Meat Loaf

The death of Marvin Lee Aday, aka Meat Loaf, sent a shockwave through music lovers of a certain age. His epochal Bat Out Of Hell album was the soundtrack to so many high school parties and college barbecues it felt as if everyone was singing from the same lyric sheet.

Before teaming up with songwriter/producer Jim Steinman, Meat Loaf acted in both theatre and film (most notably The Rocky Horror Picture Show). But it was his 1977 LP that rocketed 'Loaf to worldwide stardom on the back of four singles/videos that defined an era. "You took the words right out of my mouth", "Paradise by dashboard light", "Two out of three ain’t bad" and the album’s title song "Bat out of hell" were monsters, as was the parent album. Jim Steinman wrote all the songs on the album, as he did for the 1993 sequel Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell. That album also did big business, helped by another huge single "I’d do anything for love (but I won’t do that)".

Meat Loaf, it is told, purposefully put on a huge amount of weight to avoid the US military draft, hence the name. But he suffered from an increasing number of medical ailments during his later years, making health a constant issue, one that affected his live performances with worrying regularity. He died in January 2022 of COVID-19 related illness, precautions against which he had loudly criticised, saying "If I die, I die, but I’m not going to be controlled". He was seventy-four years old.