Meat Loaf — Neverland Express Euro 82

We have this scene where a nine year old walks down the street. He finds a suitcase. He opens it. The insides shine bright blinding gold. He reaches inside. He pulls out the contents. It’s a tuxedo. He puts it on and SHAZAM! He becomes … Meatloaf.

That’s film director Allan Nicholls speaking. His pedigree includes working with renowned director Robert Altman and co-writing the popular ‘A Wedding’. Now his sole concern is making a fantasy film around the latest Meatloaf album ‘Dead Ringer’.

As far as the eight million people who possess the staggeringly succesful debut album ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ are concerned, Nicholl’s vision of the incarnation of the man mountain could be true.

The facts are sketchy. Dallas born Marvin Lee Aday got the monicker due to his incredible bulk. After stints in bands supporting the likes of Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent and Iggy Pop, Meatloaf joined the travelling cast of ‘Hair’. He cut a fairly abysmal album with a girl singer called Stoney before returning to the theatre.

He auditioned for a play by a protégé of the respected producer Joseph Papp. The play was called ‘More Than You Deserve’. The author was Jim Steinman. SHAZAM!

Meatloaf is sitting in a messy dressing room. He looks tired. His hair flops lankly in front of his face. He is wearing a loosely-buttoned shirt and jeans, he has had a full day filming ‘Deadringer’ and is about to start his first interview since his world tour nearly three years ago.

There could never be another saga like ‘Bat Out Of Hell’. Most record companies turned it down because they’d never heard anything like it and that’s a problem the record business has, he offers as explanation. It only got released because somebody happened to like the first 10 seconds of ‘You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth’ and thought it would be a hit.

Some hit! The album sold three million copies in his homeland and seven million abroad. But the surge wasn’t immediate by any means. It was only after the video of the album was shown on British TV, months after its release, the the record of intense passions and heroic painful love sold in vast quantities.

I knew that live I was real good. I knew that I could sell records behind my tours but video was a whole new ball game. I found out that the camera really loves me, there’s some sparkle…I don’t know…It just happens. I only expected to sell 100,000 copies so I could do another one, he confides.

The whole album has been released as singles and each one has been a sizeable hit making the record something of a miracle release even in these days of record breaking sales. So does Meatloaf still have a favourite on the album?

‘For Crying Out Loud’ is the best song. I know it’s not the most popular but that song did exactly what it was supposed to do, he pauses and says in a way that lacks his renowned bravado, It made the career I have now.

In the CBS convention in New Orleans in 1978 we did ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, ‘You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth’ and then we did ‘For Crying Out Loud’.

I sang that song better than I had sung any song in my entire life up to that moment. I finished, I’m standing there. They didn’t applaud. They didn’t do anything. That was a moment in time frozen. I had them by the throat, he says malevolently.

Nobody could move My band couldn’t move. I couldn’t move. It was stone silence. Then the place went crazy…

But success meant a taxing time for Meatloaf with such highlights as doing a radio promotion tour which visited San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Eugene and Denver in one day!!!

He then took the album around the world in a show of immense physical strength that had him requiring oxygen as he carried his enormous girth five or more miles each performance for 11 months.

I barely remember going to England. I only remember what food they served for dinner. It’s a way of preserving your sanity.

What about his weight now, he looks as though he’s shed a few pounds since the last reported weight of 25 stone?

I don’t eat hardly anything. I’m always on a diet. I’ve been on a diet my whole life. If I ate what I wanted to I wouldn’t be able to fit into this dressing room, he laughs, tucks into a frozen yoghurt which he claims is full of protein.

He continues, I’ve been doing this controversial Beverly Hills diet. If anything is controversial then I go get it… except for cigarettes and drugs.

But what did the tour take out of you?

It took my mind, he states succinctly. It was rumoured that he lost his voice. A rumour which he confirms.

I thought the problem was mental because of the tour being too long and too much and was creating my own mental blocks. Then it became frightening. But then I found out it was physical and I became really angry because of the total incompetence I’d been with for six months. I’d been going to a voice teacher who taught me to sing backwards and da-de-dah-de-dah, and a psychologist and then I worked with Warren Berrigan.

Did you ever feel like you might never sing again?

Even as I sit now, his face hardens as he confronts his fear, I think from day to day I’ll never be able to sing again. I used to think that nothing could ever stop me but now I’m so in touch with it and so careful. It’s an obsession. There’s never a lighted cigarette within 100 yards of me and if I walk into a dusty room I leave. I worry about the next rehearsal. I’m on guard.

In between his vocal problems he made a few film appearances including one as Travis Redfish in ‘Roadie’, the film which had Meatloaf as the ace humper to Blondie among others. The film got panned.

I thought the film we made was great but the producer got scared and forced the director to make changes. The film wasn’t meant to be about a rock ‘n’ roll band. It was meant to be about Travis Redfish and he ended up on the cutting room floor and they lost the soul. They were trying to do ‘Saturday Night Fever’ but that film was about the guy and the music was around it. When people do things for money they always get into trouble.

He also played a minor role wrestling and killing a car in the disasterous ‘Americathon’ and as the leader of the Hell’s Angels in ‘Scavenger Hunt’. But these were all fun things while he and Steinman plotted the next move. The first was the excellent Steinman solo album ‘Bad For Good’ which was going to be the follow up to ‘Bat Out Of Hell’. Hadn’t Meatloaf any regrets about letting material of that quality slip through the fingers?

Steinman can do no wrong. Steinman is one of the best rock ‘n’ roll writers in the world. I told him to do the songs. I don’t feel any remorse as I’ll probably end up doing the songs anyway.

‘Dead Ringer’ is much tougher, he says after I remark taht the theme of the album seems to be more entrenched in reality with a streak of unfulfilled love running through it. Well that’s Steinman, and the way I put it together.

This is the way it goes down, he takes his best baseball commentator voice and starts, Boy and girl in a car. Friend sees them and doesn’t like what the boy is doing. The friend gets the girl and falls in love. This girl turns out—wholly mollyzz—what’s she doing there. There’s a big fight. She leaves. [The] guy picks up a girl in a bar and finally Everything Is Permitted.

That song ‘Everything Is Permitted’ is [gut] level. It’s tougher than ‘Bat’. It’s the [ultimate] teenage anthem. That is a 16 year old speaking. That’s how they think and [that’s] how they feel.It’s the closest to me, he continues. I don’t think it’s as perfect as ‘Bat’ but it’s more human and I like that.

Like ‘Dead Ringer’, the upcoming tour is [buttr]essed by a supporting cast of rock ‘n’ roll all stars — female vocalist Pam Moore (Bob Seeger), keyboardist George Meyer (Ian Hunter), drummer Terry Williams (Rockpile, The Motors), guitarist Mark Doyle (Andy Pratt, Hall & Oates, Leo Sayer), pianist Paul Jacobs (Edgar Winters, Roy Buchanan), mainstay bassist Steve Buslowe (‘bat Out Of Hell’, ‘Dead Ringer’), vocalist Eric Troyer (‘Double Fantasy’, ‘Bad For Good’, Gene Simmons), vocalist Ted Neeley (‘Jesus Christ Superstar’), and newly recruited guitarist Steve Hunter (Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel).

The film that will eventually accompany the album and tour will be the ultimate fantasy for years, accoring to Meatloaf. The movie concerns two characters: Meatloaf and Marvin. Meatloaf plays both.

Meatloaf is a killer. The Meatloaf that goes on stage and makes records should be serving time. He’s a tough, tense character. He’s similar to a character in that Joanne Woodward film ‘The Three Faces Of Eve’. Marvin…well, I don’t know where he comes from. I put on his glasses and he takes over. He’s the type of guy that has a telephone answering machine and never gets any messages. He’s frightening. He never speaks except through his brother Russell.

All the rock ‘n’ roll movies you see has the audience feeling out of it. It’s like I wish I could be backstage with those guys. Now there’s these two twerpy guys that people can identify with, they go backstage and get to do everything they’ve always wanted to do and Marvin ends up on stage in place of Meatloaf. It’s the ultimate in audience fulfilment. Like in ‘Rocky’ when you walk out of the theatre feeling I COULD DO ANYTHING I WANT.

Marvin goes back home to being an accountant and he still doesn’t get any messages. But he has his dream and that is all he needs. Meatloaf can go back to his psychologist.