Meat Loaf would have turned 79 on Sunday, September 27. He was born Marvin Lee Aday on September 27, 1947, in Dallas, according to Wikipedia and CNN, and he legally changed his first name to Michael in 1984. The voice arrived before the fame. He played Eddie in ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ in 1975, per Wikipedia, and two years later he and songwriter Jim Steinman released ‘Bat Out of Hell,’ an album that record executives had passed on repeatedly. It went on to sell roughly 43 million copies worldwide, according to Wikipedia, and CNN calls it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It spent 485 weeks on the UK albums chart as of 2015.
The comeback was even bigger than the debut. “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” from 1993’s ‘Bat Out of Hell II,’ hit number one in 28 countries and held the top spot in Britain for seven straight weeks, per Wikipedia. It won him the Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo, in March 1994. He never stopped acting either. A generation who never bought a record knows him as Robert Paulsen in ‘Fight Club’ in 1999, and he turned up in ‘Wayne’s World’ as well, according to CNN and Wikipedia. Steinman, the partner who wrote the whole ‘Bat Out of Hell’ trilogy, died of kidney failure on April 19, 2021.
Meat Loaf followed nine months later. He died January 20, 2022, in Nashville at age 74, with his wife, Deborah, and daughters Pearl and Amanda at his side, according to CNN. The family did not release a cause of death. The music has not gone anywhere. Steve Steinman’s stage show ‘Anything for Love: The Meat Loaf Story’ sailed a second tribute cruise from Southampton this month after its 2024 voyage became MSC Cruises’ fastest-selling independent booking ever, per Cruise Mummy, and his former band, the Neverland Express, played a tribute at the Kauffman Center in Kansas City in August. Seventy-nine years after Dallas, the bat is still out of hell. Happy heavenly birthday, Meat.