Meat Loaf, Musician and Actor HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk.

I'm Stephen Sackur.

My guest today is a rock'n'roll legend who broke the rules

of the music business.

He was never cool, never a pin-up, but his

songs and his performances have always been much larger-than-life.

Meat Loaf shot to fame four decades ago with an album, Bat Out

of Hell, which became one of the biggest sellers of all time.

Since then his career in music and in acting has been a dizzying

mix of highs and lows.

How close did he get to self-destruction?

Meat loaf, welcome to HARDtalk.

Meat Loaf, welcome to HARDtalk.

Well, thank you.

And it's a pleasure to be here.

It's a pleasure to have you here.

I want to start by considering the span of your career.

You've been in the music business, and acting as

well, for pretty much 50 years.

Yeah, this coming February - I actually

know the date, February 17th, which is also my

assistant's birthday - I will have been in show

business for a 50 years.

You call show business and you have been putting on one

heck of a show.

And the way you do things, whether it is stage acting

or performing the music, it is all in.

I mean, you give it everything.

I'm just wondering whether you ever reached a point where you thought,

I've had enough of this, I've given off?

No.

And I'll explain to you why.

Because I'm always learning.

I'm always studying.

So I will arrive, let's say at a show,

four or five hours before the show, because the show before I didn't

listen to myself sing.

I'm the only singer I know that doesn't

listen to himself sing.

That's a mistake sometimes!

But I listen to what I did.

But also, every song on that show is a different character.

So what happens is, I'm listening back to the song, I'm starting to

manoeuvre myself into the different characters.

So you mean, you don't sing as yourself?

It's a more theatrical thing.

You're singing parts.

You see, I consider it theatrical.

I consider it to be the truth.

When you go to theatre and you see great actors in a play,

you almost float.

It's almost a floating experience, because they're not acting.

They're telling you the truth in the moment.

That's what I do in everything that I do.

You're talking to Meat Loaf.

But if you were to see me in a show, every song is

a different character.

And we don't stop.

It's like a symphony. It just keeps going.

You're in character?

Well, I switch them.

It's one heck of a performance.

You are a performer.

I want to take you back and talk through your career a little bit.

To be blunt about it, at school you were an overweight kid

who got teased, who had a tough time.

Who had tough times at home as well with parents struggled.

Your mum died young.

How is it you turned yourself from a small-town kid with

problems, to this big-time performer?

I don't look at myself as a big-time performer.

I don't view myself in that vision.

I refuse to allow them, in any advertising for

an album for a concert or anything, to use the words icon, legend, star,

rock star.

I am - to me I'm just another person, and I have a job.

But I want to get this point about confidence

and being an extrovert.

If you're a kid who is finding life pretty tough aged ten, 12, how do

12, how do you get the confidence to become the performer that

you were by the age of 20?

Well, there are so many people in life that have

tough times in their lives. An alcoholic father...

Which you did.

..who tried to kill me with a butcher knife.

A mother who died of cancer. And that almost destroyed me.

I mean, it took me ten years to get over that.

But I can't blame...

Like on my father's side, you get too many people in the world

that act up and do things and they go, "Well,

my father did this..."

I don't live that way. I love my father.

I have forgiven my father. God bless him.

You know? And my mother.

And I'm going to cry.

Because I don't do that.

No sense of blame in you?

No, you can't.

You just took responsibility for your own life.

I take responsibility for my life and my life only.

So let's get to that...

You were raised in Texas, but went to New York and you

made it into Hair, and I think in Los Angeles you got a part in the

musical. Within a pretty short time

you were in the rock 'n' roll business as well.

Yeah, I don't know how I got there!

What would you define as your biggest break?

Well, there are two of them.

One was getting involved with Joseph Papp at

the Public Theatre.

He had the nerve, and I'll give him credit, to put me

into two Shakespeares in the Park.

And I had never read Shakespeare.

I have now. I made a point.

When I was on tour I read every Shakespeare

play on days off.

And the other is Lou Adler from the Rocky Horror Show.

Which did bring you quite a lot of fame.

Yeah.

I thought you were going to say something else.

I thought you might say your biggest turning point was meeting

Jim Steinman.

Well, that's an obvious one.

I mean, to me that is obvious.

But I met Steinman at Joe papp.

I auditioned for Steinman.

For people who don't know the Meat Loaf story so

well, Jim Steinman is your collaborator, the guy who's written

songs with you going back.

He's been one of my best friends for 46 years.

I love him dearly.

And I'm going to put in a little plug real quick for him.

He's got a musical that he has dreamt of for over 50 years, and it

is finally being done.

And it's opening in Manchester in February.

And the West End in April.

And that is the musical of the album that

defines you to a certain extent.

Bat Out of Hell.

Yeah.

I keep seeing things about his play, and it just keeps talking about me.

And I'm going, "No, stop talking about me,

talk about Jim!"

I'm going to talk to you about Jim quite a lot,

because your life and his have been intertwined, and not always in a

good way.

But before we get to that, let us watch a clip,

to remind everybody of the sound of Meat Loaf

and Bat Out of Hell.

Take a look at this.

# Like a bat out of hell

# I'll be gone when the morning comes

# But when the night is over, like a bat out of hell

# I'll be gone, gone, gone.

# Like a bat out of hell I'll be gone when the morning comes

# When the day is done and the sun goes down

# And the moon is shining through...#

Now I have to say, personally I never tire of listening to that

because I was a teenage schoolboy when that came out.

And I remember the whole school listening to that album.

Well, that meant you were later on, because when that

album came out in October of 1977, everybody hated it.

We were turned down by everybody, every record

company, four times.

And if it wasn't for a Little Steven of the E

Street Band, who plays with Bruce, that record would have never come

out.

There was a gentleman who used to be head of A at Epic, who

started his own label, and Little Steven said

to him that at the beginning was the best 20 seconds in rock

'n' roll history.

And so, Steve Popovich believed everything Little Steven told him.

And Steve Popovich eventually signed you, and the record became a massive

a massive worldwide hit.

He said this.

He said, "I was reluctant for so long because Meat

Loaf was too fat, too ugly, his hair was too long

and his voice was too operatic."

Why did people get it so wrong?

It seems so superficial.

Well, they're not wrong.

I weighed about 310 pounds!

I wasn't ugly.

I disagree with him on that.

And I am - my voice is naturally operatic.

I'm a heldentenor.

When I did my first Shakespeare with Joe Papp, Shakespeare

had written a song.

Of course we didn't have the music because we did

not know what music he wrote, so they hired David Shire

to write the music.

When I sang it one night, I had opera patrons come backstage and

offer me $60,000 a year for five years, $300,000, to study and make

my debut at the Met.

There are very few heldentenors in the world.

You could have been America's Pavarotti?

Well, I could have been!

The problem was, it was very tempting, but like

everything I've ever done, I had to research it.

And I found out unless you're Pavarotti, unless you're

Placido Domingo, the conductor is in control of everything.

And I am too much of a rebel, to rebellious to

-- And I am too much of a rebel, too rebellious to let some conductor

tell me how to do something.

And I would have wound up in prison for life.

I would have murdered him.

Let's talk about rebellion.

And your innate desire to get close to the edge of life.

After Bat Out of Hell came out, it was a

slow burn maybe at the beginning, but it sold in the end big-time,

over 40 million records.

It is in the top five bestselling records of

all time.

By '78, you are a massive star because of the album

and you are touring the world, and you lose it.

I hated being a star.

That is why I lost it.

I lost it partly because I knew what Jim and I had.

Because we had played little supper clubs in New York, 25, 200 people,

and people would go crazy.

I mean, not just applaud politely - I mean, crazy.

But what I'm getting at isn't so much the reaction of the fans,

which was fantastic, I'm talking about your reaction.

There was drugs, there was booze, there was bad behaviour.

No.

No, there wasn't.

There wasn't.

You called herself a monster at one point.

You talked about throwing mic stands not just at your bandmates,

but also at the audience.

No, that was a character.

In Paradise at the end, I threw a mic stand -

the guy at the end of Paradise was a monster.

I threw mic stand towards Carla.

I threw a mic stand towards Carla, but I never hit her.

I wasn't going to end like that.

If I had wanted to hit her, I would have hit her.

You see, that's media.

I've always been very disciplined, because I started off...

But what about the cocaine?

Oh, that was minor.

Really?

Bob Gillick, who was playing with you in the band,

said, "The problem with Meat Loaf was the road near the end

was killing him.

It did.

But it wasn't because of cocaine.

It was because I was so bound and determined to make this record

happen, that we would do five or six shows a week.

So I was working nonstop to make this record happen.

And you also pushed yourself beyond your physical limits.

There are famous pictures of you lying backstage after a show

with an oxygen mask.

Well, I had asthma.

I know.

But Jim Steinman said, after the 78 tour, "He had

lost his voice, he was pretty much losing his mind."

I had a nervous breakdown.

I was at a psychologist for about ten months,

five days a week.

Why?

Was there is self-destructive element within you?

No.

The whole thing with the psychologist was,

I said to the psychologist - he said, "Why are you here?"

I said, "Because people are calling me a star and I can't

deal with that."

That is very interesting.

Again it seems to me we cannot discuss your career,

and we will go through it if we have time, but we cannot discuss it

without coming back to the relationship with Jim

Steinman.

He was writing the songs, certainly on Bat Out of Hell.

You did some more collaboration with him, but often times after that

you did your own albums as well.

But the truth is, if one looks at it, your albums

without Jim Steinman were never as successful,

and most folks would say, never as good as the work you've

done with Jim Steinman.

Yeah, they probably would.

But believe me, I wouldn't have put it out if I hadn't have loved it.

I mean, I did a duet with Roger Daltrey on Bad Attitude.

But Jimmy is one of the greatest writers in history.

I mean, he is in the category of Richard Wagner.

He is in that category.

He is an old soul.

Forgive me for playing the pop psychologist,

but here is a theory.

You struggled with the stardom and all of the focus on you,

because from the very beginning Meat Loaf,

the name, had been you, and the music seemed to be you,

when in fact Jim Steinman was an absolutely crucial

collaborator and he didn't get the credit.

So that made the spotlight on you all the greater,

and at the same time Jim Steinman has been very frank and said,

you know, "I wanted more recognition because I was there,

but my name was never attached."

Absolutely.

You guys fell out over that.

No, we didn't.

We never had an argument.

We didn't really fall out.

You sued each other.

He sued you.

No.

That's...

You see, that's what happens when record companies and managers

start to sue each other - they don't sue each other,

they have to put our names to it.

And then they say, "Don't talk to each other."

But Jim Steinman, I mean, he must have been aware

that the legal suit his lawyers lodged against you, bankrupted

you for a while.

You had to declare bankruptcy.

Year, but not because I couldn't pay the MasterCard or I couldn't

pay my groceries or do any of that.

It became because we were in Chapter 11 which allows you to be...

To protect your assets while you're trying to...

Yeah.

And it wasn't because...

You get all the stories of all these rock stars spending their money

and all this.

Well, I never did that.

Many of them snort it away or drink it away.

I don't...

I don't like alcohol.

I throw up at the smell of champagne.

The only thing that I ever touch is tequila.

And I don't sit home and drink tequila.

I never drink tequila at home.

I don't drink anything at home.

I don't even drink soda pop.

I suppose what's interesting, because, you know, your partnership

with Steinman is one of the great creative partnerships in music.

It didn't work for a while, and then you came back in 93 to make

the follow-up to Bat Out of Hell.

Two.

Which we started in 87.

That's right.

That sold really well.

Did fantastic.

Then you tried to do Bat Out of Hell 3 without him and that

didn't really work.

Well, you see, that was a problem.

That was managers fighting.

And when Jimmy and I got together to do this record...

Which brings us to the present day, because now you've got a new record

out, which is some old songs and some new songs, another

collaboration between you and Steinman.

Well, I told him things that had happened about Bat Out of Hell 3.

There was so much he didn't know.

So you are totally reconciled with him now?

Jim and I have never had an argument.

Let us come, in that spirit, Jim and you working together,

and listen to one of the tracks on the new album.

# We always seem so much braver than we ever are #.

That is you looking rather imperious.

Again, too much make-up!

I suppose what I'm interested in is, we talked about how you gave

everything to the music from the very beginning.

I gave everything to everything.

Do you still...

Your voice has mellowed.

Rolling Stone said there is a much gentler vibe to the new album,

Braver Than We Are.

Have you dialled back or not?

That was a conscious...

Yes.

Jimmy and I both discussed this.

We did not want to recreate Bat Out of Hell or Bat Out of Hell 2.

I said, how about Who Needs the Young?

And that is the first song that Jimmy ever wrote as a songwriter.

And he was 19 years old.

It's interesting, because it's all about ageing in the voice

of a man who is considering what it means to get older.

Yeah, but I sang it as a 19-year-old.

Let's get to that, what it means to get older.

We all have to consider it.

Well, getting old is not for wussies.

That's what I say.

I get you.

Over the years, coming back to the physicality

of your performances, you have fallen off stages,

you have done your knee in, and back in 1978, you collapsed

onstage, you have had heart conditions, asthma...

I have had 18 concussions.

I've fallen three storeys off a balcony.

I've been in planes where landing gears didn't come down.

I'm a cat with 49 lives.

And you've got a bad back, which is restricting your

movement right now.

Yeah, which I can't work with, it's driving me crazy.

You've got a plan to tour Europe.

You said you weren't going to tour so much any more,

but you've got a plan to tour Europe with the new album.

How can you do it having battered your body to the degree

to which you have?

Well, I get my back fixed, and when I do...

I had knee replacement that never healed.

So I have three months of therapy.

I'm ready to go for that.

Do you really want to tour, with all of the pressures that

come with that?

I don't want to travel and I don't want to pack.

But I want to do the shows.

That means you've got to travel and you've got to pack!

I don't want to do those two.

So two out of three ain't bad!

I think I've heard that before.

Now look, I don't want to end on a morbid note, but I think

it is rather wonderful thing, because you are committed

to continuing performing, you said, "I actually don't mind

if I die onstage."

I don't.

I either want to die in my sleep or die onstage.

Is it true that you've told your bandmates -

because you do have the asthma and you do have a history -

have you told your bandmates that if you keel over and actually die

onstage, they have to continue playing?

Yeah.

They're going to play When the Saints Go Marching In.

And then they're all going to get up, and if it's in America,

the audience will sing the song Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

Which I just found out was written in 1907.

And you want this to happen even though your dead body

is being carried off the stage?

Well, I want it to stay there unless it's too morbid.

If it's too morbid, take it off!

All I can say is, God willing that is not going to happen.

No, probably not.

Probably not.

Meat Loaf, it's been a pleasure to have you on HARDtalk.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.