heat
15 Aug 2003, 18:39
As promised, here's the interview with Meat from the Evening Standard, Monday 11th August. Lucy Cavendish interviews.
MEAT LOAF? IT'S NOT ME AND I DON'T EAT IT.
Meat Loaf is in a terrible dither. He's arrived here in London without his clothes. 'What, no clothes at all, bar the one's you're wearing?' i ask him. 'Oh no, I have clothes. I mean, i just don't have Meat Loaf's clothes.' It's all very confusing. Whose clothes is he wearing then? 'My clothes' he says, 'but the other clothes, my Meat Loaf stuff, are halfway across the states.'
As he goes on - and believe me, he does - it becomes more apparant what the problem is.
He doesn't have his stage clothes with him and he had, he says, bought a lovely suit for his apperance on the BBC and he doesn't have his stage jacket that turns him from mild mannered Marvin Lee Aday into mad, bad and dangerous to know Meat Loaf. He really is very upset about this. When i suggest that he pops across the road and buys new clothes from Barkers in Kensington, he says, in a rather pained fashion, 'But it won't be the same. You don't understand, do you? I had ONE suitcase with a shirt and track pants and night stuff, and the other had all my special clothes and i picked up the wrong one.' Anyway, he says, he hasn't got time to replace the clothes and so the BBC will just have to make do with sweat pants.
As it turns out, someone, if not himself, must have gone to the shops, because when i see him on Patrick Kielty Almost Live he's wearing a leather jacket and he looks perfectly fine to me. But then again, maybe the clothes thing really did unhinge him, because, on Patrick Kielty, he seems almost schizophrenic. He charges on and takes over the mike and rips up Kielty's questions and flirts with a giggling Lorraine Kelly and a bemused Shania Twain and then belts out a song from his latest album, Couldn't Have Said It Better and the leaves.
Phew. But that scratchy, bullish man is not the slightly feminine, fretting, manicured man in front of me. He spends most of the interview with a cushion clutched to his chest so that it covers his stomach. 'You want me to be fat, don't you?' he says in an oddly high pitched voice. I tell him i really don't mind.
'Everybody does. Everybody wants to take photo's of me looking fat because that's how they know me. Big fat man with greasy hair. But i didn't like being 23 stone so i've been on a diet, but whenever people meet me, they don't recognise me and they feel dissapointed.'
His weight really is an issue with him. He tells me he's been on nearly every diet out there. 'I lost a lot of weight with UltraSlim diets. It's like WeightWatchers really. That worked.' Recently he's been on the Atkins diet, which means he eats everything apart from carbohydrates. 'Did you know that tomatoes have carbohydrates in them? Did you? It's an impossible diet.'
The problem is also that Meat Loaf is a vegetarian, but he had to temper his stance because the Atkins diet is all about eating high-protien foods such as meat. 'I was a vegetarian for years!' He says, 'The things i do for my figure! I'm thinking of going back to being a vegetarian now, though. You see, i love food. I could eat a couch.'
So here we are then, at the crux of Meat Loaf. He's never liked being Meat Loaf. He wasn't called that name untill he trod on his football coach's toes as a child growing up in Texas. He said 'You Meat Loaf' and it stuck.
In fact, his football coach sounds a slightly unpleasant man. Struggling to find his niche - with his gospel-singing mother dying of cancer and his salesman father hitting the bottle - Meat Loaf decided to get involved with the school dramatics society. 'I got up one day to sing and it felt really good, and i just got more and more involved with it. I loved the acting, I loved the music. Then the coach came up and said 'Are you gonna come back to playing sport or are you gonna hang out with the faggots in here?' that was the deciding moment for me.'
Another deciding moment for him was when he was 15. 'My mother died and i went crazy. My dad says i attacked him with a meat knife, but i can't think that i did. All i know is that we fell out. It was a terrible time for me. I really loved my mother. Her family were musical so i think that's where i got it from.'
He says he started playing gigs, and by the mid 70's was quite well known. But he went stratospheric when, in 1977, he recorded the gothic iconic rock album Bat Out Of Hell. This was when the Meat Loaf we all think of - the huge heavy man with long hair who appeared to be a drinking, smoking, hard living biker - was born. In real life, though. he was a vegetarian, non smoking, non drinking married man who had never owned a motorbike and was constantly on a diet. Although, to be fair to his rock credentials, he did have an alcohol fuelled breakdown after recording Bat Out Of Hell.
All sorts of rumors surfaced about that - that he went to a doctor who injected him wwith his own urine, that he lost his voice, that he popped pills given to him by alchemists. 'i didn't loose my voice. i lost my mind!!!' He says, 'And i didn't have a breakdown. I just stopped working. I thought it was my health that was messed up but i went to a doctor and he said 'No, you're physically alright, it's your mind thats gone.' But i'm fine now. Look at me, I'm an actor. I've been in 44 films. I know how to keep in control of myself now.
He tells everyone this. Within 5 mins of being on Kielty he says ' I'm an actor, i've been in 44 films, i know how to keep control...'
Anyway, apparently this means that he created an image all those years ago and it turned out to be so wildly successfull that he had to stay with it despite the fact that he never really wanted to. Now , of course, he actually has short hair and talks about himself as someone who has 'low energy'. 'I'm a quiet man' he says.
'I'm a watcher, a looker, a listener. When i play gigs i like to sit outside and watch the audience come in. None of them ever recognises me. I just sit and take it all in.'
Meat Loaf doesn't really like being a star at all. About that breakdown many years ago, he says 'i was just not well equipped for fame. I couldn't handle all the attention. I can't be Meat Loaf all the time.'
He's much more starry than he likes to let on though. He lives outside Los Angeles on a national game reserve in the Santa Monica hills. He used to share his home with his wife Lesley, whom he met more than 20 years ago.
She worked for Bob Dylan's manager and he proposed to her 10 days after they met. The couple married in Woodstock. But Meat and Lesley Loaf have recently split up. He says 'We're not together anymore. I mean we're just not. I can't talk about it because it hurts so much.'
So now Meat Loaf lives there alone. 'it's very quiet and beautiful, i love it.' It also happens to be next door to one of California's most exclusive and expensive golf courses. 'it's like no one ever goes there because it costs too much.' However, it does mean he can keep in touch with his friends. 'Oh yeah, i look out of my balcony and say ' Oh theres Jack (Nicholson) and Micheal (Caine) and Johnny (Mathis).' i like seeing them. I go out and have a chat because i'm friendly like that'.
He's also, rather bizzarely, looking for a house in the Hartlepool area as he is obsessed with Hartlepool F.C. 'Never actually seen them play though' he says cheerily.
Thats the thing about Meat Loaf, he is friendly and he is funny, and he is also someone who has been catipulted into iconic status by recording one album. Despite the fact that he sees himself as an actor - he was in Fight Club and 51st State - everyone else see's him as the man who sang Two Out Of Three Aint Bad. How does he feel about the fact that he'll never better that album? He get's all fake annoyed and a bit coy.
'Never better it? i did Bat 2 and this new albums pretty hot and then i'm doing Bat 3 and that'll be good.' But the truth is, at 53, he's getting on a bit. 'This is my last tour,' he says 'I can't keep the energy levels up.'
Now he says, he's going for the quiet life. 'I survive on coffee and i rarely go outside' he says.
Something seems quite sad about him - the tamed hellraiser who's barely ever raised his voice.
'I sure can sing loud though' he says laughing, 'It just may be for not much longer.'
MEAT LOAF? IT'S NOT ME AND I DON'T EAT IT.
Meat Loaf is in a terrible dither. He's arrived here in London without his clothes. 'What, no clothes at all, bar the one's you're wearing?' i ask him. 'Oh no, I have clothes. I mean, i just don't have Meat Loaf's clothes.' It's all very confusing. Whose clothes is he wearing then? 'My clothes' he says, 'but the other clothes, my Meat Loaf stuff, are halfway across the states.'
As he goes on - and believe me, he does - it becomes more apparant what the problem is.
He doesn't have his stage clothes with him and he had, he says, bought a lovely suit for his apperance on the BBC and he doesn't have his stage jacket that turns him from mild mannered Marvin Lee Aday into mad, bad and dangerous to know Meat Loaf. He really is very upset about this. When i suggest that he pops across the road and buys new clothes from Barkers in Kensington, he says, in a rather pained fashion, 'But it won't be the same. You don't understand, do you? I had ONE suitcase with a shirt and track pants and night stuff, and the other had all my special clothes and i picked up the wrong one.' Anyway, he says, he hasn't got time to replace the clothes and so the BBC will just have to make do with sweat pants.
As it turns out, someone, if not himself, must have gone to the shops, because when i see him on Patrick Kielty Almost Live he's wearing a leather jacket and he looks perfectly fine to me. But then again, maybe the clothes thing really did unhinge him, because, on Patrick Kielty, he seems almost schizophrenic. He charges on and takes over the mike and rips up Kielty's questions and flirts with a giggling Lorraine Kelly and a bemused Shania Twain and then belts out a song from his latest album, Couldn't Have Said It Better and the leaves.
Phew. But that scratchy, bullish man is not the slightly feminine, fretting, manicured man in front of me. He spends most of the interview with a cushion clutched to his chest so that it covers his stomach. 'You want me to be fat, don't you?' he says in an oddly high pitched voice. I tell him i really don't mind.
'Everybody does. Everybody wants to take photo's of me looking fat because that's how they know me. Big fat man with greasy hair. But i didn't like being 23 stone so i've been on a diet, but whenever people meet me, they don't recognise me and they feel dissapointed.'
His weight really is an issue with him. He tells me he's been on nearly every diet out there. 'I lost a lot of weight with UltraSlim diets. It's like WeightWatchers really. That worked.' Recently he's been on the Atkins diet, which means he eats everything apart from carbohydrates. 'Did you know that tomatoes have carbohydrates in them? Did you? It's an impossible diet.'
The problem is also that Meat Loaf is a vegetarian, but he had to temper his stance because the Atkins diet is all about eating high-protien foods such as meat. 'I was a vegetarian for years!' He says, 'The things i do for my figure! I'm thinking of going back to being a vegetarian now, though. You see, i love food. I could eat a couch.'
So here we are then, at the crux of Meat Loaf. He's never liked being Meat Loaf. He wasn't called that name untill he trod on his football coach's toes as a child growing up in Texas. He said 'You Meat Loaf' and it stuck.
In fact, his football coach sounds a slightly unpleasant man. Struggling to find his niche - with his gospel-singing mother dying of cancer and his salesman father hitting the bottle - Meat Loaf decided to get involved with the school dramatics society. 'I got up one day to sing and it felt really good, and i just got more and more involved with it. I loved the acting, I loved the music. Then the coach came up and said 'Are you gonna come back to playing sport or are you gonna hang out with the faggots in here?' that was the deciding moment for me.'
Another deciding moment for him was when he was 15. 'My mother died and i went crazy. My dad says i attacked him with a meat knife, but i can't think that i did. All i know is that we fell out. It was a terrible time for me. I really loved my mother. Her family were musical so i think that's where i got it from.'
He says he started playing gigs, and by the mid 70's was quite well known. But he went stratospheric when, in 1977, he recorded the gothic iconic rock album Bat Out Of Hell. This was when the Meat Loaf we all think of - the huge heavy man with long hair who appeared to be a drinking, smoking, hard living biker - was born. In real life, though. he was a vegetarian, non smoking, non drinking married man who had never owned a motorbike and was constantly on a diet. Although, to be fair to his rock credentials, he did have an alcohol fuelled breakdown after recording Bat Out Of Hell.
All sorts of rumors surfaced about that - that he went to a doctor who injected him wwith his own urine, that he lost his voice, that he popped pills given to him by alchemists. 'i didn't loose my voice. i lost my mind!!!' He says, 'And i didn't have a breakdown. I just stopped working. I thought it was my health that was messed up but i went to a doctor and he said 'No, you're physically alright, it's your mind thats gone.' But i'm fine now. Look at me, I'm an actor. I've been in 44 films. I know how to keep in control of myself now.
He tells everyone this. Within 5 mins of being on Kielty he says ' I'm an actor, i've been in 44 films, i know how to keep control...'
Anyway, apparently this means that he created an image all those years ago and it turned out to be so wildly successfull that he had to stay with it despite the fact that he never really wanted to. Now , of course, he actually has short hair and talks about himself as someone who has 'low energy'. 'I'm a quiet man' he says.
'I'm a watcher, a looker, a listener. When i play gigs i like to sit outside and watch the audience come in. None of them ever recognises me. I just sit and take it all in.'
Meat Loaf doesn't really like being a star at all. About that breakdown many years ago, he says 'i was just not well equipped for fame. I couldn't handle all the attention. I can't be Meat Loaf all the time.'
He's much more starry than he likes to let on though. He lives outside Los Angeles on a national game reserve in the Santa Monica hills. He used to share his home with his wife Lesley, whom he met more than 20 years ago.
She worked for Bob Dylan's manager and he proposed to her 10 days after they met. The couple married in Woodstock. But Meat and Lesley Loaf have recently split up. He says 'We're not together anymore. I mean we're just not. I can't talk about it because it hurts so much.'
So now Meat Loaf lives there alone. 'it's very quiet and beautiful, i love it.' It also happens to be next door to one of California's most exclusive and expensive golf courses. 'it's like no one ever goes there because it costs too much.' However, it does mean he can keep in touch with his friends. 'Oh yeah, i look out of my balcony and say ' Oh theres Jack (Nicholson) and Micheal (Caine) and Johnny (Mathis).' i like seeing them. I go out and have a chat because i'm friendly like that'.
He's also, rather bizzarely, looking for a house in the Hartlepool area as he is obsessed with Hartlepool F.C. 'Never actually seen them play though' he says cheerily.
Thats the thing about Meat Loaf, he is friendly and he is funny, and he is also someone who has been catipulted into iconic status by recording one album. Despite the fact that he sees himself as an actor - he was in Fight Club and 51st State - everyone else see's him as the man who sang Two Out Of Three Aint Bad. How does he feel about the fact that he'll never better that album? He get's all fake annoyed and a bit coy.
'Never better it? i did Bat 2 and this new albums pretty hot and then i'm doing Bat 3 and that'll be good.' But the truth is, at 53, he's getting on a bit. 'This is my last tour,' he says 'I can't keep the energy levels up.'
Now he says, he's going for the quiet life. 'I survive on coffee and i rarely go outside' he says.
Something seems quite sad about him - the tamed hellraiser who's barely ever raised his voice.
'I sure can sing loud though' he says laughing, 'It just may be for not much longer.'