RIP Meat Loaf

Meat Loaf died Thursday at the age of 74. 2022 isn’t off to a great start, folks.

Most folks recognize Meat Loaf for 1977’s “Paradise By The Dashboard Lights” or, if you’re a generation younger (like myself), 1993’s “I’d Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”.

I swore I’d love you to the end of time
So now I’m praying for the end of time
If the 4:15 mark doesn’t get a rise out of you you’re dead inside.

My boys like to request and shout-sing along to “I’d Do Anything For Love” and it’s one of my absolute favorite things.

Meat Loaf was also know for his roles in films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Fight Club (His name was Robert Paulson) but my personal favorite is his scene stealing and wonderfully ironic cameo as young Jack Black’s anti-rock ultra-religious father in Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny and the most definitely not safe for work or around young children “Kickapoo”.

Rock at your own risk.

Last year, Meat Loaf was interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine to discuss the life of long time collaborator Jim Steinman who had passed away in April, 2021 (which I wrote about in November):

Jim Steinman was such a titanic figure in Meat Loaf’s life, that sharing their saga in a single phone call to Rolling Stone after Steinman’s death simply was not possible. It took two long calls across two days to get it across, and at the end of the first one, Meat Loaf broke down and sobbed uncontrollably over the loss of his friend. “Oh my God!” he moaned. “I haven’t cried until now. It just hit me. Oh my God! It’s horrible!”

Today many folks are saying the same thing about Meat Loaf’s passing.

“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

Joan Didion 1975 Commencement Address at the University of California, Riverside

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