Meat Loaf Interview in Jam!

[mszee]

Don't know if this was posted before but I found this to be interesting...

Meat Loaf sizzles on dark side

By JAMES REANEY -- Sun Media

Unlike his intimates, I just couldn't bring myself to call the big man Meat.

"Mr. Loaf" didn't seem to work either.

So the formality of first name and last name -- as in "Hi, uh, Meat Loaf" -- seemed safest during a conference call to beef up the U.S. rocker singer's tour. Meat Loaf plays the John Labatt Centre tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m.

A few of the rock writers who really know the man were quick with the "Hi, Meat -- how's it going?" and "Yeah, right, Meat."

No Meat for me.

It still seems right to call him by both names.

We did talk -- mostly about one of the darkest, most compelling movies in film history.

Our part of the conversation turned into a Meat Loaf riff on the Orson Welles film noir masterpiece Touch of Evil. From the Bat Out of Hell trilogy to a 1958 thriller was a short journey with Meat Loaf leading the way. He turned out to be a huge fan of Welles -- the film's director and its iconic star as the evil lawman Quinlan. It was a case of one larger-than-life American legend nodding to the genius of another talented big fella.

Like Welles, Meat Loaf is comfortable working on the dark side.

"It deals with extreme situations in people's lives," he said elsewhere in the call. "It's the emotional peaks and valleys in people's lives when they're at their most vulnerable."

Touch of Evil? Nope, Meat Loaf's own oeuvre, starting with the 1977 mega-seller Bat Out of Hell.

There was so much Meat Loaf to digest, I passed on the chance to interview Norway's Marion Raven, his duet partner on the hit single It's All Coming Back To Me Now and tomorrow's opening act. I can tell you Raven looks sensational on the cover of a European edition of Cosmopolitan.

Meat Loaf sizzled from the start.

"How do you figure that?" he barked at a Sun Media colleague who sensibly fired up the whole call by wondering about Jim Steinman not wanting to be involved. "Songs by Jim Steinman" is the way it reads on those famous Meat Loaf covers. Finally, the singer allowed that Steinman's serious illness, lawyers battling back and forth and other concerns had been met.

Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose was produced by hit-maker Desmond Child -- at Meat Loaf's invitation. It was completed in 2006.

Steinman wrote seven songs and also became involved during the mixing process.

"Jim Steinman is very clever about dealing with those emotional peaks and valleys," Meat Loaf said.

I'm not sure if I really understood Meat Loaf's plot synopsis of 1977's classic Two Out of Three Ain't Bad. "You've got a girl who's in love with a woman who the guy's not in love with because the guy's in love with another woman who's not in love with him," the singer said. Maybe.

Questions about songwriting had Meat Loaf boiling. "Did Marlon Brando write On the Waterfront . . . did (Robert) De Niro or (Al) Pacino write The Godfather?" he barked. "You're assuming that a singer cannot engage emotionally with a song unless it's become his reality."

Those actors connect emotionally with characters written by someone else. Same with Meat Loaf and the songs.

"I'm not putting myself in a category with an Olivier (Laurence Olivier) and a Brando but I do know that I become emotionally connected . . . that's my job with the song's characters," he said.

Meat Loaf has acted in such movies as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Spice World and Fight Club, and fooled around with Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny.

"Fight Club really opened it up to a hipper generation," he said. "I guess that Tenacious D (The Pick of Destiny) would, too . . . (but) Tenacious D, it's a real quick hit and I'm gone."

It takes a while before Fight Club fans figure out just who is playing the troubled character, Bob, credited to Meat Loaf Aday -- a combination of the singer's ID and his non-star identity of Marvin Lee Aday.

"People don't realize right away it's me," he said with real pleasure in his voice.

He loves it when recognition sinks in. Who was that playing Bob? Who was that? It couldn't be Meat Leaf could it?

"' Bob . . Omigawd, it was you,' " he has heard them say. They didn't know it was Meat Loaf.

"That's the biggest compliment I could be paid," he said.

And that is what makes Meat Loaf happy.

Original link:

http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/Artists/M/...7/3769086.html

[RadioMaster]

Jim was involved in the mixing?

[mszee]

Originally Posted by RadioMaster

Jim was involved in the mixing?

You picked up on that too, eh?

[Jayd]

MMMMMmmmmm so there was Jim being involved on Bat 3 then.

[RadioMaster]

if its true....press people often get things wrong at times...

you never know

[duke knooby]

indeed and a good story helps with promotion... was its all coming back to me now really written for bat 2? (glad anything for love was written and released first)