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April 29, 2008 11:07 AM

Meat Loaf voted ideal driving song

December 01, 2003 12:02 PM

After successful surgery, Meat Loaf ready to resume road work

by Rob Evans
liveDaily Editor

Just two weeks after undergoing heart surgery, Meat Loaf has been cleared by doctors to resume his U.K. tour.

The 52-year-old singer said in a London press conference on Friday (11/28) that he hopes to perform in Dublin on Tuesday (12/2), and to fulfill the remainder of his scheduled dates. He also plans to reschedule all of the shows that he postponed in recent weeks due to illness.

Among the shows he plans to make good on is his Nov. 17 appearance at London's Wembley Arena. He collapsed about an hour into his performance on that date, and was taken to a hospital.

He was later diagnosed with a heart condition known as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, which causes an irregular heartbeat. "Basically, it is a condition where an individual is born with an extra electrical pathway in the heart," Meat Loaf said in a statement issued last week.

"Your heartbeat can get up to 300 beats per minute and then it explodes, so that would have been uncomfortable," he addeda in last week's press conference. "I guess I cheated death."

He underwent a catheter ablation--during which the extra electrical pathway is removed to restore a normal heartbeat--on Nov. 1 in London.

November 25, 2003 02:47 PM

Meat Loaf recovering after undergoing heart surgery in England

by Rob Evans
liveDaily Editor

 - Theatrical rocker Meat Loaf underwent heart surgery on Friday (11/21), after doctors discovered that he has a condition that causes an irregular heartbeat.

"I went through a whole week of tests for my heart and lungs and they found out I have a condition called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome," the 52-year-old singer said in a statement posted on his fan club's website. "Basically, it is a condition where an individual is born with an extra electrical pathway in the heart. Many, many people are born with this condition and can live their whole lives without ever knowing it is there. Mine appeared to have remained quiet until now. The cardiologist performed an angiogram on Friday and they were successful in removing the extra pathway (a procedure called 'ablation').

"The prognosis is excellent as the procedure's success rate is over 95%. I was in surgery for around two hours, out of the hospital and back at the hotel."

He added that he hopes to resume his current U.K tour on Dec. 30, if he gets the O.K. from his cardiologist.

Meat Loaf's Nov. 17 performance at London's Wembley Arena was cut short after the singer collapsed on stage. The collapse was blamed at the time on "exhaustion due to a prolonged viral infection," according to a press release. He tried to resume the show after collapsing, but was advised by on-scene paramedics to go to the hospital.

The week before, he postponed two sold-out performances "after being struck down by a particularly vicious bout of flu," according to a press release.

Meat Loaf was in the midst of a sold-out, 18-date U.K. tour to back his latest album, "Couldn't Have Said It Better," which surfaced in late September.

November 18, 2003 11:08 AM

Meat Loaf collapses during London performance

by Jon Zahlaway
liveDaily Staff Writer

Singer Meat Loaf's Monday-night (11/17) performance at London's Wembley Arena was cut short after the singer collapsed on stage.

The collapse was blamed on "exhaustion due to a prolonged viral infection," according to a press release. Meat Loaf tried to resume the show after collapsing, but was advised by on-scene paramedics to go to the hospital.

The incident occurred during the first of two consecutive sold-out nights at the venue, and caused the cancellation of Tuesday's (11/18) scheduled performance.

According to a statement, "Meat Loaf will be re-evaluated by doctors today and further information about his status will be made available."

Last week, Meat Loaf postponed his sold-out Nov. 13 and Nov. 15 performances under doctor's orders "after being struck down by a particularly vicious bout of flu," according to a press release issued on Friday (11/14).

Meat Loaf is in the midst of a sold-out, 18-date U.K. tour that backs his latest album, "Couldn't Have Said It Better," which surfaced in late September.

Saturday, September 20, 2003

Meat Loaf convinced to do third sequel to hit album

Meat Loaf says his album Couldn't Have Said It Better, set for release Tuesday, was supposed to be his last. But there's been a slight change of plans.

"Yeah, we're doing it," he says from his Toronto hotel room, the "it" referring to Bat Out Of Hell III. "That's why I said this was going to be the last record, but we're going to do III. I'm not going to tour. I may do a show or two but I'm not going to tour."

The musician, who wants to concentrate on his acting career under his real name Michael Lee Aday, is currently in the middle of his last world tour. It's a tour he knew would be his last for some time.

"I wish it was over already," he says. "I've just had a bad summer, I've had (emergency intestinal) surgery, and then I got really ill, and then I got freaked out, and I've been stressed. When we went out on tour last summer and it was called the Just Having Fun For The Summer Tour, it really was fun.

"Not all the shows have been as good as I wanted. I had these terrible nights in the dry climate and I'm sick and I don't actually know I'm sick. I hate cancelling so I just keep going anyway. And then people can tell me how good the show was and I want to shoot them."

Meat Loaf rose to stardom with an appearance in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but his fame reached new heights with his 1977 album Bat Out Of Hell, which has sold more than 30 million copies. The songs he wrote with Jim Steinman, such as Paradise By The Dashboard Light and the title track, were instant classics.

The 57-year-old says his new album was more enjoyable to make than 1995's Welcome To The Neighborhood.

"Welcome To The Neighborhood was a rush-rush, push-push thing," he says. "In fact every album except Bat and this one have been rush-rush, push-push. You gotta get it done! You gotta get it done! Every one of them!

"So I said, 'I'll never do it again.' And I didn't, I waited until I thought, 'Okay, I have nothing else left to say right now on this record. I have no other scenes in my head.' It's really not what I'm saying but what scene I'm playing, and have all the scenes been played inside this little play? All the scenes that should have been there were there."

Meat Loaf says that while he juggles both acting and music, he doesn't see any difference between the two.

"What you take is reality, you make them real," he says. "That's what acting is and that's what it should be when you're on stage. But I don't see too many performers on a rock stage who make it real. You're just singing words and singing melodies if you're paying attention to the audience.

"It would be like going to see Shakespeare and the guy is doing, 'All the world's a stage...' from As You Like It. Instead of being in that world, he's out cruising the front row and then giving them high-fives. People would be going, 'What is this clown doing?' If you're going to sing a song, there's no difference."

The singer says he might consider running for politics given the state of the world. He lost two friends in the 9/11 terrorist attacks while he was at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting the film Focus.

"(The world) is almost like Alice In Wonderland, The Mad Hatter, it's lost its mind," he says. "It's completely insane. It's just completely gone to hell in a hand basket.

"At least if I go do a show, I'm going to Kansas and 12,000 people show up they don't have to worry about what's going on for the next two, or two-and-a-half hours. Let's go off on a dream, let's go on a road trip."

One thing you'll never find him doing is reading his own press, and for good reason.

"There was a show that I got sick and we cancelled," he recounts with a laugh. "And the next day we were still in that town. There was a review of the show in the paper. And it was a good review, too!"

May 21, 2003 12:44 PM

Meat Loaf adds stops to his farewell world tour

by Rob Evans
liveDaily Editor

 Theatrical rocker Meat Loaf will say goodbye to extensive road trips with a 15-month world tour that opens in California this June and is so far scheduled to visit more than 30 North American cities.

The singer-actor will play concert dates in the U.S. through September before traveling to Europe, Australia and Asia. Additional treks through Europe and North America will follow before the tour concludes.

Cyndi Lauper and Kasim Sulton will split opening act duties; details can be found in the itinerary below.

Meat Loaf's publicist told the Associated Press earlier this year that the artist plans to devote more time to his acting career. Among the movies he has appeared in are "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Fight Club" and "Crazy in Alabama."

Though a U.S. release date hasn't been announced, Meat Loaf's first new studio album since 1995's platinum-certified "Welcome to the Neighborhood" has been issued in Europe and Australia. Titled "Couldn't Have Said It Better," the new album features contributions from Diane Warren, Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx and Better Than Ezra's Kevin Griffin. It was produced by Peter Mokran, who has mixed and/or engineered albums from 'NSync, Christina Aguilera and R. Kelly.

Meat Loaf's 1977 release, "Bat Out of Hell," has sold more than 14 million copies in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry of America, which ranks the album at No. 24 on its all-time sales list.

April 23, 2003 04:58 PM

Meat Loaf dishes up farewell tour

by Rob Evans
liveDaily Editor

Theatrical rocker Meat Loaf will say farewell to touring with a 15-month world tour that opens in California this June.

The singer-actor will play concert dates in the U.S. through September before traveling to Europe, Australia and Asia. Additional treks through Europe and North America will follow before the tour concludes.

Meat Loaf's publicist told the Associated Press earlier this month that the artist plans to devote more time to his acting career. Among the movies he has appeared in are "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," "Fight Club" and "Crazy in Alabama."

Though a U.S. release date hasn't been announced, Meat Loaf's first new studio album since 1995's platinum-certified "Welcome to the Neighborhood" has been issued in Europe and Australia. Titled "Couldn't Have Said It Better," the new album features contributions from Diane Warren, Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx and Better Than Ezra's Kevin Griffin. It was produced by Peter Mokran, who has mixed and/or engineered albums from 'NSync, Christina Aguilera and R. Kelly.

Meat Loaf's 1977 release, "Bat Out of Hell," has sold more than 14 million copies in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which ranks the album at No. 24 on its all-time sales list.

A new day for Meat Loaf

The name's changed, but he's still in Focus

For the record, the name is now, legally, Michael Lee Aday. It's not Meat Loaf, nor Meat Loaf Aday, nor even his birth name, Marvin Lee Aday.

 "Names are so weird to me," says the singer and actor who's still best known for groping and frenching his backup vocalist night after night onstage in the '70s rock opus Paradise By The Dashboard Light. "I mean, I've been called 'Meat' most of my life. I can't deal with names, it's confusing."

 As he kicked back with a Cuban cigar on the balcony of his room at the Four Seasons Hotel during the Toronto International Film Fest, it seemed logical to draw a line between the bombastic rock-operatic personality "Meat" and the thinner and thoughtful actor-for-hire who was in town promoting his role in the film of the anti-racist Arthur Miller novel Focus.

 For one thing, "Meat" began as a cruel nickname foisted on him during a traumatic Texas boyhood by his alcoholic father -- a man Aday now calls, among other things, "a racist."

 "But my mother was not. And my mother (who died of breast cancer when Aday was 19) influenced me far more than my father did. In fact, any parental influence in my life, my mother gave it to me, musically, morally, she's the influence in my life. Really. Right there."

 That her influence flies in the face of some of his movie roles goes without saying. Set in the 1940s, Focus revolves around an ordinary middle-class white American (William H. Macy) whose life turns to hell when a new pair of glasses apparently makes him "look Jewish." Aday plays the man's next-door neighbour Fred, who begins looking at him with fear and malevolence even as he tries to enlist him in a head-bashing organization of "America First" racists.

 "I didn't claim Fred as evil," Aday says. "I never thought of him as evil at all. He was on that road, but I think he just wanted his block to conform to how it should be. It's all based on fear. To me, racism is completely absurd. It's like in that old Star Trek episode where the guys are half black and half white and they hate each other. And Kirk says, 'What's the difference?' And the guy goes, 'Well, he's black on the right side.' "

 Similarly, the redneck Southern sheriff he played memorably in Crazy In Alabama (on the trail of suspected spouse murderer Melanie Griffith) "was, again, a very stereotypical character in whom I tried to find some inner good. That character is more in touch with the situation of what's right and what's wrong than Fred was, even though he's still a redneck sheriff."

 There are no such shades of grey in his character in The 51st State, a movie in which he'll be credited for the first time as Michael Lee Aday. In it, Samuel L. Jackson plays an American superchemist who looks to score on a major drug deal. Aday is a lowlife named Lizard. "It's a black comedy," he says, "and I play a person with no redeeming qualities at all. I just went with it, and created somebody who's not likable on any level."

 (Aday says he was assured that Focus would be the first movie with his new name -- "Paramount was going to change the trailer, but finally they said it would cost too much money." When that one's released, he'll be Meat Loaf Aday.)

 I suggest to him that the sweet and tragic testicular patient he played in the controversial Fight Club might be closer to his real character (a survivor, the amiable Aday has battled various health problems of his own, as well as the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, before settling in as a husband and father of two daughters). But the notion of any of his characters reflecting his real life horrifies him.

 "If you see me in any way, that freaks me out," he says. "Forget Meat Loaf, 'cause that's a whole other persona. He's like a cross between something terrifying and Red Skelton, it's something really overacted, a song and dance, a musical comedy.

 "But even just seeing me ... it drives me crazy to see any piece of me onscreen, 'cause I really try to go to a physical place with these people I play. I'm like Shirley MacLaine channelling ... (he laughs) ... Okay, I'm not going that far, but you hear actors all the time say, 'I'm bringin' such and such from myself into this.' Well, I don't wanna. I don't want to see me up there, and I hate it when I actually do pop through. There's one little moment in Focus, you'll never see it, but I saw it, just for a hair. And it really bothered me."

 Fans will see that other guy, Meat Loaf, back on stage in the next year.

 His new album, due in March, is called Testify -- "which is something I've been doing my whole life. I should have been a preacher. If you liked my last record (Bat Out Of Hell 2), you're gonna forget that last record. This record is me, sounding like me, but it will surprise you."

 And no, it won't be produced by his legendary mentor/Svengali Jim Steinman, a reunion he won't discount.

 And it goes without saying that the proportions of his character in concert will be less "something terrifying" and more "Red Skelton." Aday wrestled with many demons in the Bat Out Of Hell days, sustaining a dozen or more concussions through sheer physical punishment, and "hitting the wall" twice in Toronto.

 Once he ended up here after suffering a breakdown and going missing, while on another occasion in 1978, he fell off the stage during a Toronto show and ended up in a wheelchair for a month.

 Just don't call him a rock star. "It's like people call me a rock star or this or that. And I go, 'Don't call me that. I don't think of myself in those terms. If you have to call me anything, call me a chameleon.' "

A slice of Meat Loaf's

TORONTO -- Focus co-stars a fellow you might know as Meat Loaf, playing Fred, a neighbour who falls in with an anti-Semitic gang of thugs. And while he's billed in the movie as Meat Loaf Aday, yesterday was his debut as Michael Lee Aday.

"The studio (Paramount Classics) insisted I keep my name as Meat Loaf," the Loafster said yesterday.

Seems they wanted whatever star power they could get. However, he was billed as Michael Lee Aday at yesterday's presser and vows to remain so throughout his film career.

"I'm a very confused person 'cause I've been called Meat all my life. But that other guy (Meat Loaf) is a character," he says. "I'd be appalled if I thought people were thinking about him when they saw me onscreen."

Not to worry, though. Meat Loaf will return in March, when he releases his new album Testament.

Piping hot Meat Loaf

Singer becomes sought-after character actor

NEW YORK -- The pendulum is on the upswing again for Meat Loaf.

"For the past 32 years, I've done nothing outside the entertainment business. I've had some real highs and some real lows, but I love the work so much that I never once thought of quitting," he says.

"Performers only go wacko when they fall from grace if they like the adulation more than the work."

Meat Loaf, who is best known for his 1977 debut album Bat Out of Hell, which has sold more than 50 million copies, is busier than a hellbent bat.

In Fight Club, he stars as a dying man looking for meaning in the last months of his life.

In Crazy in Alabama, he is the bigoted sheriff of a small town.

On Oct. 30, he kicks off a 25-city tour of his new audience participation concert tour called Storytellers.

His autobiography To Hell and Back, which is already in bookstores, will be turned into a made-for-TV movie next year.

"This acting gig is so exciting. I'm getting the kind of critical recognition I never dared dream possible. Rolling Stone, which never appreciated my music, called me one of the hottest character actors in the business today."

Meat Loaf, who was born Marvin Lee Aday 52 years ago, made his film debut in 1975 in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, playing the freeze-dried motorcyclist Eddie.

"I had done the role onstage and I had been looking for a way to break into films, so this was the natural way to do it. I thought it was going to be a snap because all I'd have to do was break through a mock wall of ice, sing and die. I couldn't have been more deluded," he recalls.

"It took us eight days to film four minutes of screen time and each day there was an accident. My stunt double fell off the ramp with the cycle landing on him. I rushed over and, in my adrenalin rush, lifted the motorcycle into the air. He got out from underneath and walked away."

The next day, it was Meat Loaf's turn to crash.

"My stand-in saw what was about to happened and broke his leg trying to prevent the accident. After a debut like that, every other movie has been a cakewalk." Well almost.

In Fight Club, Meat Loaf plays Bob, a former bodybuilder who contracted cancer from his abuse of steroids. The steroids have also produced large female breasts.

"I was padded from the knees to the elbows and the breast sacs were filled with flax seeds and weighed 16 lbs. each.

"Brad Pitt teased me incessantly. He was always fondling them. He's a great kid. Very outgoing. He really livens up a movie set."

Meat Loaf has high praise for his Crazy in Alabama director Antonio Banderas.

"From our first meeting to our final handshake, Antonio treated me like an equal -- like a professional actor and not some old rocker."

Meat Loaf is not the only actor in the family. His 18-year-old daughter, Amanda Aday, has a small role as a TV production assistant in Crazy in Alabama.

"She auditioned on her own. I refuse to pull any strings."

Meat Loaf has learned his lesson.

When Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace debuted this summer, Amanda reminded her father that she could have been playing Queen Amidala.

"Amanda and Natalie Portman are good friends. They were in the same acting class together when they were both asked to audition for The Professional.

"It came down to the two of them. I refused to let her do the screen test after I read the screenplay.

"I don't regret that decision. She was too young to start a serious acting career."

Meat Loaf cooking in movies

 HOLLYWOOD -- Rock musician Meat Loaf -- who first roared onto the big screen in the 1975 cult comedy-musical Rocky Horror Picture Show -- has joined the cast of Fight Club opposite stars Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, Variety says.

The picture is about two men involved in a love triangle who start a secret society that gives yuppies the chance to engage in brutal fistfights.

Meat Loaf has appeared in the features Motorama, The Gun In Betty Lou's Handbag and Wayne's World. His albums include Bat Out Of Hell and Bat Out Of Hell 2, which have combined sales of an estimated 50 million.

He is currently on location for Antonio Banderas' directing debut, Crazy In Alabama, with Melanie Griffith, and is on screen in the Patrick Swayze's Black Dog. His future film roles include The Mighty with Sharon Stone.

Role-playing on a grand scale

By WILDER PENFIELD III -- Toronto Sun