Meat Loaf was one of rock’n’roll’s biggest stars – in more ways than one – yet when we meet in a music studio he is looking like a much less meatier 72-year-old version of his old self.
They say fame comes with a price and it’s certainly true in his case.
Along with a difficult relationship with food, he struggled to deal with life in the spotlight.
But it’s a much happier Meat Loaf sitting opposite me, recounting the difficult and sometimes bizarre times he lived through.
The Bat Out of Hell legend, dressed in black with a massive cross hanging from his neck, recalls how in 1981 – as he was reaching the peak of his fame – he had secretly holed up in a hotel for four months to escape the trappings of fame when one night he decided to go to a restaurant with friends.
“I ordered rabbit and they served it with its head on, no ears and its eyes closed,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Take this away and I want vegetables and a salad,’ and from that moment I became vegetarian for maybe 11 years.”
Once a mountain of a man, his veggie conversion lasted until he was forced to shed the pounds for health reasons.
“I stopped because I wanted to lose weight. The carbohydrate diet worked to a point, I lost 30lb but it went right back on. I lost 70lb on the low-fat no-sugar diet.
“You don’t need calories, you need a lifestyle change… and less fat.”
We’re interrupted by an assistant who brings Meat some snacks. “Is that Kettle potato chips and a cookie in there? Perfect,” he says, without a hint of irony. “People should try and have two meatless nights a week. If everyone had a meatless night, that would save 1,600 people per steak – just multiply that!”
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It’s fair to say the Texan’s grasp of maths also contributed to financial issues as he says people made
millions from him at a huge personal cost. “It was just too crazy,” he sighs.
“Everyone was just going around saying the stupidest things. I don’t play the game of celebrity legend icon stuff. So I just went in to a hotel room and kept ordering food from a deli.
“Every night and every morning, that’s where I got my food. When I checked in at the front desk I told them, ‘I don’t care who they are, I’m not here.’ People were looking for me everywhere and couldn’t find me.”
The spectacular success of his first album Bat Out of Hell in 1977, which sold 43 million copies and even now sells 200,000 a year, put Meat under massive pressure to produce a follow-up hit.
“One night I decided to walk to the deli. I saw some of my old softball team, who I hadn’t been able to play with for four years because Bat was absolutely enormous. I’d got a tiny inkling of what it would have been like for The Beatles.
“Folk would say, ‘You’ve changed.’ But I would say, ‘I haven’t, what’s changed is the way you act towards me. Your perception has gone crazy and you think I’m something more than I am.’ So I invited them…to the restaurant and said, ‘Lets get back to where we were’.”
It was that night the lonely rocker found his old buddies again – but lost his taste for meat. By then he was also struggling with voice problems after a cocktail of non-stop touring, partying and drugs left him exhausted.
A magical pairing with Cher produced his huge 1981 anthem Dead Ringer For Love, which reached number five in the UK singles charts. Despite their chemistry, Meat says they don’t keep in touch.
“We’re still friends but I don’t see her a lot,” he admits. “We were supposed to be in Vegas at the same time but we didn’t have the same off days.”
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It was 12 years before Meat staged a comeback when his songwriting partnership with Jim Steinman produced Bat Out of Hell II. It sold over 15 million copies.
Breakout hit I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) went to number one in 28 countries in 1993.
Eight more albums followed and Meat Loaf attained megastar status in the UK. But in 2016, Meat collapsed on stage in Canada. A series of back operations left him housebound and grumpily turning to social media to scotch rumours about his health.
He says huffily: “The last album was really experimental because I’m an actor. People call my work theatrical, but it’s more than that, I do characters for every song and they borrow my voice. So in the last record, I sang as the character, and everybody started going, ‘Oh he’s losing his voice.’
“F*** you!” he explodes, “I’m sorry for the language. But f*** you, I’m not!”
Meat looks after himself more these days. “I go to PT three times a week for my back. It was caused by years of being on tour or shooting films.”
An actor before becoming known for his flamboyant, four-octave vocal range, Meat is keen to remind people that he launched Broadway musicals and appeared to critical acclaim in more than 50 movies and TV shows.
“I shot 11 films and did two tours from 1996 to 2001,” he says. “Crazy In Alabama and Fight Club were shooting at the same time in LA. One morning I got to the Crazy In Alabama set and there was nobody around but I put my costume on. Finally someone showed up, and I said, ‘Where in the hell is everybody?’ They go, ‘Nobody’s coming in today – it’s a night shoot.’ I was supposed to be at Fight Club.”
British fans have always had a fondness for Meat. In the 80s he lived in London’s St John’s Wood and would regularly visit Stonehenge. He drawls: “I think it’s really mind-boggling.”
The day we meet he is in London on his way back to the US from an autograph event in Germany. “When you’re touring or doing a film you never get in touch with fans. At the Comic Con things I’ll have a line of 150 people to meet. Some get angry as I’m going too slow.”
Meat speaks slowly and a film crew – shooting an advert for high street restaurant Frankie & Benny’s Veganuary campaign – want to get back to work. But Meat likes to chat and I wonder if he’s a bit lonely.
“I don’t have family around at Christmas. At Thanksgiving I was by myself because my wife’s mother broke her hip, so she had to go to Canada.”
Meat - real name Michael Lee Aday – got hitched backstage at Woodstock in 1979 to singer Leslie Edmonds, who already had a daughter Pearl. The pair then had Amanda, now a 34-year-old actress, but the marriage broke down after 21 years and Meat married Deborah Gillespie in 2007
Singer Pearl, 44, wed Anthrax band member Scott Ian, and Meat is chuffed about his grandson, boasting: “Revel is eight and he’s played guitar with the Foo Fighters on stage.”
Not that Meat is ready to hand over his mantle just yet, as he insists: “I’m not old. I’ve got songs for another record and I’m reading a script.”
Clearly he still has those Rock and Roll Dreams.
Frankie & Benny’s Meat-Free dishes are 50% off mains from Jan 5 to 31.