
of all the stuff that was going on
on Bat Out of Hell.
# Ever since I can remember you've
been hanging around this joint
# You've been trying
to look away... #
It's nicely worked out because
she says this and he says this.
"Ever since I can't remember
you've been hanging around,"
"Now you've finally got the point,"
and they have the thing
and then they actually do lines
off each other.
You know, "Da-da," "Da-da,"
"Da-da-da!"
# Oh, you've got the kind of legs
that do more than walk
# I don't have to listen
to your whimpering talk
# You got the kind of eyes
that do more than see
# You've got a lot of nerve
to come on to me
# Oh, you got the kind of legs
that do more than drink
# You've got the kind of mind
that does less than think
# But since I'm feeling kind of
lonely and my defences are low
# Why don't we give it shot
and get ready to go?
# I'm looking for anonymous
and fleeting satisfaction
# I want to tell my daddy
I'll be missing in action... #
It's a three-minute pop song
with a story.
"I've been coming to this bar
for ages." "Yeah, you have."
"You're not interested." "Yeah,
maybe I am." "Oh, all right."
And then they leave together.
The end.
# Dead ringer for love
# Dead ringer for love. #
There's a guy looking at England
for his music cues sometimes.
Dead Ringer was a massive hit
single in England,
but didn't get much airplay
in the United States,
and, after Dead Ringer,
it was harder for Meat
in the United States.
Hi. I'm Meat Loaf and we're
in Miami, Florida.
Oh, stop for one second. Time!
Midnight at the Lost and Found,
Tom Dowd was brought in to, well,
maybe we needed to tone it down a
bit and get some simpler songs
and all of that stuff,
and, you know, the material
just raised his edge
and all of that, maybe good songs,
Midnight at the Lost and Found.
We've got to do it again.
It wasn't Bat Out of Hell,
it wasn't Two Out of Three,
it wasn't Paradise by the
Dashboard Light.
He should've done the Bonnie Tyler
song Total Eclipse of the Heart
which was written by Jim Steinman.
# Turn around
Every now and then
# I get a little bit lonely and
you're never coming round... #
I had Jim Steinman's songs
that we were going to do
on Midnight at the Lost and Found and
it was being produced by Tom Dowd
and CBS call up Tom Dowd and say,
"Don't record any of these songs.
We're not paying for it."
Jim Steinman produced
my latest album
and it was really exciting
working with him.
He'd worked as a songwriter
and producer with Meat Loaf,
and he's sold over 10 million
albums around the world,
so I felt really thrilled when he
said he wanted to work with me.
# Every now and then I
get a little bit lonely
# And you're never coming round...
That's it.
# Every now and then I get
a little bit tired
# Of listening to
the sound of my tears...
I know Meat would have
loved that song
and I know that Meat Loaf
always says
that he was offered that song first.
We were recording Midnight
at the Lost and Found
and all we had was stupid songs that
I write, but I hate what I write.
I can understand that Meat Loaf
might have thought,
"Oh, I could've done that song,"
you know,
but swings and roundabouts!
There it is again, you know,
I got it! Ha-ha-ha!
The superstar just became star
or less.
In Europe, he was still huge,
but, in the States, he had
burned a lot of bridges
and today's flavour was not
Meat Loaf any longer.
This is the house that Meat built,
but this placid suburban retreat
has nothing to do
with the Chicago Stock Yards because
it was built by another kind of Meat
- a 280 lbs rock'n'roll
earthquake named Meat Loaf.
David Sonenberg was Meat's manager
when I came on.
Dave was a young lawyer.
When things were falling apart,
Meat Loaf left David Sonenberg
for another manager
and David Sonenberg took Meat
to court.
He sued him for breach of contract.
Leslie, his ex-wife, and him told me
that they got a knock on the door
one day and they opened the door
and it was the sheriff.
He said, "Would you please step
out of the house?"
And they padlocked the front door.
They couldn't take a thing
out of the house
and they got in their car and drove
away and they lost everything.
He went through a two-year period
of complete and utter depression
and devastation,
and then he woke up one day
and went,
"Well, I can't record,
but I can perform."
And he got a band together
and he started performing
and going up and down the East Coast
in little bars
and, you know, he was this huge star
and, all of a sudden,
there he is, playing
in some blues bar.
No-one of my generation cared
or knew
or, you know, like, my dad
was some fossil from the '70s
for all the kids I went
to school with cared.
And then, in the late 1980s, Meat
and Jim started being in touch again
and I think enough time had passed.
I think enough time had passed.
He came out to my house, '89 or '90,
came out to the house and played me
I'd Do Anything for Love
and he hadn't finished it.
He goes, "I'm not finished.
"It's a duet and
the girl comes in here."
I'm going, "Well, so far,
it's great, Jimmy."
His management and his
record company and Jim and me
saw lightning in a bottle if the
two of them could get together again
and make one more album.
There is a possibility that
lightning would strike again
and it did.
And the song comes in...
I'm walking. Tell them I'm walking.
..that just blows everybody away.
People are calling this a comeback.
Do you consider this a comeback?
No, I never went anywhere.
It winds up charting 11 weeks at
number one on the Billboard chart,
the Billboard singles charts.
The album, I think, was nine weeks
at number one.
# And I would do anything for love
# I'd run right up to hell
and back...
That song has act one, act two...
# I would do anything for love...
..intermission, act three, act four,
and then I get the finale.
# No, I won't do that
# Would you raise me up?
Would you help me down...
And the girl who was supposed
to sing it was Ellen Foley,
I believe, and they said,
"Will you go in there and
sing that with Meat Loaf?"
"Are you kidding me? Me?"
When Lorraine sang it,
she owned it.
# Will you cater to
every fantasy I got?
# Will you hose me down with
holy water if I get too hot...
The part I regret is not
being in the video.
Gorgeous looking model,
but, as soon as my voice came out,
it made everybody think
that she was singing.
# I know the territory
I've been around
# It'll all turn to dust
and we'll all fall down...
But Meat Loaf and Jim
had been so kind to me
and I was on a number one record.
Why are you going to bite
the hand that feeds you
when they've given you
a great opportunity?
# No, I won't do that. #
And then this came from Bob.
How many movies have you been in?
I have been in 59 films.
CROWD CHEERS
Sh! Don't applaud!
27 of them suck.
So, after Bat Out of Hell II,
Meat Loaf kind of spent more and
more time doing screen acting
and he appears in a number of movies
until, finally, towards
the end of the '90s,
he has a very significant role
in Fight Club.
And this is how I met
the big moosy.
His eyes already shrink-wrapped
in tears.
Knees together,
those awkward little steps.
My name is Bob. Bob.
At which point, everyone, weirdly,
sits up and goes,
"Wow, Meat Loaf is a really
decent actor. Who knew?"
It's me. Bob.
Hey, Bob.
What Fight Club is about is men
secretly getting together
and beating each other up,
but, actually, it's about men
idolising other men.
Wow.
First rule is - I'm not supposed
to talk about it.
And the second rule is -
I'm not supposed to talk about it.
And the third rule is...
Bob, Bob, I'm a member.
When, you know, I'm talking about
Fight Club with someone, I'm like...
Everybody goes, "You were on set
on Fight Club?"
"Why were you on set on Fight Club?
Who did you know on Fight Club?"
I'm like, "My dad."
And everyone goes, "Oh, yeah!"
Meat Loaf's character,
he's a character
who is having a crisis of maleness.
He's a character whose body seems
to be not male enough for him.
We're still men.
Yes, we're men.
Men is what we are.
He's fragile and feminised and
anxious and undercut and worried,
which is all the things that he
never, ever was in his music.
OK. You cry now.
In recent years, Meat Loaf
has continued his journey.
He's actually, through his
sheer force of nature,
created this melting pot
demographic.
He had a big platinum album called
Welcome to the Neighbourhood,
and then you have
Hang Cool Teddy Bear,
and the interesting thing
about that record is
it sort of steers Meat Loaf
into a new Hollywood
where guys like Jack Black meet
the traditional guitarists
like Brian May of Queen.
And then there was a big top 10
hit in 2006,
It's All Coming Back to Me Now.
A duet with Marion Raven.
# If you forgive me all this
Forgive me all this
# If I forgive you all that
Forgive you all that
# We forgive and forget
# And it's all coming back
to me now...
That song was huge in Norway,
obviously.
Marion Raven's from Norway.
Huge hit in Europe.
He constantly is a presence.
# It's all coming back to me now. #
He's been here for nearly 40 years.
You're still getting Meat Loaf
and those platinum albums
and he's been there for
a third of a century.
I don't think anybody foresaw that.
The Apartment
by Duncan Lamont
If you were to see Meat Loaf
in the afternoon,
you would kind of wonder,
"Who's this guy?"
We'll get into, like, a warm-up,
maybe an hour out of the show,
and it's like this thing comes
in the room, you know,
and it's like,
"Holy shit. It's Meat Loaf."
What are we going to do? ALL: Kill!
What do we need to do? ALL: Kill!
What do we always do? ALL: Kill!
What do big dogs do? Kill!
At the moment, he has hairline
fractures in his foot.
He limps because of it and
he also had a knee replacement
where they had to remove some bone
and put rods in,
and he's on stage every night,
so that gives you an idea
of how tough he is,
and that was driven in to him
in Texas when he was a boy.
You know, playing football
and by his father.
There are eight Jim Steinman songs
on the new record
and there hasn't been that much
of an involvement with Jim
since '92 on Bat II.
In fact, I'm doing one of the songs
which was meant to go
on Bat Out of Hell
and Todd threw off of
Bat Out of Hell.
It's called Who Needs the Young?
What he sings is...
I call it rock'n'roll opera.
The songs, in and of themselves,
are so difficult for a singer.
I don't want to say it's impossible,
but it's difficult.
# Just can't seem to make it tell...
But, to his credit...
# You took the words right
out of my mouth. #
Meat Loaf has an ability to work an
audience like no-one I've ever seen.
You took the words right
out of my mouth!
Must have been when
you were kissing me!
No!
His ability to entertain and capture
and hold an audience is still there.
He loves his fanbase like I've never
seen anybody love a fanbase before.
He cares about everything.
Hi, my name is Parker.
Hi, Parker. How are you?
I...
It's OK, honey.
Your music kept me alive.
Well, hey, I think my music's
kept me alive too.
It's not about Meat Loaf, it's about
him wanting to perform for his fans.
Once he was accepted,
it's sort of like the
fat kid finds love
and that will be such a loyal love
for the rest of his life.
I never thought I would meet you.
Never.
Well, there's no need
to cry, darling.
But it was you that kept yourself
alive, because you wanted to be here.
Oh, boy. See, so fate brought us
together. There you go.
It was a fabulous concert.
Well, thank you very much.
For an old man, I go for it.
For an old lady, I liked it.
The audience is always the
most important thing to me.
I'm going to fucking cry here.
Because I live for these people who
spend their money on these seats...
..and they mean more to me
than I do to myself.
I...
..I don't mean anything.
They do.