Meat Loaf Biography

Meat Loaf is the stage name of Michael Lee Aday (born Marvin Lee Aday on September 27, 1947), an American actor (stage and screen) and rock singer. He is particularly noted for his smash hit album Bat out of Hell and several famous songs from movies. Meat Loaf is also the name of the band he fronts, as its lead singer. In 2001, he legally changed his first name to Michael.

Aday was born in Dallas, Texas. Despite setbacks (including bankruptcy, on more than one occasion), Meat Loaf is notable for the ultimate success of his music career, spawning some of the largest-selling albums of all time, and breaking several records for chart duration. Bat out of Hell, the debut album which had been four years in the making, sold over 34 million copies, becoming more profitable than Michael Jackson's blockbuster Thriller. After almost 30 years, it still sells an estimated 200,000 copies annually, and stayed on the charts for over 9 years. Each of the seven tracks on the album, eventually, also charted as a single hit.

Although he enjoyed success with Bat out of Hell and Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell, Meat Loaf experienced some initial difficulty establishing a steady career within his native United States; however, he has retained iconic status and popularity in Europe, especially the UK, where he has ranked 23rd for a number of weeks overall spent in the charts, and is one of only two artists with an album never to have left the music charts. In Germany, Meat Loaf became notably popular following the release of Bat out of Hell II but has enjoyed most success among pop/rock fans. He ranked at 96th on VH1's '100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock'.

Meat Loaf has also appeared in over 50 movies or television shows sometimes even as himself, or as characters resembling his onstage personality, such as his memorable role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He starred (unrecognizably out-of-character) in the acclaimed feature film Fight Club, as a cancer-survivor support-group member whose former steroid abuse caused him to grow large breasts, and led to castration to prevent the spead of the cancer.

In 1980, Meat Loaf started working on Dead Ringer. Steinman wrote all of the songs, but had little else to do with the album. At the time, his manager, David Sonnenberg, stepped out, and Todd Dellentash stepped in to manage Meat Loaf's career. The tour they planned, to support the album, was canceled after one show, because they ran out of the money that the studio advanced them. Sonnenberg and Dellentash also convinced Sony Records and CBS to advance more money for the making of the movie Dead Ringer, which was shown at the Toronto Film Festival and won some favorable reviews, but was poorly considered after Dellentash and Sonenberg re-edited the movie.

Meat Loaf sold out over 160 concerts during his 2005 tour, "Hair of the Dog". On November 17, 2003, during a performance at London's Wembley Arena, on his Couldn't Have Said it Better tour, he collapsed of what was later diagnosed as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. The following week, he underwent a surgical procedure intended to correct the problem. As a result, Meat Loaf's insurance agency did not allow him to perform for any longer than one hour and 45 minutes.

As well as singing all the classics, he sang a cover version of the hit single "Black Betty". During this tour Meat Loaf also sings "Only When I Feel", one of the songs from his upcoming album Bat Out Of Hell III. He mentions that this is not one of the most critical songs on the album. Meat Loaf says that this could be his last 'world' tour and that he will be doing less than a fifth of the concerts he did on his most recent tour.